HUMBUCKERS

There are so many variables that give a humbucker its voice. Post your favorites, their construction, manufacturer, what type of guitar you use them in and if you wanna make a demo video on youtube please embed it. I'll start if no one posts by tomorrow.

I have a couple, is that okay?

1. Cream T- These are amazing. I want them so bad. They seem really interesting to me, but never have gotten to play them in person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=731D191pmkk

2. Alnico 2s- The classic choice. Great for classic rock and blues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZngum4f5d0

In readily available, current production buckers I am digging the Duncan 59 custom hybrid as a bridge pickup. A5 magnet, with a '59 coil and a Custom coil. This video does it no justice. Maybe I'll make my own demo video that doesn't sound all 80s hair metal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK9IVy43dqY

I have two.

1. EMG 40DC

My first active bass was an Ibanez 305DX. Once I went active I couldn't ever go back. I just hate the tone I get with passive. The EMG 40dc's are a solid dual-coil with a little bit of low burp/growl to them. Paired with a Spector 5 string, you can get amazing croaky growl while still keeping the mids and highs perfect and thick.

1. Unknown MM Style Bucks

I bought a Hadean EB-9705 a couple of years ago from RondoMusic. The bass itself was garbage with a neck through neck built like a staircase. It was so bad the local luthiers here wouldn't even touch it, not to mention the customer service and return policies of Rondo sucks. I stripped the bass and shaved the body and neck into a baseball bat. I figured I would keep the the other pieces for a project bass. The pickups I got off of it are amazing for their price. Highest, Loudest output in a pickup I've ever had. We tested them out and held the pickups for strings and nearly an entire inch away the strings rang through loud. I still have them in a bag and was planning on making a Red Lantern's Omage bass out of a bongo body with them. The only downside to them is that they drain a battery like you wouldn't imagine. The circuitry of the Hadean was incorrect and it was set so that the preamp was using battery charge even when the input jack wasn't plugged in. A new 9V battery would only survive about 24 hours. I still prefer MM style pups. The sound just fits me well. http://www.rondomusic.com/photos/bass/vickers5nm5.jpg

Love the look of that bass.

They used to make an alternate stain as well.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x296/sixstringpoet_album/Picture282.jpg

getting set-up to demo all my buckers thru my ac4.... get ready for embedded videos! might take all day though... I have a lot of guitars

I frickin' hate prosumer gear. Its such a pain not to overload my phone or even a usb mic into a laptop even with 4 or 5 cruddy watts. Shit is metering fine and sounds pretty great until I dig in. Its only an AC4 for fuck's sake. I didn't try to unleash one of the ac30s on this stupid podcast piece of crap. I am going to go drink a beer and swear a bunch about modern technology. This is why I do guitar stuff in studios now that I no longer have a big space to do my whole setup in. To record serious guitar rigs ya just need serious shit at your disposal and a nice big space to get loud in. Or I do anyway. My ears aren't even ringing, its just not that loud to be pushing a microphone diaphagm to its limits.

Anyway, I may have to ditch convenience in favor of a more serious recording method that will involve pulling shit out of storage. Demo videos of all my buckers are coming, honest.

I am jack's raging bile duct right now, so no good demoing will get done even if I can stop overloading this weak-ass budget condenser. I am super annoyed that I have to dig out some real microphones, pres and a compressor just to make a little video for each of my favorite humbuckers... I guess I could use the master volume on my ac4, but its so lame and it just saps away a lot of the mojo. PAF-stye humbuckers should be demoed blazing away through an amp that's wide open.

Before you go off naming your tumors and such, let me suggest you get a DI box exclusively for direct recording. I'm not certain which ones offer colorless sound options, but I am very fond of the SansAmp Bass Driver. Even for guitar parts it sounds wonderful. 200 bucks on that, some money on a good quality XLR cable right into your mixer, and you sir are set.

I think it may be destiny telling you to start saving up for the Kemper man. I doubt you'd get it to fart out on you like that. Don't rage, Slide.

I have gobs of DIs man. They're packed in boxes right now due to space issues. I could find one. But I can't demo PAFs thru an amp sim though.... but you are making the Kember sound good!!!!

My mixer is HUGE.... currently in storage.... the power supply takes up 4 rack spaces! I was just trying to do something fast and dirty. But it got TOOO DIRTY!

What I lack is a basic 1 or 2 channel USB or firewire interface like a focusrite scarlet.... all my stuff is PCI based and fancy...

those cream T double teles sound interesting...

These are my favorite bucks in my current favorite guitar, check out the video:

https://youtu.be/Qi6UYNoCYoU

necroposting the 'bucker thread... what's everyone got in their guitars lately.... I know Liam has been changing his guitar collection around and pulling out pickups, rewiring everything....

right now my Yamaha 335 copy has the stock 70s Yamaha PAF copies, my Greco has the stock Maxon Dry Z PAF copies that rule, my sg has the stock 490R and an early 70s T-Top Gibson bucker, my silver LP has a burstbucker pro neck and Duncan 59 custom/hybrid bridge & my washburn has a pearly gates neck and another 59 custom/hybrid with the magnets swapped so its A5 neck and A2 bridge... I just put a fat bid in for another early 70s T-Top on the bay as I am eyeballing a silver SG special from '01 at sam ash.

I really like the 70s Gibson buckers in SGs, they sound very RIGHT for these guitars.

