Pickup Tweaking at Seymour Duncan Forum

[WGTP]

Think about what your feeding your distortions.   I'm re-posting this from another thread for those interested in tonal enlightenment.  At the bottom is a link as an example. 

The boys at the Seymour Duncan Forum have been experimenting with changing the pole pieces in their pickups.  Usually it involves trading Hex and Flat Head screws around.  The Full Shred (my favorite for distortions) and the Screaming Demon have double rows to mess with.  I recently put all flat heads under the plain strings and all hex under the wound strings of my Screaming Demon and really like it.  I seems to make the wound and plain strings sound more similar.  The screws have a more bell like tone and the hex are more focused and brighter.  I suspect that the change in magnetic field/mass/material of the poles cause this effect.  They also saw off the flat head screws that stick down below the pickup up which reduces the mass/inductance and alters the magnetic field.

They have also started mixing coils from different pickups.  The '59/Custom seems to be the most popular

They also have been switching out magnets.  Alnico 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and Ceramic. 

250K, 500K or 1M pots to load the pickups

I have notice at the DiMarzio forum that they add mass in the form of unmagnetized slugs into gaps in the coils from underneath.  This is part of DM dual resonance system and the boys are experimenting with this to alter tone.

Many possibilities for tailoring/tweeking your tone.

If you can find 2 broken pickups usually 1 of the coils still works and you can mix them, if they fit physically.

Be careful it can be as addictive as building stomp boxes.   

http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/showthread.php?t=174444

[paulyy]

I build my own pickups and have had good results on swapping certain thing out to change the tone but the best pickup I made was a one off humbucker for a guitar Luther. I wound the pole side with 42 gauge plain enamel wire and the slug side with 43 gauge plain enamel wire. Both were wound with the same exact amount of turns. The thing screamed. Still had the warm and open tones of a P.A.F but had tons of sustain. Swapping coils is one of the things that can really change the tone next to changing magnets and yes. It can be addictive.

[Schappy]

Buying one pickup like the Seymour Duncan Custom quickly turns into 4 pickups when you consider magnet swaps.

Alnico 2,5,8 all sound good as does a ceramic mag. All depends on what you want but tons of versatility.

[Joe Hart]

They also saw off the flat head screws that stick down below the pickup up which reduces the mass/inductance and alters the magnetic field.

This isn't something that could be easily reversed (so I'm hesitant to try it), so does anyone know what this would do to the tone of the pickup?
-Joe Hart

[zombiwoof]

I remember years ago when Seymour Duncan first came into prominence, he advocated cutting off the part of the polepiece screws that sticks out of the bottom of the pickup.  Of course you'd have to have the poles adjusted to your liking before doing this, but it was supposed to make the pickup sound better in some way that I forget.  I thought of trying that but never did.  But it's another thing that can affect the pickup sound similar to what you're talking about.  And yes you can easily get obsessive about this stuff, as you can with effects, strings, amps, even picks.  I think the main thing to remember is to not let that get in the way of playing your damn guitar!

Al