Changes to one of my 2020 builds

I posted awhile ago about a neck I finishing for one of my LP-style guitars (I had an issue with the stain bleeding onto the binding when I applied the clear).

Well, I overcame that and got the clear all sprayed 3-1/2 weeks ago. Last week did a fret level, got it installed and set up (it's a screw-fixed neck).

I'm definitely liking the new neck compared to the previous. It was always just a tad too narrow to my liking. I am always amazed how much difference 1mm here or there can make with how a neck feels.

The new one is only 1mm wider at the nut (43mm) and the taper is only .5mm wider at the 12th, but it's chalk and cheese in how it feels. I think the thickness is [just] marginally deeper too. (I can't find my pre-finish measurements, and it's hard to re-measure with the strings on).

Oh, neck info: Maple neck; Purpleheart fretboard; 12" R; Single ply binding on fb, 4-ply on headstock; Stain is a blend of FW Golden Teak and Old Baltic; Clear coat is satin poly. (FYI: this was a Haze brand neck off of eBay for $50)

The other change I made was putting in a pair of Warman Firebuckers (low output mini-HB's).
They sound great. I don't know how they compare to the vintage Firebird mini's, but I don't really care :D.
I've become a major fan on mini HB's. I got them in 3 guitars now!

Anyway, though I'd share some pics of the new & improved model:

Attachment 41781 Attachment 41782 Attachment 41783

Thanks for looking!

Nice. The neck looks really good for $50.

Thanks Trevor.
Yes, I was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t come with a nut, but I would have changed it to the TUSQ one anyway.
The frets required the typical end dressing etc but they were quite good when it came to levelling them. Didn’t take a lot of work.

The first thing I check, especially with budget necks, is the truss rod and this one (dual action) had no issues at all.
There were (are) some micro fissures in the headstock binding that I didn’t become aware of until the black stain was applied, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. It’s not too horrible, so I can live with it.

Such a beautiful guitar!
Where did you get the body from?
And if you don't mind me asking, what makes mini hb's better than hb's to you?

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Originally Posted by RocknRolf

Such a beautiful guitar!
Where did you get the body from?
And if you don't mind me asking, what makes mini hb's better than hb's to you?

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Thanks!

The body is a totally stripped, heavily modified Epiphone LP Special II. Mahogany body is finished in acrylic lacquer.

Mini HB's are brighter than full size. Many describe them as between a HB and a single coil, which I think is good analogy.

I play SC's 98% of the time, so when I switch to a HB guitar, I typically find them too dark without totally readjusting the amp EQ (especially the neck pickup). I find the mini's closer to my SC tone so usually just a little bump in treble is all I need. Sometimes I'm happy with no tweaking at all.

Before anyone says it, I know there are a number of ways to combat the switching back & forth etc, but I'm just speaking in a general sense about my attraction to mini HB's.

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Originally Posted by McCreed

Thanks!

The body is a totally stripped, heavily modified Epiphone LP Special II. Mahogany body is finished in acrylic lacquer.

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Cool haha, unfortunately there are not too many lefty's in Aus to pickup, otherwise it could be a nice platform to start from.
Was there a problem with the neck, or did you change the neck because as you said "too narrow" for your liking?

Thanks for explaining the mini hb's.

Nice work, Mick.

Your Warman pickups are a different construction to Firebird pickups, so are really standard mini-humbuckers. Not quite sure why Warman added a Firebird reference in the name, apart from attention drawing. If they are made like the Gibson/Epiphone mini-humbuckers, then you'll have a bar magnet on the base, a row of screw slugs and a steel bar for the other pole. A normal humbucker would have individual steel slugs instead of the steel bar.

The Firebird pickup has two bar magnets on their sides 'blade' style, which the coils are wrapped around so they are a very different construction indeed.

In terms of sound, the traditional Firebird pickups are a closer to a single-coil sound than mini-humbuckers, though obviously the minis are a lot brighter than full-sized humbuckers.

I recently changed the stock Gibson ceramic pickups on my Firebird, which were over-bright and piercing, for some Oil City 'Winterizer' alnico V units, which sound a lot nicer indeed. I generally find that ceramic pickups don't do subtle very well. Fine for very distorted sounds, but sound pretty flat on clean and edge of break-up sounds.

