Category: Pickups

Mutant Beauty Pageant: Enter and “Win!”

Post author By joe
Post date November 14, 2011
25 Comments on Mutant Beauty Pageant: Enter and “Win!”

It’s time for another contest!

I hereby announce the first Tonefiend Mutant Beauty Pageant.

I know many ~~deadbeats with too much time on their hands~~ musicians, and most of them have a thing for weird gear. I’m talking real freak-show stuff, the items that make anyone who walks into your music room shriek, “What the hell is that thing?”

Here’s the idea: You post your oddities, and the coolest/weirdest item wins. They can be anything music-related: guitars, basses, amps, effects, CDs or vinyl, music industry swag, some crazy DIY project—anything goes! The winner will receive—well, let’s just say something as weird and cool as the stuff being posted.

DIY guitar Pickups

Changing Three Pickups in Five Minutes
(and What It Sounds Like)

Post author By joe
Post date October 29, 2011
18 Comments on Changing Three Pickups in Five Minutes
(and What It Sounds Like)

This is my kind of pickup change: the easy kind!

I got my hands on the new Seymour Duncan Everything Axe pickguard, which comes with three pre-installed Strat-format humbuckers (JB Jr., Duckbucker, and Little ’59). I’ve always avoided humbuckerized Strats because they remind of really bad ’80s bands. But I love the JB and ’59, so I figured, why not confront my prejudices?

I slapped the pickguard onto your basic Mexican Strat, and voilà! Instant coolness.

Here’s a little demo featuring all five pickup combinations. As the product name implies, this particular pickup trio yields many high-contrast colors. But I’m struck most by how much Strat flavor remains—there’s certainly no lack of shimmer and twang. I favored clean tones in the demo, just to deep-six my outdated stereotypes about harsh, compressed, over-distorted Strat humbucker sounds.

And it really did take about five minutes.

DIY guitar Pickups

Can Cool Pickups Save a Crappy Guitar?

Post author By joe
Post date October 21, 2011
32 Comments on Can Cool Pickups Save a Crappy Guitar?

Textbook example: Nice pickups, naughty guitar.

Multiple readers have asked some variation of that question since I launched this blog last month. I’ve been wondering myself as I prowled the local music emporia, searching for a fun, but seriously funky guitar to experiment on.

Bass DIY Pickups

“Only an Idiot Would Put Those Things on a Bass!”

Post author By joe
Post date October 17, 2011
18 Comments on “Only an Idiot Would Put Those Things on a Bass!”

2011-08-03 at 00-58-16 (2) — Cheap chic: The Italia Maranello bass

I’ve got this weird Italia Maranello bass I picked up years ago when I was playing in the Eels. It looks like it’s from the ’60, but is, in fact, a modern instrument designed by Brit luthier Trev Wilkinson and built in Korea. The only “Italy” in “Italia” is the fact that their instruments look like the Brand X axes being made in Italy, Gemany, and Sweden nearly 50 years ago. It looks inexpensive, and is. But it’s cool if you like weird, trashy stuff.

I strung it up with flatwounds, figuring I’d try to use it as a pseudo-Hofner, something to use for melodic parts that didn’t demand massive low end. Given the instrument and the relatively dull-toned pickups, I didn’t expect anything massive-sounding. I got this:

Digital DIY Effects guitar Pickups Recording

Humbucker + P-90 = ?

It's not like these pickups NEED a hot tub disco light to be exciting, but it can't hurt.

It's not like these pickups NEED a hot tub disco light to be exciting, but hey, a little mood lighting never hurts.

I recently upgraded a beat-up old Les Paul with a pair of Seth Lover humbuckers, a journey detailed here and here.

While I was in a makeover frame of mind, I figured, what not try something I’d always been curious about: installing a P-90 and a humbucker on the same guitar. So I swapped the neck pickup for a Seymour Duncan Phat Cat, a vintage-sounding P-90 is a humbucker-sized housing.

guitar Pickups

To Pot—Or Not?

can-you-hear-me-now-300x200 — Can you hear me now?

