Slammer Blues Pickup Questions...
bja...@iwaynet.net
blues guitar. Bottleneck blues guitar. I got a couple of resonator
guitars but wanted a more electric sound as well.
So I picked up this Hamer Slammer used axe with a Floyd Rose Trem. It's
kind of beat up and dirty, but was cheap and I figured the perfect
thing to experiment with. First thing was I tuned it open E tuning. And
the Floyd Rose raised way up from the tension. So I added another
spring and it was OK. But tone with the slide was rather insipid, so I
got a set of heavy gauge XL drop tuning strings. (.013-.056; originals
were .008-.041) But the tension was WAY to big for the Floyd even with
springs in all the holes. So in the end I used the original strings
with the top and bottom strings only in the heavy gauge. This works
well! Lots of guts on the bass tone of the low string and yet the high
string (where most of the slide stuff is anyway) just sings. With the
Floyd filled with springs it lies level. All this is great progress and
I love the electric sound and tone of this setup. The clerk at the
store where I bought this clued me in to using your wrist on the tuning
screws of the Floyd to get trem. This is not a bad blues axe.
BUT. There seems to be a pickup question. The guitar has the classic
neck dual open coil humbucker/center single coil/Bridge dual open coil
humbucker setup with a 5 way switch.
Well the neck humbucker sounds pretty good to me. But the middle single
coil, while having a nice clear single coil tone is WAY weak and you
have to turn up the volume when you switch to it. Is this normal? The
bridge PU has a very thin and nasty tone. The pickups are all kind of
dirty and some seem to be sort of tilted at nasty angles. I think this
needs some kind of PU rework here. That's OK. I mean the whole purpose
of this cheap axe is learning and experiments. But my question here is
what kinds of PUs should I be looking at for electric blues. The Neck
double seems nice but the rest rather suck. I'm wondering if maybe I
should grab some replacement PUs like say alnico open coils. Or maybe I
could just pull them all off and put on some covered humbuckers and
forget the middle single coil jobbie. What kind of pickups do you guys
think would be the ones for a blues sound? I'm hoping you guys can
kind of point me in the right direction so I won't have to spend more
trying pickups than I spent on the whole guitar!
Benj
bja...@iwaynet.net
bja...@iwaynet.net wrote:
<snip>
> What kind of pickups do you guys
> think would be the ones for a blues sound? I'm hoping you guys can
> kind of point me in the right direction so I won't have to spend more
> trying pickups than I spent on the whole guitar!
>
> Benj
Hmmm. Zero responses. I wonder what I said to piss them off?
Grabs new guitar.
<FONK!>
Deposits it in shit can.
Grabs bass and begins to practice some scales.
Benj
Note to Self: Next time be sure to only ask a question like: "I can
still hear the drummer! How can I make my amp louder?" or "Is Guncho
really in love with himself?"
Thad
>
> Hmmm. Zero responses. I wonder what I said to piss them off?
"Bass player".
--
Thad
Thad
>
> Hmmm. Zero responses. I wonder what I said to piss them off?
"Bass player".
--
Thad
Thad
>
> Hmmm. Zero responses. I wonder what I said to piss them off?
"Bass player".
--
Thad
Chris
afew years ago I bought a strat, with all single-coils. By comparison, the
strat sounded very weak.
It could be your perception, if you're used to playing with different
sounds, or it could just be the pickups need adjustment, or you could need
some new ones. If you can, either try and test the guitar out with
alternate pickups, or see if you might borrow someone else's guitar in a
similar configuration. Single-coils always sound weaker to me, but that's
because they produce tones on a different level than what I'm used to.
VampiressX
So good you had to say it thrice.
:)
Thad
I always laughed and pointed when that happened to others....
Karma is a bitch.
:-/
I wonder what caused it?
--
Thad
VampiressX
Dunno but try upgrading to the latest version at least. T'bird 1.0.7 is
quite old you realise.
Benj
<SNORT!>
:-)
Benj
bja...@iwaynet.net
Thanks for the advice Chris! You are right it could just be my
perception not being familiar with the various pickup sounds, but while
everything on this guitar seems to work pretty well, the pickups do
sound wierd to me. There is a 5 way switch (neck/ neck+middle/ Middle/
Middle+bridge/ Bridge). The neck and bridge are humbuckers (dual open
coil) and the center is a single coil. To my ears the neck pickup is
VERY loud. It has a big full killer sound. When you add the center pup,
the volume seems to drop considerably. The single coil alone seems
quite a bit weaker and thinner sounding. I sort of expected a single
coil to be lower output than the humbucker and it is closer to the
bridge making it sound thinner, but man, you REALLY have to turn up the
volume to match the neck pup volume! Is that the common thing? I sort
of figured that the output level of all the various configurations
should sort of be the same. And if you keep going and switch to the
bridge humbucker that has a low output too. So the whole effect
switching from neck to bridge in the 5 positons is the neck is quite
loud and nice, and then all the rest are sort of weak and thin sounding
although there is a tendency toward a thinner, higher sound as you'd
expect going toward the bridge. I'm kind of thinking something may be
defective here and I may need to get some new pickups. You're right, I
think a trip back to the used guitar store to try a few others for
comparison is in order!
Thanks again. Its always a help to hear from someone who knows how
things are supposed to sound!
Benj
(Who loves the Floyd Rose Trem even though it is a pain in the butt for
tuning and string changes)