The fact it's so distorted when clean really says a lot about how insanely powerful this pickup is. Definitely would be great for grunge type stuff as-is and even doom/sludge/stoner metal if you pile on the fuzz.
@@pistachiowarcrimes6885 he's saying that it'd sound like an amateur who doesn't know what they're doing just dialing everything to 10 and scooping the mids. Just chose to say it in a strange way
@@rx-heaven8934 yeah cuase he's playing distorted open chords. It's gonna sound muddy. Hit it with some power chords or single string riffs it'd sound great
There are three things I would love to hear with this pickup: - Coil split. If it's this hot as a humbucker, what happens if you only have one coil left? Single coils tend to be brighter than humbuckers, so that might actually solve the resistance issue. - Does it clean up if you roll down the volume? How far can you take this? Is the tone useful in this scenario? - Treble cap to boost highs. A bit of extra brightness wouldn't hurt, so perhaps a capacitor could help with this. Overall, I think this sounded better than I had expected. Yes, it sounds compressed. However, I think it sounded more barky and dynamic than boosting an amp with a Tube Screamer. There is more experimentation to be done. I hope you'll consider making a follow-up video.
today lots of pickups maker have passive pickups with 20/24/26 k ohms . Such as lace pickups , bareknuckle , bulldog pickups ... but 54K looks insane for me .
I’ve got the Slug in my custom baritone and it absolutely slays. I was really unsure if I made the right choice initially, but after spending about two years with it now I am sold and would absolutely put it in another guitar.
Have you had the pleasure of viewing Mr. Glenn Fricker?? He's my number 1. Science driven experiments and no BS. KDH is solid as well but, He's more of a guitar player who dabbles in "equipment reviews"
@@middaymeds yo bro, I felt the same way when I first gave him a try. I needed a break before I fell for him. That Troll behavior you speak about is just humor. Don't be so easily offended son. You limit yourself.
@@napesdrk1174 You mean the guy who trashed a microphone because he used it backwards and then complained how it sounds? Or is it that guy who complains how everything sounds the same these days, but insists using the same amps and distressor on every record, because people need to have their own sound but when they do, he doesn't like it and would rather use a 5150 because that amp really has a unique sound?
@@napesdrk1174 *INTERNET PSA* I learned a long time ago not to recommend someone from another channel on someone's channel unless someone did it first and even then it's still a dicey conversation to start. Fanboying/gushing about it on someone else's channel is just bad form; assured to get you at the least derision if anyone responds in the first place. But as someone finally told me a long time ago, no one is going to *tell* you but they'll be glad to *teach* you. You see what happened there? I thought it was a teachable moment; I hope you found it a learnable one.
Just an F.Y.I. - while DC resistance for a pickup can help indicate more signal level/output (more DC resistance means more windings of wire for the pickup, which means more of a magnetic field, for the string to pass though, inducting more electrical voltage/signal through the pickup coils). I have a bit of an electronics background (I guess it's why I did most of the electronics related tech stuff for the bands I played in), and would like to point out that there are other factors in pickup output such as pickup magnet strength (though if the magnets are too strong, they will have a tendency to pull on the strings too much, killing string vibration, and in some cases, pull the string out of tune), and pickup height/closeness to the strings. Also, DC resistance can be higher, just because of the wire size of the coils being small (smaller wire typically has a higher electrical resistance). As much of a pain as it is, the only real way to tell what a pickup's output is, to measure the voltage, when a string is plucked, with an oscilloscope, or a voltmeter (preferably an AC voltmeter). I'm not surprised that you noticed a loss of high end for the pickup. With as many windings as it has to give it a 54 kilo-ohms DC resistance, it has very high inductance. The higher the inductance, the more, that higher frequencies are impeded/blocked. It's a tradeoff for mega output pickups. You either go the active route (relatively few windings to preserve the high end, and an internal pre-amp to boost the pickup signal), or wind the living daylights out of a passive pickup, and put up with it being darker sounding.
