Danuda said:
I had looked at the hot stack, but when I looked at the resistance it seemed hotter than the Phat Cat.
This is why people need to stop looking at DC resistance averages as if they mean anything.
Here's something every single guitar player/modder/builder needs to memorise:
DC resistance tells you nothing about how a pickup will sound.
The SD Hot Stack for Tele is the perfect example. The average DC on one of those is about 20k, yes? That's more than a DiMarzio D Activator-X or EMG 81. Yet in reality it has less output than a Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pro, a humbucker measuring just 7.9k.
Meanwhile, check out the seemingly-similar Seymour Duncan Hot Rails for Tele. That's rated at 14.8k; fairly hot, but not the hottest you'll have ever heard of. The Strat version is rated at 17k. Which provies more output? The Tele version. In fact, the Tele Hot Rails, when the coils are wired in series, gives you more output than an EMG 81, DiMarzio D Activator, Seymour Duncan Alternative 8 or Gibson Dirty Fingers.
I'm putting together a Jazzmaster build right now, one with two humbuckers that I've put together myself. The neck pickup reads 10.2k and the bridge pickup reads 10.1k. You'd expect them to be pretty similar in output, yes? Or, if anything, the neck pickup should be more powerful? Well, it's not. The neck pickup has an A8 magnet and was wound with 43 AWG wire while the bridge has a ceramic magnet and was wound with 42 AWG wire. In the end, even though the DC resistance of the two pickups is virtually identical, with the neck just in the lead, the bridge pickup is actually almost twice the power.
Ignore DC resistance. The only statistics that pickup manufacturers give you that are of any value are the magnet type and the resonant peak. From these you can get a vague idea of the tone balance.
What is far more important—and what pickup manufacturers don't often tell you—is the type of wire used, the size of the coil(s), how multiple coils are to be wired together (though of course you can do whatever wiring you want) and the size of the magnet(s) used.
So, let's go back to the SD Hot Lead Stack for Tele. It's 20k, which seems like a lot, but it's using smaller wire so this only the equivalent of about 14k with standard PAF or early Tele construction. Additionally, it is designed to always be wired with the coils parallel, not series; a series humbucker at 20k will be pretty hot no matter what wire you use, but parallel-wired? Less than half the series output. Again in normal Tele or PAF humbucker terms, this leaves you down to the output of about a 7k pickup. If anything, that is a little on the weak side.
Now we look at the magnet. Rather than six magnetic pole pieces, like most Tele pickups have, we're looking at one bar magnet, like humbuckers use. This gives you a much smoother and warmer tone. Because the magnet is installed 'edge up' and close to the top of the pickup, like in a Firebird pickup, this increases the output a little compared to most bar magnet pickups (which have the magnet at the bottom of the pickup) and it adds a little brightness and clarity as the magnet is right under the strings (which is why traditional single coils, with six magnetic pole pieces, have their extra-bright sound).
Have a look at the resonant peak that Seymour Duncan state is the average for this pickup: 6KHz. Now look at the resonant peak of the Phat Cat that you like: 6.3KHz for the neck model and 6KHz for the bridge version. The Phat Cat uses two A2 bar magnets at the bottom of the pickup, giving a warmer tone with less output, but it has one giant coil wound up to 8.5k, giving it a brighter tone (single coil) and more output (overwound). The result is a very tonally balanced pickup with medium output. The Hot Lead Stack for Tele? Same thing. A5 magnet at the top gives more output and a brighter sound while the two slightly mismatched coils wired parallel give a warmer tone and less output, again resulting in a balanced sound. The resonant peak of the Phat Cat is still a tiny bit higher, but the Hot Lead Stack is designed to fit into a Tele and angled, making the tone brighter (and meaning it does need to be a very slightly warmer design, which it is).
In fact the only part where they really differe in use is that, because the magnet is so high on the Hot Lead Stack, you do need to back it down further from the strings than you usually would. That's hardly a big issue.
So, once you learn to ignore DC resistances—which the internet, for some reason, puts so much emphasis on—and start to look at the other, much more important aspects of a pickup, you can start to see how to match pickups much more easily.
By all means, skip over the Hot Lead Stack—you may well find that just by virtue of being angled it doesn't suit you and routing the guitar for a full-sized humbucker really is the only way you'll be happy—but if there is one thing you
can take away from all this with certainty, please let it be that DC resistance is irrelevant :icon_thumright:
