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My 14K Dualtone attempt is thin sounding

5/1/2005 12:39 AM
scott	My 14K Dualtone attempt is thin sounding Should this thing sound like a single coil in humbucking mode? Go figure...I built a full size mini-humbucker and moded the vacating Duncan mini to keep up with it. The mini kicks its arse! Wud I do? Grounded coil(S-90)wire swaps didn't give full tone, just, well...parallel or out-of-phase tones. I usually quickly correct this kinda thing. What's really going on? Hope this is enough info. Coils used: 6.4K and 7.8K Construction: V rods are in 6.4K Yamaha coil and A5 bar between coils that boosts the rods and a slender ceramic bar opposite, ala P-90 on 7.8K Ibanez coil. The big A5 helped matters. Oh, per coils, there is opposing poles. There's no contrast between the two coils o/p or tone? The S-90 has plenty of magnet material and is only .3K ohm's weaker than a much more robust sounding P-90 I have. Trouble shooting: I even wired these coils up individualy just to be certain and sure enough...both weeak. I moded the Duncan I mentioned for the neck position. I removed in-coil bars and slapped in blades with a single A5 bar...Wow! big like a P-90. It has 7.2K fewer ohm's(1/2), also less 5 rods and a slender ceramic bar worth of mag material. Thanks in advance, Scott in socal

5/1/2005 12:39 AM

scott

My 14K Dualtone attempt is thin sounding

Should this thing sound like a single coil in humbucking mode?
Go figure...I built a full size mini-humbucker and moded the vacating Duncan mini to keep up with it. The mini kicks its arse! Wud I do?

Grounded coil(S-90)wire swaps didn't give full tone, just, well...parallel or out-of-phase tones. I usually quickly correct this kinda thing.
What's really going on?

Hope this is enough info.

Coils used: 6.4K and 7.8K
Construction: V rods are in 6.4K Yamaha coil and A5 bar between coils that boosts the rods and a slender ceramic bar opposite, ala P-90 on 7.8K Ibanez coil. The big A5 helped matters. Oh, per coils, there is opposing poles.
There's no contrast between the two coils o/p or tone? The S-90 has plenty of magnet material and is only .3K ohm's weaker than a much more robust sounding P-90 I have.
Trouble shooting: I even wired these coils up individualy just to be certain and sure enough...both weeak.
I moded the Duncan I mentioned for the neck position. I removed in-coil bars and slapped in blades with a single A5 bar...Wow! big like a P-90. It has 7.2K fewer ohm's(1/2), also less 5 rods and a slender ceramic bar worth of mag material.

Thanks in advance,

Scott in socal

5/1/2005 1:11 AM
Larry N	Until a real expert comes along, I'll just throw out some thought debris floating by. That's a lot of magnet! I'm wondering if when you tested were the magnets still intact from both coils? Maybe there's a cancellation effect from some magnet polarity issue. Just a wild guess. I know a P-90 has the same polarities facing each other. I got some A4's from Fralin. Have you ever messed with A4?You're an adventurous pickup builder! That's a cool tip on the A5 in the Duncan mini. Where did you get blades? Good luck and hope you arrive at a good sound.

5/1/2005 1:11 AM

Larry N

Until a real expert comes along, I'll just throw out some thought debris floating by. That's a lot of magnet! I'm wondering if when you tested were the magnets still intact from both coils? Maybe there's a cancellation effect from some magnet polarity issue. Just a wild guess. I know a P-90 has the same polarities facing each other. I got some A4's from Fralin. Have you ever messed with A4?You're an adventurous pickup builder! That's a cool tip on the A5 in the Duncan mini. Where did you get blades? Good luck and hope you arrive at a good sound.

5/1/2005 5:18 AM
Andrew C	Hi Scott, Not for want of trying, I really have no idea what you are talking about for much of your post. It does, however, appear to be intriguing. Could you give us the longhand version? Andrew C.

5/2/2005 1:52 AM
scott	Larry, - I haven't tried A4's but I was thinking of getting A3, A2 rods and bars. How are the 4's, darker, weaker than 2's and 5's? - I went from a little A5 bar(away from rods) to a regular A5 bar. It increased o/p. - blades were made from some old Ranger truck carb stamped shield. Andrew, sorry, you caught me...Doh!. Okay, "Dualtone" has basically 1 strat coil and 1 sudo p90(s90). So, rods for one and bars for the other. The coils differ in brand, ohm's and wire color code. I don't know if they're winds are same direction or which wires are start/finish ends. So, I got the coils to have opposite polarity and the strat in phase with the neck pup. Then I set out to get the s90 coil wired in to series and in-phase with its self. I soldered 1 wire of the s90 to grnd and the other to link up with non hot of strat coil. 1st try was pretty weak out-of-phase tone, 2nd try I reversed the s90 wires, yielding parallel or sgl coil tone. At this point I decided to increase mag strength, so I swaped in a full sized bar mag that made contact with both the rods and the screws of the s90, which it did. Even with the increase the o/p was improved marginally. N & B pups in series sound like they're in parallel and the parallel setting has a o/p drop almost like out-of-phase. Individually the coils sound alike. The mag mass and extra windings on the s90 coil should crush the strat. I hope that is better.

5/2/2005 1:52 AM

scott

Larry,
- I haven't tried A4's but I was thinking of getting A3, A2 rods and bars. How are the 4's, darker, weaker
than 2's and 5's?
- I went from a little A5 bar(away from rods) to a regular A5 bar. It increased o/p.
- blades were made from some old Ranger truck carb stamped shield.

