Grateful Dead Music Forum

MK,

When did Bobby use DiMarzio virtual PAFs in the Ibanez Cowboy guitar?


Jim

These are the pups that Ibanez used in the 30 Cowboys they made 5 years ago. This guitar was supposed to be an authentic repro of the original. I won't guarantee that they actually were in the original. I suspect they may be the closest sounding pickup that had available in 2005?

mk

Ok. I was going to say that I don't think DiMarzio had the Virtual PAFs in the late 70s.

Jim

Ok,

I unwound my old SDS-1 and now it measures 5.42 ohms with my digital multimeter. I threw it in my guitar last night and it sounds way better. Not as dark - has more clarity. I did have to raise it up very close to the strings and lower my other pickups to match volume but it sounds pretty good now. Maybe I'll try to record it with my friends H2 and share it.

Jim

Cool Jim.

Please do provide an audio snippet if you can. I'm about to go to my buddy with the pickup winding machine real soon and do the same. My only fear is that I don't want to have to get the pickup TOO close to the strings because a single coil pickup can pull on the strings themselves and cause that "wolf tone" or "strat-itis" that happens. That's one advantage of a humbucker. The magnetic field doesn't pull like a single does.

Thanks for the input.
Brad

That's a very good point... Wolf tones are really obnoxious...

The lower the pups impedance, the cleaner, and more detailed, the sound produced... to a point of dimenishing returns, which is, the lower impedance also lowers the strength of the signal... so it's always a trade off.

I would think that 5.42 would be about the low end of the spectrum. I have all mine between 5.8 and 6.2 (tending more toward the 5.8 to 6.0) which seems to give me the best of both worlds... however, I'm a fan of the '69 to '73 tones, and that may not be true of the later Jerry sounds... it seems to me I saw somewhere that the single coil impedence of later Jerry usage was somewhere in the high 4's?

And DC resistance of a pickup's coil is only part of the equation. The magnetic field shape and strength, the gauge of the wire, the actual number of turns, the thickness of the enamel coating of the wire, etc. all contribute to the final output signal strength and resonant frequency. With the SDS-1 experiment, all things fixed except the number of winds we can control the variable. If the stock pickup is just under 10k, then I'd tend to want to shoot for about 6.5k to 7k, keeping the pickup fairly strong but increasing the treble response by a reasonable amount. Like you said, it's a tradeoff because as you reduce the winds to add brightness, you do reduce output strength, and then that requires that you move the pickup closer to the strings.

Brad

I didn't realize the SDS-1 was so hot... perhaps I'm remembering the split humbucker coil in the middle position? Does anyone know what the humbucker's resistance was/is?

Super II as a series humbucker is 8.7k. Single coil is 4.35k.

Dual Sound as a series humbucker is 13.68k. Single coil is 6.8k.

Again, those numbers will not directly translate to the SDS-1. Other factors are at play.

The stock SDS-1 is 9.36k. The Super II is wound to 64% of a Dual Sound. So if you know that sonic difference, then I'm thinking we should take a SDS-1's 9.36k down to about 6k or so. This is totally experimental.


Brad

I simply unwound wire and stopped at a certain point that I thought was "enough". It happened to measure 5.42k. I put it back in the middle pickup and it sounds pretty good. What's interesting is that the SDS-1 as currently advertised on DiMarzio's website has adjustable polepieces but mine has fixed staggered polepieces.

Here are a couple samples I recorded in my garage on an H2 this afternoon. I think it gets a very 70's tone which is nice. I would probably sound pretty sweet in the middle position on a Strat.

http://www.archive.org/details/UnwoundD ... s-1Samples

Thanks,
Jim

Jim, how does it compare to half a Super 2?

I don't know since it's in the neck position and I haven't used a Super II in the neck to compare it with. It sounds way better than before though (for a neck position pickup).

Jim

Jim,

that sounds great actually. Knowing what they sound like in the neck position, I'd say that's a real improvement.

Brad

Thanks for the inspiration to do it Brad. I wouldn't have even thought about it without your suggestion.

Jim

Here is a site that duplicates classic pickups, In case you want that 57 strat sound.

http://leosounds.de/index_en.html