Putting a Bridge pickup in the Neck position

[Nicholasdaniel]

I have a SD P-rail for the bridge position. I planned on getting a neck P-rail and inverting it so that the rail was facing the neck as the bridge pickup does, however I see the new p rails hot are out and Im considering buying one of those and putting it in the bridge and putting the current p-rail i have in the neck. Is this a valid idea? If not I'll probably just buy the neck pickup. Also wondering if anyone has a prail and inverted it in the neck position  my guitar teacher did it in his tele and really liked it im just looking for other opinions.

 

[Dan025]

its a matter of tase, it'll be pretty fat but some like that, my personal taste is low output pup's that i can fatten up with the tone control (i use small caps to avoid mud).  but with the p-rails you have the parallel and single coil options. hell the single coil option mat be better on the bridge pup anyway.

 

[dNA]

that should be perfectly fine. Usually the only difference between neck and bridge models of a set is that the bridge is usually fatter with higher output, to compensate for the lower volume and lack of low end you get closer to the bridge. If it's a fat guitar, it might be a bit much but I doubt it's nothing you can't deal with. and like Dan said, if it's too fat you have two other modes you can try out. Personally I think you can never have too fat a sound for playing leads on the neck pickup.

 

[Nicholasdaniel]

It's going in an alder body with a maple/rosewood neck and I just don't want it to sound muddy I don't mind a little fattness

 

[lafromla1]

The worst that can happen is it sounds like crapola and you switch it out.

 

[Nicholasdaniel]

Yea I know but I'm kinda short on funds mayb I should just play it safe and buy the neck pickup... I'm still debating

 

[dNA]

I really don't think you need to worry about it. Seymour Duncan doesn't have an exchange policy? If it were DiMarzio, you could try it out and if it's no good you have at least 30 days (i've pushed 40) to exchange it for the other one anyway

 

[Nicholasdaniel]

True and I mean I plan and wiring so i can get series/parallel/rails/p90 from the pickup so if i dont like one of the settings im sure the other will work to my advatage and be worth it... its just the muddiness that im worried about what kind of things can you do to avoid that.. such as cap sizes and adjusting pick up height ?

 

[dNA]

True and I mean I plan and wiring so i can get series/parallel/rails/p90 from the pickup so if i dont like one of the settings im sure the other will work to my advatage and be worth it... its just the muddiness that im worried about what kind of things can you do to avoid that.. such as cap sizes and adjusting pick up height ?

depends on the wiring setup in the guitar. If you have independent volume and tone controls for each pickup, you can use higher value pots for the neck pickup than the bridge pickup. Though honestly that'll make it have more treble, not less bass.

 

[Dan025]

1-meg pots, and sometimes i wire the tone so that the cap is shorted against itself at the "10" position so it has zero influence on the sound, in this arrangement the tone pot loads the pickup the same as a volume would so the 1meg pots are needed, you wind up with 500k load in the end, nothing says you cant go with a 5-meg pot for the tone either. or you can try a tbx style tone control or a passive notch filter like a lawrence q-filter combined with a capacitor. using the right resistor in the notch filter circuit can make any guitar quack, using a larger resistor and a small cap sounds a bit like a traditional tone control but keeps the presence and a push pull can let you decide which resistor you want.

any of these things are cheaper than buying another pickup but i thought duncan had a return policy as well :icon_scratch:

 

[Nicholasdaniel]

I haven't bought it yet

 

[pabloman]

You should throw your bridge pickup in the neck position before you buy anything. even if you just wire it straight up at least you'll have an idea of the tone you can expect. I have a guitar with two Dimebuckers in it and I love the split tones with the bridge and neck together. I put the neck pickup upside down just for asthetics but I am so happy with it. It's of course pretty hot but the mud I expected to get wasn't there. Good luck!!!!