Incoming NGD...Hopeful Platform for Firebird Pickups...

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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Surfysonic
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Incoming NGD...Hopeful Platform for Firebird Pickups...

Post by Surfysonic » Sun Jun 20, 2021 11:33 am

Too sweet of a deal to pass up on Reverb for this Fender Player Mustang 90. It ships out on Monday. Seller had replaced the stock MP-90s with Lollar P90s. I expect them to sound great, but my purpose for getting the Fender Player Mustang 90 was to use it as a mod platform for some Firebird pickups. I'm sure the Lollar P90s will sound great - I'll save them for a future build.

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mbene085 wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:11 pm
You could say I'm a fan of Firebirds in HH Jaguars. It's a small club, but we have a few members here on the board. I think they're a natural pairing.

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I've had Firebirds in four different Offsets, and they sounded the best in the hardtail Jags, hands down. Thinking about it, I guess the warmth of the short scale and the longer sustain/lower emphasis on attack from the hardtail make the HH Jags more similar to the actual Firebird they were designed for than, say, a Jazzmaster or a Jag or Mustang with a vibrato. They sound good in anything, but they just sound the best to me in Jaguars (or actual Firebirds).

FYI, if you want to keep the HH look and/or reuse the pickguard, the pickups in my gunmetal blue Jag are called Big Birds, from D'Urbano Magnetics/Mr. Fabulous in Australia. They've got PAF-sized bobbins with PAF-sized bar magnets in them, but are constructed in the same manner as Firebirds. They're basically the WRHBs of the Firebird world. Physically bigger and bigger-sounding with more low end than a vintage Firebird, but the same characteristic clarity and attack.

I had Fab wind mine with asymmetric bobbins (one coil with 43g wire and A5, one coil with 44g wire and A5 degaussed to A2 strength), and wired to Duncan Triple Shot rings. Each coil is roughly analogous to a strat-sized lipstick tube pickup (big bar magnet, low inductance, significant eddy currents from a full metal cover), so it gets all sorts of Danelectro-like tones as well. You could just get a standard/symmetrical wind and a simple coil split to similar effect, too, if you don't need the fifteen million combinations. I wanted to try it "for science" and there's definitely a difference between each position, but realistically a single split tone per pickup would be more than enough to add variety and make a great pair of pickups even better.

Of course, I'll never argue against getting Curtis to wind you up some Firebirds if that's the direction you're leaning. I've had three sets of his pickups over the years and they've all been great. I wouldn't bother coil splitting a vintage Firebird, that'd be too thin a tone, so I leave my standard Firebirds wired in series as nature intended.

PS, how long until this one is sporting some stickers? :P


Curtis Novak's site seems to be down for some reason - lots of Forbidden errors over the weekend. I'm going to go ahead and buy a set of the D'Ubano Magnetics Firebird set from Mr. Fabulous off of Reverb. Would you recommend ALNICO 2 or ALNICO 5? I'm fairly clueless about ALNICO differences.

I'm guessing the P90 routs in the pickguard will be too large for the Firebird set (could be wrong, usually am :derp: ). Since I'm getting 2 pickguards (stock mint green and the white one), I'll likely send off the white one to Pickguardian to have one made to properly fit the Firebird set.

Any recommendations on pickguard color with the Burgundy Mist (my first Burgundy Mist ever! :w00t: )? Black? Tort? Mint? Something else?
The doofus formerly known as Snorre...

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Re: Incoming NGD...Hopeful Platform for Firebird Pickups...

Post by Embenny » Sun Jun 20, 2021 11:50 am

I'd stick with A5, it's the classic formula for Firebirds. A2 in an otherwise identical wind ends up a bit lower output and warmer. As a Fender single coil fan you'll appreciate the A5. Also, be sure to let Fab know you want chrome covers, his default is nickel I believe, which matches Gibson hardware, but your bridge and control plate are chrome so I'd go with that.

FBs are indeed smaller than P90s, so a new guard is in order unless you want to use P90-shaped pickup rings which do exist (as seen on the red Jag above).

A small tip - ask Tony to line it up so that the outer edges of the FBs line up with the outer edges of the P90 routs on your guard (as far apart as possible within the existing routs), rather than centering them. Because the FBs are narrower, you can space them a bit farther apart that way, which both looks more balanced as well as gives a more traditional neck and bridge pickup tone. As it stands, the routs on those Player Mustangs put the two pickups quite close together which makes both positions sound a bit closer to a middle pickup tone. Maybe you'd like that, but I find that the bridge pickup especially loses its magic when you let it wander too far toward the middle. It becomes softer and honkier instead of sharp and biting.

I'd go with something like parchment on that colour, personally. Anything too loud would distract from the subtle but beautiful tone of the BMM.

Congrats on the NGD, this will be great. Shortscale plus hardtail is truly where FB pickups shine in my opinion. Should land about halfway between Fender and Gretsch tonal territory, so I know you'll love it. I'd just make sure you use 500k pots or even 1M. Firebirds get their unique tone from their single coil-like resonant peak, but it's subtler than a Fender pickup's, so they need the higher pot values to help it pop. You can still roll down the tone pot for more PAF-like tones, but with 250k, that's the only option you get. The "tele on steroids" thing happens with higher value pots. Fab's default wind is a bit on the hot side using one gauge of wire thinner than the true vintage recipe, which sounds amazing, but would exacerbate the 250k pot issue. 500k will sound pretty traditional and 1M (or a no-load tone pot) would give you the option of leaning into the snarly Tele bridge imitation that FBs do so well. Most modern players find true vintage winds too thin at the bridge, and 250k pots would sound fine there, but Fab like just about everyone, other than Q Pickups, goes a little hotter to make the bridge a bit more tonally consistent with the neck.
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Re: Incoming NGD...Hopeful Platform for Firebird Pickups...

Post by Surfysonic » Sun Jun 20, 2021 2:32 pm

Cool, thanks, Mike! A5 it is. Well, it looks like my only options for the Firebird mini hb's are nickel or gold...so I went with the nickel. :whistle:

It looks like Mr. Fabulous sells Mini Humbucker/Firebird pickup P90 adaptor rings in cream or black. This way, I can (for now) stick with my stock mint guard and use the black adaptor rings - at least it will match the control knobs. Pickup set and P90 adaptor rings ordered!

If it works alright for me, then at some point I'll order a Decoboom Mustang 90 parchment/black/parchment guard.

If the pickups aren't spread wide enough, however, I'll also cover my bases and send off the white pickguard to Pickguardian and request to Tony your recommendation "to line it up so that the outer edges of the FBs line up with the outer edges of the P90 routs on your guard (as far apart as possible within the existing routs), rather than centering them" on a parchment pickguard that he'll make for me.

It will be interesting to A/B the two different pickup pickguard positions.
The doofus formerly known as Snorre...

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