Forgot to say as intended that I think the neck is at least 70% of a guitar. It's the part you interact with the most and if it doesn't feel right, then you simply don't want to play it. If it is just right, then you don't want to put it down.

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Originally Posted by RocknRolf

Cool haha, unfortunately there are not too many lefty's in Aus to pickup, otherwise it could be a nice platform to start from.
Was there a problem with the neck, or did you change the neck because as you said "too narrow" for your liking?

Thanks for explaining the mini hb's.

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Yeah, the more I played it, the more it just didn't feel right. Mainly to narrow at the first 3 frets. I remeasured the nut width today and it was actually a smidge under 42mm. (41.72mm to be exact!)
Which was probably my own fault because I stripped the original finish and must have sanded more down than I should have.

Maybe I'll cut a new nut for it and use it for a 4-string Cigar Box Guitar!

Thanks Simon.
I missed your post because I hadn't refreshed the page before writing my last post.

I agree with you about the neck being a real make or break component (sometimes literally!).

The Warmans are actually the Firebucker II's which have the adjustable pole pieces. The regular Firebuckers are solid covers, but have no idea if the internal construction is the same or different as the II's or how similar/dissimilar to the FB ones they are.

These are also ceramic which I'm generally not a fan of, but since Warman posts both the DCR and the Inductance (6.6k and 3.1H), I had at least some idea of what to expect in regard to "brightness". (I wish more pickup manufacturers would do this)
They also claim that they use "high quality ceramic magnets" which is allegedly suppose to make for better tone. May just be marketing speak, I don't know.

In the end, I'm very pleased with how they sound both clean and with overdrive.

From the Warman site, "Concealed beneath the case are two coils wrapped around carbon steel blades with a powerful ceramic magnet". So the Firebuckers are a blade-style humbucker and not of 'true' Firebird construction. I'd imagine they'd probably sound quite similar to your Firebucker II pickups.

The trem 'ceramic magnet' conceals a whole range of different formula magnets. Unlike alnico, which has the numbering system (which itself has irregularities and only gets you to a rough ball-park area), I'd imagine there are so many different compositions of ceramic/ferrite magnet that a numbering system would be too complicated, so you'd have to go right back to the manufacturer's magnetic property tables for that particular type of magnet. But it's rare you'll ever see those as an end-user. And you normally don't need to know either. "High-quality' is just marketing speak IMO. The qualities you want are dependent upon the application, so what may be a good magnet for one job is inappropriate for another. But the magnet quality is the same.

Thanks for the ceramic magnet remarks. That all makes sense.
I didn't know if their use of the word "quality" was more to do with consistency of things like magnet materials and gauss.

I should say that the "high quality ceramic magnets" line originated in a reply email from Warman when I contacted them with some questions. It was not in any of their promotional literature that I have seen.

I suppose you could always have a very non-homogenous mix of materials with an uneven magnetic output, but it's going to be quite hard to do.

Reading about it, a lot of magnets are made by first melting the components to form an alloy bar or strip. This then gets crushed into a fine powder, from which the magnets are then pressed and sintered (so first make your material and then convert it into a form that makes it easy to make different shaped magnets).

So I'm not sure how you'd really get a poor quality magnet, especially a ceramic/ferrite one, which is known to have good magnetism retaining properties. You could obviously come up with a mixture that easily lost its magnetism, but that's not the sort of stuff standard guitar magnets are made from.

Well, I accidentally ordered a pair of gold firebuckers for a couple of projects, based on your results, Mick. So there's that.

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@ Simon - I know nothing about the manufacture of magnets. I just presumed that there would be good and bad practises or materials affecting the outcomes.

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Originally Posted by dozymuppet

Well, I accidentally ordered a pair of gold firebuckers for a couple of projects, based on your results, Mick. So there's that.

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Oops! Sorry!
Hopefully you like them as much as I do or I'll feel like a knob...

Did you get the originals or the II's?
I ordered mine back in July, and they took 20 days from the UK to Brisbane.

