Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

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alexpigment
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Re: Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

Post by alexpigment » Tue Aug 13, 2019 1:09 pm

molul wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 11:23 am
Which would be your dream sustainer build, if I may ask? :) My current strat build works like a charm.
Well, I've got the guitar in my closet - a backup Squier Deluxe (i.e. red J. Mascis), and I am just kinda waiting to settle on the logistics before I pull the trigger on a sustainiac/sustainer system. It would be a JM, a tele bridge pickup with a dummy coil in the rhythm cavity to make it silent, sustainer humbucker pickup in the neck position, 3 way toggle, two switches for the sustainer, and some way to easily change batteries.

Most of this I can achieve on my own, but the battery compartment is something I'm torn about. I'd rather not do any permanent body routing. My thoughts are as follows:
1) Just keeping it hidden somewhere under the pickguard and hope that I don't have to change the battery very much
2) Cut the pickguard along the rhythm circuit so that the area covering the rhythm circuit can be separately detached without taking the whole pickguard off
3) Route between the two pickups and put a battery compartment there

FYI, someone already made a cool sustainer that I saw on Reverb a while back:
https://reverb.com/item/9691092-partsca ... rem-bridge

Would love to be able to find a sustainer humbucker with an off white color like that, but you kinda have to find a Fernandes guitar with one and sacrifice it. Pretty rare stuff.

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Embenny
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Re: Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

Post by Embenny » Tue Aug 13, 2019 7:41 pm

You could save some hassle and probably get a better result by using Curtis Novak's humcanceling Telecaster pickup. There are a lot of noiseless options out there but I've heard demos and I don't think anything beats this one. I've gone the dummy coil route in the past and to be honest I found the tone sacrifice of using a dummy coil to be as much of greater than switching to a good noisecanceling pickup.

The only truly transparent solution for existing single coils that I have used is the Ilitch system (a strat backplate in my case). It's essentially just an ultra low resistance adjustable dummy coil. Large and with a trimpot to match the noise inversely with your pickup, but extremely low resistance and capacitance vs a regular dummy coil, so that the impact on tone is truly minimal. They ain't cheap though - there's a reason I have multiple guitars with noiseless pickups and only one with an Ilitch.
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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alexpigment
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Re: Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

Post by alexpigment » Tue Aug 13, 2019 8:08 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Tue Aug 13, 2019 7:41 pm
You could save some hassle and probably get a better result by using Curtis Novak's humcanceling Telecaster pickup. There are a lot of noiseless options out there but I've heard demos and I don't think anything beats this one. I've gone the dummy coil route in the past and to be honest I found the tone sacrifice of using a dummy coil to be as much of greater than switching to a good noisecanceling pickup.

The only truly transparent solution for existing single coils that I have used is the Ilitch system (a strat backplate in my case). It's essentially just an ultra low resistance adjustable dummy coil. Large and with a trimpot to match the noise inversely with your pickup, but extremely low resistance and capacitance vs a regular dummy coil, so that the impact on tone is truly minimal. They ain't cheap though - there's a reason I have multiple guitars with noiseless pickups and only one with an Ilitch.
I trust your opinions on this, but I have several guitars with the same tele pickup that I like and a dummy coil (which is just the original neck pickup in the set). The tone change is extremely minimal - I've verified with a switch - and the installation hassle is almost non-existent. When you have a sound you like, it's hard to justify branching out to a noiseless pickup that you may or may not like. At any rate, it's not the dummy coil that I am concerned about. It's that on the Sustainiac website the guy says "use another guitar" in the section about Tele pickups, but apparently humbucker tele pickups are fine. I don't know if that means a tele with a dummy coil would be OK, since that is effectively a humbucker spread across two locations. I have a custom JM pickup that's wound like a Tele (with a baseplate but straight magnets) that I could use as well if necessary.

Also, the Ilitch is a great solution for certain people, but just moving the second coil out from under the strings is like 99% of the battle in maintaining the single coil sound. It's a lot easier to fit a dummy coil on a JM than installing an Ilitch system, and there's very little payoff other than adjustable cancelling (which you can do easily with a pot if you really wanted to).

Lastly, I've heard that side-by-side noiseless pickups have weirdness when bending a note across the two coils (e.g. bending up on the G string), but I have no idea if this applies to the Novak pickup. Otherwise, it sounds good in theory.

EDIT: Here's a sound sample I just uploaded. Most of the sound differences are related to how hard I'm strumming each time. As you'll hear, the sound difference is pretty minor:

www.theselectedworks.com/music/dummycomparison.mp3

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molul
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Re: Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

Post by molul » Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:57 am

I'm likely buying a kit like this to make the sustainiac experiments: https://www.gear4music.es/es/Guitarra-y ... e-Jazz/PZU

Once I know where to put and how to connect everything, and I make sure it works, I'll order a body and neck from Warmoth.

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Re: Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

Post by Embenny » Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:49 am

Cool, glad you're happy with your pickup arrangement. I just know a lot of people who don't have firsthand dummy coil experience and weren't happy with it once they tried it.

Side-by-side humcanceling designs only have "fade" with string bending in the neck position, if you move the D or G strings into the dead zone where the coils change over. Bridge pickups can't suffer from that problem because it's physically impossible to move the strings that far with their anchor point being the saddle, which is why I love the Novak design so much, and why he only offers it as a bridge pickup.
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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alexpigment
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Re: Getting neck pickup sound in bridge position

Post by alexpigment » Wed Aug 14, 2019 9:02 am

molul wrote:
Wed Aug 14, 2019 1:57 am
I'm likely buying a kit like this to make the sustainiac experiments: https://www.gear4music.es/es/Guitarra-y ... e-Jazz/PZU

Once I know where to put and how to connect everything, and I make sure it works, I'll order a body and neck from Warmoth.
Sounds like a good plan. Let us know how it goes!

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