Excellent points! I wanted to make them but there is no need. One thing maybe: it's easy and cheap to measure the inductance (devices cost about the same as multimeters); it would be interesting to know that.
Bang on. As an electronic and electrical engineer as soon as resistance of the pickup was equated to “power output” my spidey sense tingled. Great that you gave this run down !
Lol, I was hoping it was meant to be a joke. But he has this very shrill vibrato that is way too fast and never in time. There is no feel, some people see others use vibrato and think “oh so I just arbitrarily wiggle the string so fast the listener needs to pop a Dramamine, regardless of the tempo of the song, vibe etc”.
Pinch harmonics always will be shrill and you don't have a lot of time for gentle, wide oscillations with this technique, it's not just vibrato, you catch a string with the pick and say, part of the thumb to make a squeal, which you can then do stuff with. It's a staple '80s metal feature and the only way Zakk Wylde can play anything. I think this guy has particularly good pinch harmonic chops
I lost it at that pinch too lol. That pickup is so hot that the compression of it almost makes it sound like a beast trapped in a cage....But that pinch gives ya an idea of how truly hot this pickup is.😈
If this is supposed to be a heavier version of the Slug, then they should have called it 'The Snail' - BIG missed opportunity here. Guess you could say they were a little /slow/ to the pun.
Looks exactly like the Seymour Duncan Slug. Same magnets and about 6kohm higher than the slug but Seymour was first with the stupidly high output pickup. The slug also has highs and definition.
@@waitin4winter no, if he were a comedian, he’s be banned on all Woke college campuses for fat-shaming snails (who we all know are a marginalized identity group and victims of systemic hate and violence.)
@@RaymondGinn1978 please try an open mic and record the results. With a comment like that either you're a comic prodigy or you'll eat crap on stage, either way i need to see it
54kOhm is INSANE! But high coil resistance don't necessarily mean high output, it depends on magnet strength as well, so you can have a low resistance high output pickup with really strong magnets, and they sound really cool.
The phrasing "high output" when referring specifically to high resistance (Ohms) is confusing to me... The higher resistance refers to the coil's resistance to the flow of electricity, so how could this result in a higher output to the amp?
@@taylormay9938 It generally means more winds. More winds increases signal strength and inductance to the point of diminishing return i.e. wire far from the magnetized string portion doesn't contribute much to output. Typical Fender SC pickups are actually pretty inefficient in the respect. The bottom half (or so) of the coil doesn't add much. The most efficient pickup coil cross section would be ~1/8" square. Thinner (higher gauge) wire has higher resistance, but thinner wire coils are denser, and can be situated closer to the strongest magnetic section of the string, so the slight loss of output from the increased resistance can be offset by the increased coil efficiency.
The tone we all like, about a Mustang, is the actual cheap Mustang pickup. It's a Stratocaster pickup, with pole pieces level to the top of the bobbin. That's the sound. The hamburgers where used live to be louder and noisier, but in general, a straight lace Stang was a common item for recording, so much so the Pumpkins only used them for clean in studio, during Siamese Dream. You'll lose that beautiful clean tone, doing buckers in anything. It's becomes a different, much less defined sound, antithetical to a Mustang. However, everyone thinks Cobain put buckers in em and so that's the end. Ask Butch Vig, how it was recorded. Zero Humbuckers, you aren't hearing, what you assume you are.
@@caiusmadison2996 oh yea you are right and I know Cobain used single coils, but I just like the shape of the Mustang lol, it would be funny to put this in one. Not looking for or expecting the classic Stang tone, even tho it’s really nice for sure
I bought one, when it gets here. It is going into a custom strat I built. It has a Fender '64 tele pickup in the bridge, a Fender 57/62 strat in the neck. This will be going into the middle position. It has a 24 inch scale length. I am looking forward to see what it sounds like. If you meant putting it into a "mustang" like the horse thingy well then I can't help on that.