Most modern guitar pickups are potted. That means they’re dipped in wax to prevent their components from vibrating against each other in high-volume situations, which can produce unwanted feedback.

The process also prevents pickups from becoming microphonic, amplifying sounds traveling through air along with the magnetic information generated by the pickups interacting with the strings. Some pickups are so microphonic, you can literally talk into the pickups and hear your voice through the amp.

Want to hear a pickup that sounds like a cheap megaphone?

guitar Pickups

When Jazz Guitars Go Bad

jazz_gone_bad — "Let me teach you a thing or two about CHUNK, sonny!"

The other day I posted a few audio clips I’d recorded using a Guild Archtop fitted with a Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Dynasonic® pickup. Going with the ’50s theme, I strung the guitar with flatwounds and coughed up a few Eisenhower-era licks.

Reader Dohmin Semper wondered how that setup would sound playing punk or metal. I muttered a polite response and moved on.

But later I felt guilty. With all this blog’s big talk about breaking ~~things~~ rules, why had I restricted my demo of this cool pickup to the most obvious uses? What a wuss! So I slunk back into my studio and bashed out a few riffs through high-gain amp simulations.

Bass DIY Effects guitar Pickups Tonefiend DIY Club

Tonefiend DIY Club:
Join and or Die!

Post author By joe
Post date September 23, 2011
44 Comments on Tonefiend DIY Club:
Join ~~and~~ or Die!

I hereby call to order the first meeting of the Tonefiend DIY Club!

Our mission: To attain tonal mastery over our guitars, amps, and effects with the least possible damage to our gear, bodies, homes, and pets. When the smoke has cleared (and all the smoke alarms have been reset) you’ll be able to install pickups, customize your guitar’s electronics, mod and build stompboxes, repair cables, and brag about your technical prowess while waiting in line to file your insurance claims.

Take it from one of the laziest and clumsiest people ever to brandish a soldering iron: Anyone can learn these skills. They’re fun and creative, and they’re one of the best ways to “own you tone,” if I may borrow the Seymour Duncan motto.

As promised, this material will be suitable for absolute beginners. (Though I hope more experienced guitar hackers join in, because we’ll really need your help!)

Read on for lists of what you’ll need to build our first three projects, plus recommended reading while waiting for your stuff to arrive.

guitar Pickups

Pretty, Pretty Pickup

pretty1 — The Dynasonic: one pretty pickup!

Take my advice: When MJ says she has something cool to show you, drop everything and investigate.

MJ, of course, is Maricela Juarez, the longtime manager of the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. And the item in question was a clone of the DeArmond 200 pickup, also known as the Gretsch Dynasonic®. Predating the Gretsch Filter’Tron, the Dynasonic provided one of the key sounds of classic rockabilly, and was used at times by Cliff Gallup, Eddie Cochrane, and Duane Eddy. It’s also just about the prettiest-looking pickup I’ve ever seen.

Bass DIY Pickups

In Search of Primitive Bass

Post author By joe
Post date September 14, 2011
6 Comments on In Search of Primitive Bass

Compare the honking' magnets on the installed Quarter Pound to those of the factory pickup..

P_Bass Lomo — Compare the honkin' magnets on the installed Quarter Pound to those of the factory pickup.

The original P-Bass is a fascinating instrument. It’s wasn’t the first electric bass guitar—inventor and owner Paul Tutmarc claimed that title with the instruments he created and sold through his Seattle, Washington, music shop in the 1930s and ’40s. But the P-Bass, released in 1951, was the first electric bass that really mattered—the one that made the instrument a fixture of our musical landscape.

The P-Bass has evolved much over the course of its 60 years. In fact, its creators instigated the first big makeover back in 1957, when Fender abandoned the original Telecaster-inspired styling and single-coil pickup in favor of a sleeker, Strat-type look and a split-coil pickup wired in humbucking mode. (The earlier P-Bass style resurfaced in the late ’60s as the Telecaster Bass, and in Fender’s ’51 P-Bass reissues.)