Andrew,
sorry, you caught me...Doh!.
Okay, "Dualtone" has basically 1 strat coil and 1 sudo p90(s90). So, rods for one and bars for the other. The coils differ in brand, ohm's and wire color code. I don't know if they're winds are same direction or which wires are start/finish ends.
So, I got the coils to have opposite polarity and the strat in phase with the neck pup. Then I set out to get the s90 coil wired in to series and in-phase with its self. I soldered 1 wire of the s90 to grnd and the other to link up with non hot of strat coil. 1st try was pretty weak out-of-phase tone, 2nd try I reversed the s90 wires, yielding parallel or sgl coil tone.
At this point I decided to increase mag strength, so I swaped in a full sized bar mag that made contact with both the rods and the screws of the s90, which it did. Even with the increase the o/p was improved marginally.
N & B pups in series sound like they're in parallel and the parallel setting has a o/p drop almost like out-of-phase.
Individually the coils sound alike. The mag mass and extra windings on the s90 coil should crush the strat.

I hope that is better.

5/2/2005 2:17 AM
Andrew C	Still not entirely sure, but it seems like you are having trouble finding the "full" tone of the pickup? right? I would 1. Ensure that the polarity through each of the coils is opposing (as in a humbucker). You can test this with a spare charged rod, or a small compass. It sound be attracted to one coil's poles and repelled by the others. 2. As you do not know the winding direction (although you may be able to work out the relatively direct by seems the effect of moving a magnetically charged object on the output voltage +/-), just choose a start wire at random, and then there are only two option to derive the full humbucker wiring, ie non-out of phase. In series: 1. Coil 1 start - ground (choose anyone and stick to it) to 2. Coil 1 end to 3. Coil 2 start (choose any one) to 4. Coil 2 end (to hot output (ie five-way, volume pot input)) If this sounds thin or does not humcancell, reverse wires 3 and 4, and you should have a nice full sound. If you get round to winding your coils rather than modding, generally the input of one coil is connect to the input of the other. An excellent resource has been written by the incomparable John Fisher (google: John Fisher humbucker). Andrew C

5/2/2005 2:17 AM

Andrew C

Still not entirely sure, but it seems like you are having trouble finding the "full" tone of the pickup? right?

I would

1. Ensure that the polarity through each of the coils is opposing (as in a humbucker). You can test this with a spare charged rod, or a small compass. It sound be attracted to one coil's poles and repelled by the others.

2. As you do not know the winding direction (although you may be able to work out the relatively direct by seems the effect of moving a magnetically charged object on the output voltage +/-), just choose a start wire at random, and then there are only two option to derive the full humbucker wiring, ie non-out of phase.

In series:

1. Coil 1 start - ground (choose anyone and stick to it)

to

2. Coil 1 end

to
3. Coil 2 start (choose any one)

to

4. Coil 2 end (to hot output (ie five-way, volume pot input))

If this sounds thin or does not humcancell, reverse wires 3 and 4, and you should have a nice full sound.

If you get round to winding your coils rather than modding, generally the input of one coil is connect to the input of the other.

An excellent resource has been written by the incomparable John Fisher (google: John Fisher humbucker).

Andrew C

5/2/2005 7:30 PM
scott	Tested today through my Ampeg Reverberocket rather than JStation/head phones late night. The output is okay and there is real Strat tone when split to that coil. It's a h/b that's brighter than a P90(8.2K) and just about equal in o/p. It drives the tubes a little, but it's got more "Twang" than I'd like in the bridge, prolly pretty nice in the neck position. Yeah, it's a bit harsh with moderate distortion. Maybe 2 Ibanez coils will get a fuller tone. That'll be 15.6K! and all that mag mass?

5/2/2005 7:30 PM

scott

Tested today through my Ampeg Reverberocket rather than JStation/head phones late night. The output is okay and there is real Strat tone when split to that coil. It's a h/b that's brighter than a P90(8.2K) and just about equal in o/p. It drives the tubes a little, but it's got more "Twang" than I'd like in the bridge, prolly pretty nice in the neck position.
Yeah, it's a bit harsh with moderate distortion. Maybe 2 Ibanez coils will get a fuller tone. That'll be 15.6K! and all that mag mass?

5/2/2005 9:56 PM
Steve A.	scott said: At this point I decided to increase mag strength, so I swapped in a full sized bar mag that made contact with both the rods and the screws of the s90, which it did. So are you using two bar magnets for the S90? As Larry suggested, you might not have the polarities of the two bars oriented correctly: with a P-90 the magnets are aligned with like poles together (the keeper and/or the screws then acquire the opposite polarity so that the laws of physics are not negated... ) I believe that you would want to use a pair of smaller bar magnets, and keep them away from the magnetic slugs in the strat coil. --Good luck and keep us posted! Steve Ahola

5/2/2005 9:56 PM

Steve A.

scott said:

At this point I decided to increase mag strength, so I swapped in a full sized bar mag that made contact with both the rods and the screws of the s90, which it did.

So are you using two bar magnets for the S90? As Larry suggested, you might not have the polarities of the two bars oriented correctly: with a P-90 the magnets are aligned with like poles together (the keeper and/or the screws then acquire the opposite polarity so that the laws of physics are not negated...

)

I believe that you would want to use a pair of smaller bar magnets, and keep them away from the magnetic slugs in the strat coil.

--Good luck and keep us posted!

Steve Ahola

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