Only Bill Lawrence figured out how to get big output with a bright tone. Sadly, it's very easy to make them sound like a box of bees and if you run them you kinda gotta move everything over to them or you'll be spending more time tweaking your amp than playing.
@@craigharrison5406 I have the X2N in 4 guitars, it's my pickup of choice, but I'm not sure I'd call it a bright pickup. It's a very well balanced pickup, which sounds bright compared to almost anything else at that output level (except Bill Lawrence stuff). But the BL stuff is actually bright, brighter than PAF bright.
I'm morbidly curious what it sounds like in parallel wiring -- that would probably bring back some treble definition and maybe even make it usable for mere mortals. A 1 meg pot with a treble bleed cap should also help, since this seems like the kind of thing you'd want to play with the volume rolled back a bit and then dime back out for solos.
That was my thought, how did it respond to the volume control? Is this just a powerful gain boost at 100%, but the majority of playing can be done at 50-60% on the volume with less treble loss?
I ran a Dimarzio X2N back in the 80s when that was the over the top humbucker. I ran it 4 wire so I could run standard series, parallel, and single. I liked the parallel best, but I have always felt I am the only person in the world that appreciates parallel humbuckers.
Wire it with a parallel switch and you get a 13.5K brighter sounding option. Like a bright sounding DM Superhumbucker. Parallel shifts the bandwidth back up again.
DC Resistance is by no means an indication of "output". This is a widely misunderstood misconception that's perpetuated throughout the industry, and it's been said that it continues to be believed and repeated because it supports a narrative that suits the manufacturers and helps them sell pickups. In any case it is indeed a myth... It could be argued that there is perhaps a *correlation* between DC resistance and output at least in some circumstances, however the situation has become so muddled that the two terms are used interchangeably and in such a context that implies they mean the same thing which they most certainly do not.
You've just proven Glenn Fricker wrong in this video, by proving that pickups not only affect the output but also DO affect the tone (still not as much as a speaker of mic ofc).
I always found the voicing of a pickup to be more important than the output. Granted you don't want to be running vintage pickups for death metal but I've found some of the best sounding metal pickups can be medium output pickups. The Seymour Duncan Custom is a perfect example. The best sounding super high output pickup I've played is the Dimarzio X2N. Tons of volume and gain but still has a well rounded voicing that doesn't sound too harsh.
I have been putting high output pickups in guitars for years, I finally tried some mid output pickups and I find my leads sound smoother and sweeter. Especially when switching to the neck position. I play a peavey 5150 but don’t use as much gain as it has on tap, so using the lower output pickup and cranking the amp a little more creates a more dynamic/ harmonic distortion- instead of edgy grind.
Interesting pickup. If you still have it in that guitar, why not try using it with a Tube Screamer type pedal - but set it up to cut the signal slightly in order to enable a 'clean' channel. My theory is that with the way a Tube Screamer tends to cut the mids and effectively boost higher frequencies it could be a good match for this pickup. An EQ pedal could be a good alternative as well.
Interesting, really highlights how when you increase coil windings, you really create that spike in midrange, with that "aw" sound really poking through. While I prefer the 8k pickup, even for high-gain stuff, this pickup really does serve a purpose. Would be great for black metal. It definitely makes me wonder if there's the need for ultra high output pickups these days. They definitely seemed more relevant with older style amps that really needed coaxed into distortion.
I have two 24k pickups that I used on a metal style guitar. It was a muddy mess. However, based on observations and research, it has its uses. If the hot pickup were lowered on the neck position, it can sustain for a long time. Plus, coil-tap and coil splitting can add tonal versatility as well
Man I had an x2n in my les Paul back in high school. I preferred the duncan sh-8 invaders tonally but they’re both kinda like having a passive boost in your volume knob. It’s hilarious how much it distorts your signal on full, great if you want that 70s “insane volume boost into vintage amp” type of playing.