I’m only a couple of web page reads ahead of you on magnet manufacture!

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Originally Posted by McCreed

Did you get the originals or the II's?
I ordered mine back in July, and they took 20 days from the UK to Brisbane.

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I ordered the IIs. I wanted something gold for my TL-1 project, and that was the only option. I'll only be using the neck pickup for that project (I'll save the bridge for some indeterminate future project).

20 days sounds reasonable in this day and age. Thanks for the heads up.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

I’m only a couple of web page reads ahead of you on magnet manufacture!

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Hah! I've been there before.
I've actually learnt a lot by researching questions posted by others that I didn't know the answer to.

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Originally Posted by dozymuppet

I ordered the IIs. I wanted something gold for my TL-1 project, and that was the only option. I'll only be using the neck pickup for that project (I'll save the bridge for some indeterminate future project).

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You can always fit the bridge pickup in the neck if you want a hotter output. I have a friend who fits bridge position SD P-Rails in the neck of all his guitars as he prefers the sound (there are different powerful pickups in the bridge so no output mismatches).

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Originally Posted by McCreed

Hah! I've been there before.
I've actually learnt a lot by researching questions posted by others that I didn't know the answer to.

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I do it all the time!

I should have written that sentence to include:

I've actually learnt a lot by researching questions posted by others that I didn't know the answer to. (which is a lot!)

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

You can always fit the bridge pickup in the neck if you want a hotter output. I have a friend who fits bridge position SD P-Rails in the neck of all his guitars as he prefers the sound (there are different powerful pickups in the bridge so no output mismatches).

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I suppose, but what would I do with the neck pickup then?

(Sorry not sorry for derailing the thread, Mick)

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You could either use it as a neck pickup in another guitar, or as a less powerful bridge pickup, either on its own or maybe with a single coil neck pickup. Just throwing ideas out.

You don't have to use a 'neck' pickup in the neck position or a 'bridge' pickup in the bridge position just because they are labelled that way. When using a pair of them it makes sense to, but if mixing with other pickups, you can select the ones that are most suitable or complement each other. Unless they are a set that maybe has Alnico II in the neck and alnico V in the bridge, then normally the only difference is that the bridge coil/coils will have a few hundred more turns of wire on them for more output.

The only real thing to look out for if you do decide to mix and match, is that some neck pickups are built with a narrower pole spacing than the bridge pickup. It's not that common, especially on humbuckers, but it can happen.

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When using a pair of them it makes sense to, but if mixing with other pickups, you can select the ones that are most suitable or complement each other. Unless they are a set that maybe has Alnico II in the neck and alnico V in the bridge...

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I've seen threads on other forums where people prefer their humbuckers with the V in the neck and II in the bridge. I've never tried it, but it just demonstrates how how bending the rules sometimes isn't necessarily the wrong thing!

Well I'm matching the Firebucker with a T-rail Blazer (Tele type super hot rail bridge humbucker), so that's probably exotic enough for the project in mind.

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With a very powerful bridge pickup, putting the Firebucker II bridge pickup in the neck position would probably be a better match for output. There’s nothing to stop you trying both out.

Just for interest, I measured the ceramic Gibson pickups I took off the Firebird with my LCR meter. Neck was 15.9k and 3.53H, and neck was 24.9k and 4.96H.

A lot of that resistance is down to using thin wire and I don't know what size wire they used. But I'd guess 44AWG for the bridge as this still equates to around a 14.9k pickup with 42AWG wire. Neck could be 43AWG (12k 42AWG pickup equivalent) or 44AWG (9.5k 42AWG pickup equivalent). Definitely very high output pickup territory. Subtle they ain’t.

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Definitely very high output pickup territory. Subtle they 'aint.

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Wow, those would really push the amp!

Very interesting.

Warman's website says both neck and bridge have the same output, but different pole spacing. If that's true then I don't think I need to think about it too much. (Can you verify, Mick?)

However, their output is 6.6k, vs 13.6k for the T-rail. Might be too imbalanced now that I look at it closer.

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Warman's website says both neck and bridge have the same output, but different pole spacing.

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Yes, that is true of the Firebucker II's. The regular Firebuckers have no pole pieces as they are dual blades (rails) under the solid covers.

