Quick review of Fralin Steel-Poled 42 pickups for Strat/ACME Tone Shaper
RichL
yesterday, and I installed them in my Highway One Strat today.
What they are: The Fralin Steel-Poled 42s are Strat-style pickups with
adjustable pole pieces. 42 refers to the gauge of wire used in the pickups
(they also make 43s which are higher resistance). Because of the pole
pieces, they're supposed to have a P90-like character (the 43s much more so
than the 42s).
The ACME tone shaper is a pre-made assembly of circuit boards and a whole
bunch of dip switches, mounted on a Strat pickguard and made to hold
Strat-style pickups. I had ACME mount the Fralin pickups in the tone shaper
assembly. All I had to do was snip the ground and jack wires from the
existing pickguard assembly and slip the wires into spring-loaded clips on
the tone shaper, mount the new pickup onto the guitar, and put the strings
back on. It took about 25 minutes all told.
I set the switches to (a) select a 0.033 uf tone cap; (b) engage the volume
kit (treble bleed cap + resistor), (c) select an option that allows me to
use the second tone control (the one nearest the jack) as a "blend" control.
With this, I can blend the neck pickup in with bridge or middle or both, or
blend the bridge pickup with neck or middle or both.
What I recorded: Before I swapped the pickups, I recorded a set of brief
clips, starting with the bridge pickup and working my way up the 5-position
pickup switch. Then after I installed the new assembly, I recorded another
set of clips (similar to the first set). Finally, I recorded some stuff
using the blend, first gradually blending bridge pickup into neck pickup,
arriving at something that sounds like a Tele on the middle position; then I
blended the neck pickup into bridge + middle, winding up at the end with all
three pickups engaged.
So here we go. Starting with the bridge position, first the old pickup,
then the new. Then bridge + middle, first old, then new. Repeat all the
way up to neck pickup by itself, first old, then new. Finally the two
blending clips described above.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=787260&songID=8929745
I'm a big fan of that bridge pickup, but yeah, it's not very "Stratty". The
middle by itself and the middle + neck sound "Stratty" to me but with a
little more beef to them. Neck alone is less "Stratty". Overall, I like
very much! Next time I re-string, I'll swap that blend option for another
option which allows neck + middle or bridge + middle in series (in addition
to the usual parallel).
Note: I did *not* adjust pickup heights or fiddle with the individual pole
pieces yet. This is right out of the box.
Tony D. may be interested in this.
RichL
news:Td-dnVLj8ZEnfzbW...@supernews.com...
Should have mentioned....the amp is a Fender Blues Jr., gain all the way up,
master on 3. No effects, no "mud switch". Miked with SM-57.
Tony Done
Sure am, and like the difference I hear. It sounds like a strat/P90/strat
difference as far as I can tell; the Lollar Chicago has a similar property
but has the disadvantage of not being a standard size. But the clean sounds
would interest me more?
Tony D
RichL
news:GsYqn.15177$pv....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
OK, I'll try to record some strictly clean stuff tonight. Obviously, I
won't be able to do the before/after comparison.
Squier
thanks for the review and taking the time to type the very good info
about these pups. I am also taking the review not only as the pups
but how the pups sound with .033 tone cap and the ACME wired pickguard.
(actually 2 friends/bandmates had wired pickguards done from ACME when
they were in Bear, Delaware in a little shoop there -- they have since
moved to Flordia (or I think so anyways). They always did a great job.
Are there 250k pots in there or some other values ?
Also - nice clips! thanks again for this excellent review w/clips.
I think those steel poles have more balls then the usual alnico singles.
Not as sweet or chimey - but for live play they would probably hold up
better and cut better with a variety of gain/effects... etc.
RS
wrote:
>What they are: The Fralin Steel-Poled 42s are Strat-style pickups with
>adjustable pole pieces. 42 refers to the gauge of wire used in the pickups
>(they also make 43s which are higher resistance). Because of the pole
>pieces, they're supposed to have a P90-like character (the 43s much more so
>than the 42s).
Thanks for the review and clips, Rich. I've never had a chance to play
with those, so the clips were especially helpful.
I'm surprised at how different the 42's are, compared to normal strat
pickups. I'd expect the 43's to be a bit darker, but there was a
pronounced difference with the 42's. If all other settings were the
same, I'm not sure I'd like those for mid/front positions, since I
usually look for lighter Hendrix-y response from those positions. I
assume that in person the response may be a huge factor though.
The bridge position is the one that has me interested--very P90-ish in
your clips. But do you think that it's too far from trad strat pickup
sound to be used just in the bridge?
RichL
news:260320101453199307%squ...@strats.net...