@@100DollarHeadache I imagine that plexi is just screaming from all the gain and boost. As god intended of course. Interestingly I like the rat with lower gain settings lately. It’s a good treble booster and overdrive!
@@potatoheadhaoy My Rat is actually a DIY clone, using LEDs for clipping to make it a Turbo. I prefer using it as a dirty boost, I mounted the LEDs externally to see when the pedal is providing clipping, and use this to balance it between guitars.
Hi there, great found! Some people uses an overdrive not just to push the amp harder, but, most overdrives has a lo-cut at the first stage, and it makes the sound less fuzzier. More low end before gain staging causes mud on the tone If you try the SD-1 with the ton open, this will roll off the bottom end. If you do not crank up the level and keep the drive all the way down it will clean up the mud and makes it ore usable. OR you can use ONE HPF before hitting the first stage of gain but will never ever get the highs back since they were rolled off at the very beginning, right at the genesis. the maximum DC resistance tolerable to my ears is the 18.30 kΩ I got on my custom made Malagoli Eldorado pickup at my Kirk Hammet. more than that the signal becomes way much muddier. Also Output is not measured by DC resistance. The output level is measured in milivolts instead. Resistance is just consequence of the winding amount. I guess I could never use this in a production situation, they suck highs and for this I could use an equalizer before hiting the drives.
I always like how direct and observant your conclusions are. I don't even always agree with you, but I really like your honesty and fairness. Good channel bro
You can run these through a high pass cap, and add a bass pass resistor to add some bass back.. These also work nice in reverse polarity with the neck pick up, and put a super switch to either the super distortion bridge or the neck on a Gibson type pot blend circuit, so one of the out of phase coils bends into the other in phase coil, and the blend knob works as a nice tone control by using one pickup to cancel the bass frequency from the others.
I use to run a Dimarzio X2N in the neck, and it was BEAUTIFUL. Paired with a SH1B (essentially dimebags but with a Dimarzio instead of a bill Lawrence) was incredibly together
It's always difficult to compare pups - it's never just the resistance, it's also the type magnets and wire gauges that determine the actual output level. But most high output pickups use ceramic magnets, and since 43gauge is more or less the industry standard, the easier measurable resistance in kOhms has become synonymous with level of output.
This video is inadvertantly a GREAT example of the difference the pickup choice can make to a guitar. Have to say, I do love the sheer growl of that pickup.
@@allanallan4791 as is obviously shown in this video loooool. not saying the other factors aren;t in play but come on, you saying with a different mic placement and the speaker he could have gotten cleans out of that one?
I'm an electronics guy, pickup output is not measured in k ohms that is its DC impedance. Output is measured as volts peak to peak into a known load, so to properly compare two pickups you would measure output voltage (peak to peak) for each pickup on an oscilloscope while hitting the strings with the same force. If one pickup makes 1v p/p and the other makes 2v p/p the second pickup has TWICE the output. I bought an original dimarzio X2N super distortion in about 1982 when they came out. It had the big bar magnets. Even for metal playing it was muddy because if the magnets are too strong they pull on the strings influencing the strings. I played it for years but had to run the pickup quite low (away from strings) to reduce the muddiness.
I'm pretty sure the coils of that pickup are wired in series, it would be very interesting to wire them in parallel. Output would drop by almost half, however you might recover a little bit of the higher frequencies. It's possible the parallel wiring might shift the peak resonance frequency to a higher point. Very interesting for sure.
It would be an absolutely terrible doom pickup. Hot pickups are dogshit for low tunings when they're 11k, nevermind 54k. Tune this to drop A and it's going to sound like you've got a mattress in front if your amp
The loss of treble is actually a product of both resistance and capacitance in the pickup, the more turns on a pickup, and thinner insulating layer, generally the more capacitance. and the thinner the wire (to allow more turns in the same size), the higher the resistance, which together with the capacitance forms a low pass filter, filters out treble. And it's also the reason often older pickups that use plain enamel wire have more treble than newer pickups with poly wire, the plain enamel insulation layer is thicker so the capacitance is lower, less treble loss.