I am rocking out my Epiphone probuckers a lot right now. they have this really awesome sound to them that I am yet to get from other pickups I have used or owned, boths PAF and modern humbuckers. The EMG HZ pickups in the Ibanez are alright now they are working as they should. I won't be keeping them though and they will be on Ebay after I have replaced them with Dimarzio D activators. The Gibson classic 57s are alright, I am yet to plug my Gibson into my Laney to really see how good they are. My probuckers area million times nicer through the Laney than they ever sounded through the line 6. The Probuckers have this vibe going on that suits me and my playing perfectly. I have had some no name alnico 2 and alnico 5 pickups that was decent and didn't sound bad, just was pretty average. The JB ended up being too much for me and I have no sold it and the hotrail I have laying around somewhere is awesome but I don't have much uses for it so when I find it I will be selling it. I have seen a few guys making paf style pick ups on ebay that come at about £60 a pick up which I am tempted to try but takes like 3 weeks for them to be made and all that jazz but seem interesting to me

Go tubes.... not all custom winders make a great PAF for YOU, it depends what you think the PAF tone is. To me its the elusive ghost notes under distortion.

The guy I sent a few messages too, just asking questions etc really to see if I reckon they'll suit me and all that. my idea of a PAF is a really airy and open sound with a single coilish vibe to it plus all those subtle under tones you get with distortion. My Epiphone pick ups and the gibson ones have a similar type of thing going on but both sound very different from one another. I just spent an hour or so playing the Gibson through the laney and it is a lot brighter than the Epiphone but that could be due to the woods and the different caps. the epi has 0.47uf caps in there and the gibson I think 0.22uf caps. Anyway I love both sounds but prefer the Epiphone when playing with distortion.

My fiancee has started learning today on her RG and is going well, shes learned two chords in the 20 min she was playing, she's learning knocking on heavens door as I thought its a nice easy one to start her on

.047 should be brighter as should the new pots you put in. I would guess that some of the tone difference is the thick epi poly finish that doesn't breathe like the gibby finish. Some of it is wood. A lot of it is the pickups themselves. I will bet the baseplate and cover alloys are really debased if they are even trying to be vintage accurate. Does your lp have 57 classics? I don't think they are potted whereas the epis being burstbucker pro based will be potted making them darker. There's probably more turns per coil on the epis giving them more pronounced mids... I doubt the epis are wound with plain enamel wire. Its probably poly insulated making them darker...

You get the idea.

The Epi ones are wax potted and have nickle silver covers and baseplates. The Gibson has classic 57s. I had a proper look at the cap on my Epi when putting the pick ups back in and to my surprise it is a mahogany body and cap though Epiphone say its a maple cap. I'd imagine that'll make it a darker sounding guitar. I don't care, I like it still but a bit misleading of Epiphone really. The Epiphone pickups are Alnico 2 as far as I know, they don't sound like alnico 5 to me. I noticed today how loud my Gibson is unplugged. Its got a awesome unplugged tone that isn't too far off its plugged in tone. The epi sounds good unplugged but is nowhere near as loud. Both are very resonant, can feel the neck vibration when I'm playing, which is nice.

I think I want something between the two, maybe normal burstbuckers but without the over pricing. I think I need to get another les Paul for different paf type pickups for another flavour. Definitely going to get another Gibson if and when I do get another les Paul. Want an SG too. But lets get used to my new Gibson first for a while.

So what high output pick ups, more modern, hard rock/metal type pickups have you played that you liked?

high output humbuckers.... hrrrm ... in gibson style buckers you are automatically looking at a high output pickup by mystandards except for the weakest PAFs, patent sticker and T-Top. Anything over 8kohms is pretty high output. Getting over 10kohms is getting silly. But a middling DCR rating like around 8 or 9kohms with ceramic or alnico8? loud ass pickups. Not on paper, but the strong magnets give them an unexpected wallop. Then there are pickups with like 3 bars all different types of magnets, those look interesting though I have never tried them.... Its a cool idea tog et more power from a passive bucker with less turns of wire. Too many turns of wire, even thinner gauge wire, has undesireable (to some of us) side-effects.

the JB is okay, so is the good old dimarzio super distortion at the bridge, Duncan 59 custom/hybrid is pretty high output and sounds really good in its unique way (not for everyone), the Duncan custom/custom is nice sounding overall as is the "whole lotta humbucker"... I am generally not so into high output pickups. The JB and super D are a bit hot for my liking but they have a classic hot humbucker tone that can be hard to deny when you wanna play heavy. I would just rather add gain down the line to a classic humbucker though. The humbucker platform already lacks some of the dynamics of a single coil as well as having a different low resonant frequency and pronounced mids, adding turns is really not so flattering to the way I play, and I just rarely get into ceramic magnets in pickups. They just don't sound particularly good to me. You can get more power from your pickups without having to add a lot more wire, but the overtones aren't as pretty. I tried a reverend with their railhammer pickups and was quite impressed with those. VERY high output but they were dynamic and clear as a bell. Defintiely worth checining out. I don't know why anyone would want anything higher output than a JB, custom/custom or super distortion. Most of my favorite metal was played with those older designs or straight-up PAFs, Patent stickers and T-Tops.... I don't think the sound of metal music has improved since I was a kid. Quite the opposite. Its been a slow and steady decline since the NWOBM and thrash scenes.

I've really been reading up a lot on this funnily enough, and to be honest I really like some of the bare knuckle pickups I've played (Though some have been equally terrible for the price). I really like the painkiller, its got a single bar ceramic magnet, and so buckets of sustain, and power, yet a really fat, and clear sound in general, and a really tight, and djenty sound for low end stuff.

And I played the Jackson Misha Mansoor the other week at andertons (It is actually brilliant!), and the juggernaut/bulb pickups are pretty nice as well; they are incredibly versatile (I played them in one of the booths, which are filled with roland pedals, and it could do some brilliant low end stuff with a really tight, and focussed sound, which also managed to be aggressive, but when it cleans up it can have very high quality definition, and that musical aspect that alnico provides over ceramic pickups, and with this one I believe it uses alnico five, and that's why it sounds so huge.