Finished My First Build

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
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marqueemoon
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by marqueemoon » Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:35 pm

I had a chance to play a Waterslide with those pickups recently and they are very cool. Sound equally good as singles and as humbuckers.

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j mascis
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by j mascis » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:22 am

marqueemoon wrote:
Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:35 pm
I had a chance to play a Waterslide with those pickups recently and they are very cool. Sound equally good as singles and as humbuckers.
Yes, agreed.
Where did you play them? I've never seen a WS in a shop.

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j mascis
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by j mascis » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:29 am

mbene085 wrote:
Tue Jan 08, 2019 4:31 pm
Make sense?
Yes. I really can't remember because it was a month or two ago, and I just followed a diagram. Can I test that with a multimeter without taking it apart? I'm not up for removing the pickguard.

I tested the pickups again last night in both humbucker and single coil mode, and there was (a) zero drop in volume and (b) zero 60hz ...or the higher overtones of it. Dead quiet. Really cool! This was in my apartment, so I couldn't crank it. I'll test it at louder volumes this weekend during rehearsal and see if there's any noise. Maybe I lucked into wiring it the best way for live shows without even realizing it. I'd like to learn more about wiring...it's the hardest part of a build for me.

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Embenny
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by Embenny » Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:34 am

You sure can. Turn all pots to 10, plug in a short patch cord, and hold your multimeter's probes with one each against the two parts of the exposed plug - the tip and the sleeve (they're separated by a black band) and you'll get a close approximation of the resistance of whichever pickup setting is selected.
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marqueemoon
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by marqueemoon » Thu Jan 10, 2019 8:41 pm

j mascis wrote:
Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:22 am
marqueemoon wrote:
Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:35 pm
I had a chance to play a Waterslide with those pickups recently and they are very cool. Sound equally good as singles and as humbuckers.
Yes, agreed.
Where did you play them? I've never seen a WS in a shop.
Mike & Mike’s Guitar Bar here in Seattle has a used one.

Cool guitar, but I didn’t get on with the superflat board on this particular one.

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j mascis
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by j mascis » Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:04 am

mbene085 wrote:
Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:34 am
You sure can. Turn all pots to 10, plug in a short patch cord, and hold your multimeter's probes with one each against the two parts of the exposed plug - the tip and the sleeve (they're separated by a black band) and you'll get a close approximation of the resistance of whichever pickup setting is selected.
I just got a chance to test this. So in humbucker mode resistance is around 10 ohms, and it drops to about half that in single coil. The only weird thing is when the bridge pickup is in humbucker and single coil mode the resistance is 10 ohms in both, so I'm not sure what happened there? Any idea why that would be?

It is super quiet in single coil. I'm not hearing hum. Maybe these pickups are just quiet.

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Embenny
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by Embenny » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:17 am

Well, there are two possibilities for that neck pickup. You're either going from series to single coil, or your "humbucker" is single coil and "single coil" is parallel. Those are the two scenarios that can half the resistance...but 10k and 5k sound very likely to be series and single coil. Otherwise it would be a 20k humbucker made of 10k goldfoils which is highly unlikely.

The only way for the bridge to be 10k in both positions is if it's not actually switching anything...either because the coil cut switch isn't doing anything (which should be audible), or maybe because you accidentally didn't have the bridge pickup selected while you were measuring. There's no combination of two coils that would have equal resistance between any permutation of series/parallel/single coil.

As for the lack of noise, it sounds like your neck pickup is a true single coil mode, and it's just a super quiet pickup. I know my Novak goldfoils are some of the quietest single coils I've ever used. My Burns mini-trisonics are close. Both are designs with a big magnet, a small coil, and a shielded metal case, which makes sense. It's the coil that pickups up the noise. Pickups that use larger magnets to increase output of a smaller coil (lipsticks, tri-sonics, hilotrons, some goldfoils, filtertrons) tend to be lower noise vs pickups with large coils and smaller magnets (e.g. P90, Jazzmaster), and will be all the more so when grounded shielding fully surrounds them.

I'd double check that you're hearing the bridge pickup switching between humbucker and single coil through your amp, then unplug and re-check that last measurement. Something doesn't add up about that one particular result.
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j mascis
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Re: Finished My First Build

Post by j mascis » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:41 am

I agree something is off with that one, and the rest of your response sounds right on from what I do know.
Thanks for the tips!

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