Yeah, I'm a metal guy, and I actually hate overwound humbuckers (or humbuckers in general.) I only use low output single coils. WAY more tone. Just listen to Yngwie Malmsteen's tone.
@@saftovooey4569 These pickups would have been great to have 40+ years ago - certainly with old Marshalls & likewise amps, but it's just too much now... Can't get the wood sound with them now!
@@cornfilledscreamer614 oh ya. I plugged into a marshall origin 50 and single coils couldn't get anything out the amp without a pedal. But put some strong humbuckers through it and it sounds awesome.
A genuine mud-bucker. As a professional luthier for over 40 years, even most my metal players wouldn't like that sound. No articulation, no definition. Lindy Fralin - a pickup master - has graphs that show the relationship between output and high-end roll-off. Lots of variables here like what magnets, alnico II, alnico IV, alnico V, ceramic? I've found that about 12K - 16K alnico V pickups seem to be the sweet spot in a bridge, and about 8K-9K in the neck. Tone is always subjective to your style of playing and amp, but 54K is just way too hot to be practical. Thanks for sharing! Rock On!
Doom metal players would love it. Put it through a maxed out Proco RAT or a Big Muff, into an already breaking up big clean amp and make diesel generators noises. Perfect.
If they could possibly smooth out the overall tone of the pickup itself, or if you used a more feature rich amplifier to reign in that tone, it could be useable. I suggest a 31 band EQ through the effects loop for starters.
Interesting. I think your spot on in that the high impedance of the pick-up is contributing to cutting off the higher frequencies for the same reason using a 200 foot line between amp and guitar will do the same thing. This can perhaps be EQ'd if nothing else... I guess its all in your aim. I started building acoustic stringed instruments in my retirement which led to building pick-ups, pre-amps and power amps. I would not be happy with the signal hitting the rails of the pre-amp and distorting as it seemed to be doing in the test because I like a clean and flat response and if an emphasis then in the mid-range. But presumably you can always build or buy or adjust a pre-amp that the pick-up's signal can swing between without hitting the rails leading to clipping. Sure was louder for sure, but if you looked at the peak to peak voltage on a scope of the pick-up by itself and compared it to its 8K cousin the difference would be substantial and since op-amps which are the heart of pre-amps only care about voltage difference between the signal and virtual ground with current not mattering its bound to be louder at any gain setting and whether its worth it is a matter of aim and what its being supplied to.
13.6K Alnico 5 is the hottest Humbucker pickup I have and I don't think I need anything hotter than this. I drive a 1973 WEM Dominator MKII amplifier, I once hated this amp but now it is the only tube amp I have left and refuse to sell it, I now love this amp!
I'm surprised it had the clarity and as much highs as it did. Definitely not for everyone but I can see some folks in some styles experimenting and making it work. Great video.
KDH: Back in the day I installed a Seymour Duncan : "Heavy Metal Live Wire" 18V in my 86 Jackson plugged into a Mesa/Boogie .50 cal and it was SICK as Hell!!!! I would not clean up (who cares) through a Roland Jazz chorus head. I still have it! one of the very 1st ones. It crushed the 9V EMG 81's!!!
Two amendments. First, high-output pickups aren't "pushing the power tubes"; they are hitting the first preamp stage. Second, the loss of high-end information is due to capacitance (like in a really long instrument cable), not resistance.
Good point about how a pickup with relatively high DC resistance in the neck position can produce a smooth, Tube Screamer always on lead sound. Steve Morse in fact uses one in this similar vein, with his signature Dimarzio DP205 having 21kΩ DCR. Stating the obvious, the huge DC resistance in this 54kΩ seems to have removed the twanginess while boosting the mids when directly compared to the 8kΩ pickup.