They're 250s. They seem to match up well with the pickups.
> Also - nice clips! thanks again for this excellent review w/clips.
> I think those steel poles have more balls then the usual alnico singles.
> Not as sweet or chimey - but for live play they would probably hold up
> better and cut better with a variety of gain/effects... etc.
I do like the sounds, I'm going to fire up the BJ and play some clean stuff
tonight. More clips if things go well. I decided I really don't like Strat
bridge pickups, this one is killer though. I suppose a bucker would do but
I've got other guitars with buckers, no point in putting one on a Strat.
RichL
news:ns8qq5thb7p0hve75...@4ax.com...
Like I said, I didn't adjust the pickup heights or pole pieces at all, just
installed it and played it.
I also left the amp settings the same as I had them, I had more-or-less
dialed it in for the standard Strat pickups before I recorded the clips with
the old pickups. So there may be some tweaking to be done here.
Neck + middle didn't sound THAT different between the two sets, which I'm
happy about because that's one of the few settings that I liked with the old
pickups. Neck alone is a bit too midrangey for my tastes. If I get some
time tonight, I'll try fooling with heights etc. & see what comes out of
that. But I don't wanna mess with that bridge pickup too much, to me that
one's great.
Fralin says the bridge pickup in that steel-poled 42 set is 7 K. That's not
too different from a Standard strat bridge pickup resistance, so I assume
you'd still do OK swapping one in there and leaving the stock pickups in the
middle and neck positions.... In fact, thinking about it today, I was
tempted to do just that. But I want to spend more time dialing everything
in before I do anything too rash :-)
Tony Done
From what I can tell the bridge pickup is similar in sound to the Lollar
Chicago, also a steel pole with powerful ceramics and a bit less than 7K ohm
resistance. The coil is more P90 shape on the Chicago, but the big
difference is that the magnets are glued to a steel plate in the pole
up/down direction (not pole in/out as in a P90), so that the steel plate
forms one big N pole. I don't know how much difference that makes to tone,
but the output is very high for the coil size.
Tony D
RichL
Interestingly, the output on the 42s was lower than that of the stock
pickups; I had to boost those clips a bit to make them have the same volume
as that of the stock pickups. Then again, as I said, I didn't tweak the
pickup heights and I think the tops of the pickups are sitting closer to the
pickguard than they are on the old set.
RS
wrote:
Actually, your test, leaving controls set the same, would be more
representative of what I was looking for. I was wondering if a '42
would work well in the bridge spot, with regular strat pickups in the
middle and neck positions.
>Neck + middle didn't sound THAT different between the two sets, which I'm
>happy about because that's one of the few settings that I liked with the old
>pickups.
Really? I'll have to recheck the clip then, since I thought that all
positions sounded a lot darker with the 42's. But there was something
about the sound of the bridge pickup that I'd like to pursue.
> Neck alone is a bit too midrangey for my tastes. If I get some
>time tonight, I'll try fooling with heights etc. & see what comes out of
>that. But I don't wanna mess with that bridge pickup too much, to me that
>one's great.
>
>Fralin says the bridge pickup in that steel-poled 42 set is 7 K. That's not
>too different from a Standard strat bridge pickup resistance, so I assume
>you'd still do OK swapping one in there and leaving the stock pickups in the
>middle and neck positions....
I was concerned more about difference in tone rather than volume. I
thought the steel-pole would be a bit louder though.
>In fact, thinking about it today, I was
>tempted to do just that. But I want to spend more time dialing everything
>in before I do anything too rash :-)
Please let me know if you do that. Thanks again for the comments. I've
always wondered about those pickups, but never got around to ordering
them. I thought it might be good to set up a strat-like guitar that's
somewhere between regular strat and bucker turf. I did finally get a
set of Harmonic Design Z90's (bucker-sized), but haven't got a chance
to install them yet. Maybe the SP-42's are a better way to go, given
that I could get the middle pickup in play for notch positions 2 and
4.
Squier
yep. the thing (to me) is generally (maybe an over generalization)
is that Les Paul / SG players have a time of it when it comes to getting
a good neck (rhythm) pickup without mud or flub.
for Strat players - it's just the opposite. it's that bridge pickup
that's hard to get dialed in for good sounds (well ok.. regular alnico 6k
single coils at the bridge make for excellent old R&B and oldies stuff
and some funk stuff -
but for anything else it's usually way too trebly - at least for my ears)
heh. sometimes I'm happiest just playing a nice single neck position on
my Strats and really don't want to switch to any other pup.
The single coil neck pup sound on a Strat is worth the price of admission alone.
Any other pup selections that work well are icing on the cake (imho)
good luck with your new setup. Strats are cool!