Baritone Bridge Pickup

[Perry Combover]

It's been a while, but the hankering hit me hard this week, so here we go again...

The project: Baritone Tele conversion, canary neck and pao ferro fret board.  I already have the body and I will likely build the neck since the showcase doesn't have anything that suits my little heart's desire. 

I've been looking at myriad opinions on the best pups for baritone, particularly in the bridge.  I am not necessarily trying to keep the tele tone, I just want to get the most out of the new lower range.  A lot of what I've read is that high output buckers tend to make baritones muddy and that perhaps a regular old standard tele bridge pup might do the trick.  However, I can't shake the impression that a quarter pound or hot rails in the bridge would be amazing.  It has to be a big sound, otherwise why bother, right?

Hit me with it.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

These would be my picks:

In this order:
http://www.guitarfetish.com/Neovin-HARD-Vintage-Noiseless-Bridge-Pickup-for-Tele-Guitars_p_516.html

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Nashville-Vintage-Filtertron-Style-Humbucker-Chrome-Bridge-Position_p_508.html

http://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Pro-Tube-Lipstick-Humbucker-Pickup-Cool-Chimey-Tone-Bridge-Position_p_356.html

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Dream-180-Vintage-Voiced-Humbucker-Chrome-Bridge-Position_p_221.html

 

[Perry Combover]

Wow.  Those prices have to be misprints right?

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Wow.  Those prices have to be misprints right?

Nope, GFS is one of the best kept secrets.  American designed, import manufactured.  Lot's of folks on this site love em, including myself.

My Bari-Tele currently in the August GOTM has the NeoTN7 in the neck, soon to add the NeoVin Hard Vintage to replace the Carlsen humbucker that's in the bridge position currently.

 

[Perry Combover]

Awesome.  I will definitely give them some business.

 

[Perry Combover]

TFS, your beauty in the GOM running has a humbucker in the bridge.  High output? Doesn't muddy up at all?  And how low do you go with your tuning (I am aiming for B maybe Bb)?

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

TFS, your beauty in the GOM running has a humbucker in the bridge.  High output? Doesn't muddy up at all?  And how low do you go with your tuning (I am aiming for B maybe Bb)?

Low output at 6.9k, AN5 magnet.
Standard B tuning, B, E, A, D, F#, B.

Good clarity, but the SC is more of the voicing that I'm looking for.

 

[DocNrock]

TFS has a lot more experience than I do, but I'll put my $0.02 in.  When I built my baritone, I too faced the worry that something high output might be muddy.  After doing a lot of reading, I ultimately decided on a DiMarzio D-Sonic for the bridge, since they market it for dropped tuning (http://www.dimarzio.com/pickups/humbuckers/high-power/d-sonic).  I really like the tone I get with this pickup, especially with high gain.  I positioned it with the bar towards the bridge.  I initially started out with 0.013s/wrapped G string.  I liked the sound, but it was difficult for me to bend the G normally. Most importantly, to me, even with high gain it was not muddy.  I later went to 0.012s with a plain G and I like this even better.    Not the least of which is that I can now properly bend the G string when I want.  If it matters, I'm still experimenting with tuning.  I haven't decided if I like the low string tuned to B or to C. 

If the construct matters to you, the body is a one-piece black korina WGD with a bubinga baritone conversion neck.  The fretboard is ebony.  It also has a recessed, completely floating OFR with an FUTone big brass block.

The neck pickup is a DiMarzio 36th Anniversary PAF neck.  I haven't done any coil taps or anything fancy with the wiring.  I'm not so keen on the 36th Anniversary  in the neck with  high gain, but it has a great clean tone in the neck baritone application. 

I hope this helps for an additional perspective. 

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

And just to add perspective, I built my Bari-Tele as a unique instrument to force me to expand my musical vocabulary.

I'm a hard rock/Prog/Metal player in my primary genre, but I love blues and some old school country pickin, not that Shania faux crap.

I intentionally built an instrument that would shine in clean and tweed amp voicings, and occasionally get some use in high gain, which is why I had the bridge pickup under-wound seeking a voicing reminiscent of an old PAF mated with a Filtertron.

If I were building another TFS6 as a baritone, I'd likely keep with the Dimarzio Evolution as I am using it in my current TFS6 and my Ibanez RG7620, and have for many years.  It has a relatively flat eq curve, just enough output to where it's not too saggy, has a nice, tight low end.

 

[Jesse]

Wow, I never had considered that low output, low resistance pickups could be the solution to this problem.  I've been having a hell of a time trying to find a pickup for an Ibanez RGD2127Z baritone scale 7 string I have.  I hated the stock pickups and now have a set of DiMarzio Illuminator 7's in there, which I hate only slightly less.  They sound good clean, but with any distortion, forget using the 7th string.

Thank you all for (hopefully) solving my problem.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Glad to be of help Jesse.

Personally, I look for pickups with a relatively flat eq curve.  This way, I can make most of my tonal adjustments from the amp.

I'm also of the belief that if you have an amp with enough high gain range, you don't need an excessively high output pickup.

The high output pickups, ala the Dimarzio Super Distortion came about due to players that were having a hard time getting more output from their rigs without adding distortion pedals.  Some did both, which I think is overkill.  Some players prefer to push the front end of an amp much harder to get the tone that they want.  Nothing wrong with that, if that is the tone that you're looking for.

