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I have a strat partscaster I built, which I really love to play - gets used a lot around the house, but almost never gigged. The reason being I play in jazz bands, and generally need some sort of warm clean neck pickup tone (you know the general kind of thing) - and the strat just doesn't do it! It does sound good, just not good for jazz - currently has a hand wound set I had made to roughly "Eric Johnson" specs installed - the neck and middle are 5.9K and 6.1K ish, alnico 3. Bridge is 6.8K alnico 5. This is the guitar:
- one piece swamp ash body, neck is an ebony fingerboard with what I find to be a very comfortable medium "C" profile - whole thing sounds lovely and resonant played acoustically (which I do quite a bit). So it's a great guitar that I really love, but I just wish I could find some sounds I could use for jazz gigs - I suppose we are probably talking mainly about the neck pickup here.
I would kind of like it if the guitar stayed sort of in the classic strat sound area - but maybe there are different types of strat tone, and I'm just not getting the right type to be useable for jazz. So still with that crisp single-coil pickup kind of tone... Here comes the subjective attempt at a description: something with clarity, transparency, crispness, detail... but also warmth and perhaps a bit more richness than the average strat tone. Not too bass-heavy though. Can it be done? I'm wondering if some sort of lowish-wound alnico 2 set might fit the bill, or would the difference not be all that appreciable? And other pickup designs (must fit in a standard strat slot) I could consider? I did recently put a GFS "surf 90" alnico 2 pickup in the neck position of another guitar, and that is giving me a monstrously good tone for jazz:
(I usually have more than 2 strings fitted!) - it's got a kind of P90 vibe I guess, but seems maybe a bit crisper and less mid/bass-heavy (which I like) while staying warm. I believe it has over-sized individual alnico 2 magnet poles, but not sure what the coil looks like under the cover. All I know is it's working really well for me, and I wonder if I could find a pickup, or pickup set for the strat that would perhaps go a bit towards this kind of tone, if still also being what you'd call "stratty" sounding. If I'm asking the impossible please do say, but any thoughts anyone? Cheers!
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Comments
Not all the way probably.
What do the mini-switches do, by the way?
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Appreciate the thought - how much hotter would make a reasonable difference though? I'd say the current 5.9K a3 neck pickup, although it does sound good, is just not at all a good place to start for getting a jazz tone - has nice crispness and definition, but just too much upper mid, "nasal" kind of stuff happening, not fat enough sounding either. So must admit I'm a bit wary of sticking with the a3 and just going hotter.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Interesting what you say about the alnico II ICBM - it may be pure coincidence, but it seems like the guitars I have that work best for jazz are both fitted with alnico II magnet pickups. One has an Axesrus "Bourbon City" PAF type - not an expensive pickup I know, but until recently I would have said the best jazz tone I'd had. Then I fitted the GFS Surf 90 to another guitar (actually the same model guitar), and it's pretty amazingly good for my taste, and really liking the single coil sound quality compared to a humbucker. Hence my wondering if I can push the strat more into that general sort of fat neck single coil tone area with a pickup change.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Wouldn't like to say DC wise, depends on the batch of wire (42 Formvar) but something like 5% over stock wound low tension. The trick to stopping strats sounding thin is get the pickup closer to the string, but anything more than an alnico III and it's piss poor magnetic field you'll get trouble with wolf tones.
I don't normally post on pickup threads, too much like the day job. But this area I quite enjoy!
Basically you're using your volume as a tone by loading the pickup down to get rid of high end.