Noiseless Tele Pickups

[guitarhack_in_winchester]

Does anyone have an informed opinion about the "loaded pickguard" option offered by folks like "Sigler Music"?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/201547444170?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

No affiliation - on the surface, it looks like a decent price for a pickup set I like. 

Welcome your thoughts!

 

[stratamania]

Sigler Music, has a website in addition to Ebay and has been established for a long time. They offer a range of pickups and prepopulated pickguards along with a bunch of other stuff.

I have not used them yet, but if they offer something you like and don't necessarily want to do the soldering yourself etc they look a pretty good option to use.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I'll take the GFS NEO VIN Tele set or the EMG Tele Set any day.

 

[swarfrat]

Ya know... a set of Neovin Hard Vintage on a Velocity.... in Butterscotch. (Or just "Scotch!" as my kid used to call it. He was 3, and would say "Scotch! I want scotch for breakfast!")

 

[stratamania]

Lets hope when he is 30 he doesnt want Scotch regularly for breakfast ;-)

 

[Cagey]

Hehe! Scotch! Breakfast of Champions!

My kid used to ask for "Peebo" at that age (code for Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich)  :icon_biggrin:

 

[stratamania]

Sounds like a winning combo  :laughing7:

 

[T89Rex]

Well all my bits and pieces are here (except that I only ordered one knob  :doh. I went for the Bill Lawrence Microcoils in the end. I wonder if anyone would be able to take a look at this diagram and check whether this is how I want to wire the pots for a 1 Tone, 1 Blend set up. Thanks!

 

[Cagey]

That'll work, as far as it goes. Most would add a volume control to it, but you could just as easily use a floor controller.

 

[T89Rex]

Thanks. I don't often use the volume knob and I'm primarily a home player anyway so I'm happy to rely on my volume pedal for volume control.

Another question (I'm full of them today), is there a way to shield the pickup wires? For instance, could I wrap the hot wire in copper tape then connect that to ground?

 

[Cagey]

You won't need to with those MicroCoils. Even though they're truly single-coil pickups, somehow they don't pick up noise. At least, not unless you really force the issue by getting right next to/on top of a big transformer, CRT or U235 Transient Interspace Modulator. If you do manage to get into a spot that's radiating hard enough for those pickups to pass it along, shielding the lead wires isn't going to help.

Spock! The pickups... did they hum?​

 

[T89Rex]

I do so love it when the lazy option is also the right option. Well it's all done and... the blend is a lot less interesting than I'd hoped. The in-between sounds are so subtle that they'll probably rarely come into play. Fun experiment though.

On the plus side, the pickups are lovely. The bridge in particular has all the tele bite and grit I was looking for. Still fiddling with the neck pickup to find the sweet spot in terms of height but I think I'll get there soon enough. Still can't believe how cheap they were.

One negative from the whole thing: all of my tone control's range seems to be in the last quarter turn or so. Is there a basic mistake I might've made that could cause that?

 

[stratamania]

For the tone control if you would like a more even change you could try a linear pot. 

For volume controls however stick with audio  (logarithmic pots ).

 

[Cagey]

My experience with blend controls has been less than thrilling as well, so I don't do it anymore. I guess I just don't appreciate the fine subtleties available from that scheme as much as some do.

Those microcoil pickups are surprisingly proximity sensitive, so adjust slowly or you may miss the sweet spot.

Volume (and to a lesser extent, tone) controls that have most of their action in a narrow band at the extreme throws of the pot usually result from using "linear taper" pots as opposed to "audio taper". The human ear has a logarithmic response curve, so linear changes in loudness/frequency aren't perceived as such.

If you did use log (audio) taper pots, it's possible they're of too high a value. The way impedances work out between guitar pickups, cables and amplifiers, 500K pots work best more often than not. 250K pots tend to eat a little high end off the signal, while 1M pots tend to have lop-sided response characteristics such as you're experiencing. If you used 1M log taper pots, you may be able to get a satisfactory response out of them without replacement by simply tacking a 1M resistor across the outside terminals of the pot. It's not a perfect solution, but it's close enough for government work. Modern pot tapers don't follow a log curve as closely as is implied anyway.

 

[T89Rex]

I used a log taper 250K pot as far as I can tell, so I'm not sure what's going on with it. I realise now that I did wire it "backwards", in the sense that the knob works the opposite way to what I intended. But that shouldn't make a difference, should it?

EDIT: Having tried it I now see that it makes a great deal of difference. All good now.

EDIT II: So I understand, can somebody with electronics knowledge explain what was happening there? Was I effectively showing the circuit much higher resistance than I intended by wiring it backwards?

 

[Cagey]

Well, yeah, it will. While an audio taper pot has an approximation of a logarithmic response curve, it still has the same extremes as a linear taper part - no resistance and rated resistance.

So, just poking around with an ohmmeter won't necessarily reveal a problem that your ears will pick out instantly.

Also, as Stratamania pointed out earlier, you may be better off with a linear taper pot for the tone control. It kinda depends on how your ears work.

Another thing that will give you lop-sided response from a guitar tone control is an over-sized capacitor. You very rarely see them larger than .047μF, and even that's too large by my lights. Some will use .033μF, while I've found that .022μF works best, and you could go as low as .01μF if you only wanted a subtle range of control.

 

[T89Rex]

Thanks for that. I think somehow my mind got stuck on the idea of the blend pot just wiping from one input to the other and started thinking of the tone pot the same way. Completely forgot that the resistor is kind of the whole point of the thing. You live and learn.

I'm using a .047 cap here and honestly I doubt I'll ever use it dialled all the way back. It's just way too dark. I think I have a .022 in my Strat which has a much more sensible range. Still, you never know when that sound might come in handy I guess.

 

[Cagey]

I should point out that "curve" 3 in the plot above is how the vast majority of log taper pots are manufactured, as creating a true log taper of resistance would be expensive and generally unnecessary in practice. When you look at that plot, it's easier to see how wiring it backwards would put most of the change at the wrong end.

 

[swarfrat]

You should at least credit RG Keen's Geofx site for that graphic. He's done an amazing job of educating musicians on the internet about electronics over the past few decades.

http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/potsecrets/potscret.htm

 

[Cagey]

You're absolutely right. He's done a great job there and I honestly meant to include a link so as to fill in a lotta other details that some might find interesting, but I got side-tracked. I have the attention span of a butterfly sometimes.