Other players, prefer to get all of their gain from the amp, which is my preference.

And, adding to that, there are so many ranges of "sweet spot" in between.  I definitely think that there is a relationship between the pickups, player style, and the amp that contribute to this.  Not just the amp's gain, but its voicing all together.

It's all relative.

 

[Jesse]

I will usually look for pickups with relatively flat EQ curves although I will often pick something for the neck with a lot more treble bias.  I would generally EQ the amp to work with the bridge pickup and then want the neck pickup to sound good at those EQ settings.

But more than that, I'm just looking for a pickup that sounds good.  I've figured out how to generally know what I'm looking for by looking at the pickup specs, but even there I'm sometimes surprised.  The 7 string has been a big challenge for me, as a lot of things I feel I know about pickups just don't seem to apply, especially on the really low notes.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I will usually look for pickups with relatively flat EQ curves although I will often pick something for the neck with a lot more treble bias.  I would generally EQ the amp to work with the bridge pickup and then want the neck pickup to sound good at those EQ settings.

But more than that, I'm just looking for a pickup that sounds good.  I've figured out how to generally know what I'm looking for by looking at the pickup specs, but even there I'm sometimes surprised.  The 7 string has been a big challenge for me, as a lot of things I feel I know about pickups just don't seem to apply, especially on the really low notes.

Is your 7 string application primarily under High Gain, or other?  Amp choice, music style, etc...  An artist who's tone inspires you as a starting point?

 

[Jesse]

The 7 string thing is a totally new adventure for me, so I don't have a great answer.  I've played nothing but 6 strings my whole life and have been told by several people that it takes quite a while to figure out what to do with the 7th string.  Generally I use a higher gain tone but this is all running through an Axe Fx, so I can have whatever tone I want basically.  I will say that I'm not a metal or djent player.  I probably am into more of a hair metal style.

At this point the issue I've had is that I can get a cool clean tone out of the guitar and enjoy using the 7th string as a bass note for arpeggiated chords.  But if I go to any sort of high gain patch, instant mud.  It kind of makes me want to not use the guitar.

There was a set of barely used PAF 7's sitting on eBay for $100 that were taken out of an Ibanez RG752.  I can easily get that much for the Illuminators, so I snapped those up today.  We'll see how those go.  Thanks again for the advice.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I'm heading out the door in a minute, but I'll provide my experience as a hard rock player and how I adapted to the 7 string tomorrow.

 

[Perry Combover]

Hey Tony, our bated breath is turning to halitosis.  :icon_biggrin:

 

[Jesse]

Well I ended up getting that PAF7 set from eBay and they showed up really fast.  Gonna pull the Illuminators out of the guitar today and put the new set in there.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I'm heading out the door in a minute, but I'll provide my experience as a hard rock player and how I adapted to the 7 string tomorrow.

I started out with an ESP/LTD F207 as my first 7 string.

Initially, I just tried to play it as a 6 string to familiarize myself with the wider fingerboard and added string.  I had to get over my instinct to chug on the low B thinking it was the low E. 

As I got more comfortable and could instinctively play it like a 6 totally and intentionally ignorant of the low B, I then started utilizing this Extended Range into our set list.  In my opinion, a 7 string is a true Extended Range instrument, whereas a Baritone in my opinion is simply a Transposed Range instrument.  A 7 is adding range, a Baritone is simply moving the ranger lower.

One of the things that helped me adapted and add the additional range to my playing vocabulary was to play it like a 6, up until perhaps the final verse or chorus in one of our original songs.  Doing so added a weight to the songs that they hadn't had before, and in retrospect, I think this was better for us as a band.  Had I just started playing all over those B to D# parts an octave lower, then the songs wouldn't have had the dynamic range or the "someplace to go to" kind of range that they ended up with. 

It pumped up certain sections of the songs, and left the rest intact.

Once we had been doing that for a while, I started writing on the 7, and many new ideas started to pour out, but I was cautious to not just spend all of my time in the lower range, but use the lower range creatively and musically.
There's also a great tutorial section at sevenstring.org for learning extended lead passages/exercises/arpeggios, etc.. I used some of them, but many of them I just learned on my own simply by applying the notes that I know on the 2nd B string to the 7th B string.  From there, it was just part of my music theory and fingerboard vernacular.

I also write with the keys/synth frequently, so it also gave me some added options in arranging and allocating ranges.

This would be my recommendation to others who are considering the 7 string.

 

[Jesse]

Was playing around with the seven for a while last night.  I really wish I liked the distorted tone of these pickups more because the clean tone on the neck pickup is amazing.  I may end up trying to salvage that pickup in all this.  The guitar is just so resonant and has a huge, bassey sound.  I think that's a big reason why this thing gets so muddy when you turn the gain up.

Not sure how it's going to work out having a lower output pickup in the bridge but I'm assuming I can balance things out with pickup heights.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

When playing in high gain, you gotta dial back the low end to tighten it up, and leave room for the bass player.

I love the PAF7, but it likes a particular amp voicing.  It may shine on a JCM800 or 2000, or even on a Recto, but a Bogner Uber or Diezel VH4, and you end up with too much "oooooommmppphh" if you don't dial back the low end.

I use the Evo7 in the bridge, and a Blaze Neck.  The Blaze neck reminds me a bit of a PAF Pro but with lower output.  The newer Titan 7's are supposed to have a lot of detail/clarity.  Looking forward to their release.