I love all the random potentially obscure songs KDH puts in his demos. Safe to say that a rerecording of the Strong Arm of the Law album with this pickup needs to happen
I want the coil tap!! Also super interested in what it sounds like into a line level input. Also very interested to see what is sounds like into an amp with low preamp gain. An amp where the V1 tube is a unity gain 12au7. Also should be 60w power output or 120w to get the full effect
Just to clarify, you're measuring the series resistance of the coils of the pickup. That's not "output." BUT, given the math that determines the output voltage of a pickup ( E = blv), "E" being the output voltage, "b" being strength of the magnet, "l" being the length of wire in the coil (winds), a longer coil (and therefore higher series resistance) results in higher output voltage. So, "54 k Ohms" reads "54 kilohms" and means 54,000 Ohms series resistance. Which, as you said, is totally bananas to the point of hilarity. I thoroughly enjoy your videos, btw!
I have a Strat with a Bill Lawrence L500XL, which is an extremely high output. I have compared it to Super Distortions and it blows them away. I currently have it in a 3 humbucker pickup Strat in the neck position, and found the extreme high output pickups sound great in the neck, more so than the bridge as I find them simply too much for anything but extreme metal in the bridge, or require too much retuning the amp controls to allow for the extreme output of the bridge compared to the neck.
One thing that I'd like to know is whether they are using just the one coil or tapping both coils when you make use of the additional wire coming out of the pickup. If they're actually shorting out both of the two coils (giving you a more reasonable output to enable cleans with the option of going harder for distortion sounds but still retaining the hum cancellation in both modes) I can see it being a really cool idea. Kind of like having a passive booster in the guitar like the new Yamaha Revstars have, except that they do it with a small step up transformer instead of it being part of the pickup design. I think it sounds pretty good but it's definitely not very versatile without the coil tap/split feature.
6:53 High frequencies are filtered out with inductivity (L) of the coil(s). Reactive resistance or impedance of coils is calculated by formula Ra(coil)= 2*Pi*f*L. High the frequencies are more suppressed than low frequencies. While more L means more filtering for the same frequency.
The high end lose is from the increased coil inductance from more windings not resistance. Series inductance is like parallel capacitance like a tone control with a cap.
I like a single coil neck sound for leads and cleans. If I had this pickup I would use it as the bridge pickup when I switch to rhythm to act as a booster, it may sound good.
It actually sounds really good dude! I would put one of those into a Kramer and plug right into a Plexi, wouldn't need to do anything else really except if you want to throw a wah in there Also I am not the type to plug right into the amp, I like pedals, but I don't really care either way, both sound good
Would be interesting to hear how this 54K pickup sounds in the clean position if you turned the guitar volume down to say 1/3 level. That way the pickup should not be over driving the amp input and should be clean. Then when its lead time just turn the guitar volume up a bit.
DC resistance isn't a direct measurement of output. It's an indication of *inductance* which one of the two parameters that are actually important, but it's only valid for identical construction and identical wire gauge. Inductance also increases with coil area and the amount and magnetic permeability of core material. Inductance is also a measure of the cut-off frequency of the pickup, they're intrinsically low-pass. The series resistance of a pickup is insignificant in the circuit. Read up on parallel LCR filters for more information, the R value here is the parallel sum of your volume pot and the input resistance of your amplifier, and C is the capacitance of your guitar cable. It probably dwarfs that of the pickup at around 500pF. That pickup is crazy hot though.
I've had a Dimarzio Steve's Special humbucker from the early 2000s. It's a very hot pickup, 17k Ohms. I also have a Seymour Duncan humbucker and a pickup from a Fender Jaguar in the same guitar. I get a good range of sounds from it. It's a Squier Affinity series guitar body and has it's quirks as far as intonation but it's pretty good.
Getting a proper soldering iron would probably improve your soldering results significantly. Those "gun type" soldering irons are not meant for electronic work.