I was trying to find some info on a pickup I bought and ran across these pages.

http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/Pi...evaluation.htm

http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/Al...ickupology.htm

It's interesting to note that while the early Fender pickups used alnico magnets, virtually all of the pickups that Leo Fender designs for G&L used ceramic magnets. I think that most of the aftermarket blade pups deigned by Bill Lawrence also used ceramic magnets.

Another similarity that I have noticed between my G&L "MFD" pickups and my Bill Lawrence pups is that they have relatively low ohms, but very high output.

My BL pickup had low enough ohms readings that it prompted me to find the specs. Sure enough the ohm and inductance specs were dead on and the output was high IRL.

Bill Lawrence the person used a lot of test equipment to measure some pretty esoteric stuff like current eddies (at least that seems esoteric to me). From what I've heard about Leo Fender, he used a lot of trial and error for position of the pickup as well as composition. As far as I know though Leo Fender didn't leave a lot of writing about his his method.

FWIW, I have come to think that, for an ordinary person who is not an EE, the most reliable way of judging output and how will pick up is going to sound is to listen to the pickup in a guitar similar to the one you want to put it in, where the player is using a style that something you might use too. I've had reasonable luck selecting pickups listening to recordings on YouTube. Playing a guitar in a store that has the pickups you like is even better, probably, but harder to find with a lot of the aftermarket brands. The one mistake I've made in buying pickups, probably could have been avoided by listening to a few recordings. I bought a set of DiMarzio J's some years ago mostly because they got good reviews. When I went back to YouTube and really listened to basses that had them installed, I could hear pretty much exactly what I didn't like about them. That's not to say they're bad, it's just to say they were not my cup of tea, and I could hear that in the recordings.

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It's interesting to note that while the early Fender pickups used alnico magnets, virtually all of the pickups that Leo Fender designs for G&L used ceramic magnets. I think that most of the aftermarket blade pups deigned by Bill Lawrence also used ceramic magnets.

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I believe Lace Sensors (and Lace pickup in general) use ceramic magnets as well. There seem to two camps with Lace: love 'em, or hate 'em. I used Sensors for quite a while and and was very happy with them. Then I tried some Fender Vintage Noiseless (designed by BL actually) and preferred those to the LS.

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Another similarity that I have noticed between my G&L "MFD" pickups and my Bill Lawrence pups is that they have relatively low ohms, but very high output.

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I had a set of G&L MFD's from a S-500 (they actually "vintage" :p from around '82) the DCR of those were 4.5k Ω and were the loudest pickups I've ever owned. However, as my hearing (and playing) matured, I found them a bit too bright without re-EQ-ing the amp when switching guitars back & forth.

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...I have come to think that, for an ordinary person who is not an EE, the most reliable way of judging output and how will pick up is going to sound is to listen to the pickup in a guitar similar to the one you want to put it in, where the player is using a style that something you might use too.

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One of my biggest pet peeves with demo videos, is when all you want to hear is what the pickups sound like and the knobhead doing the video is just playing through an amp with death metal-like distortion! :mad: Aaaarrrghhhh!!!

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Originally Posted by McCreed

I had a set of G&L MFD's from a S-500 (they actually "vintage" :p from around '82) the DCR of those were 4.5k Ω and were the loudest pickups I've ever owned. However, as my hearing (and playing) matured, I found them a bit too bright without re-EQ-ing the amp when switching guitars back & forth.

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I like my MFD pickups, but they are on a bass. They came stock with PTB tone controls. They are a bit too bright *and* a bit too bottom heavy on their own, but sound best in pretty much every setting with the T and B tone controls backed off a bit. These are the only pickups I have ever had that produce too much boom on the low end, but it's easy to EQ out on the bass. On the other hand, you can dial in a huge range of tone by switching pickups and coils which makes up for it I figure.

The only bass pups I've had that really seemed to have too much top end are Dano lipstick tubes...which are not strictly a bass pup, I know. These have alnico bar magnets, and are not particularly hot, but they have a LOT of top end even with 100K volume pots.

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One of my biggest pet peeves with demo videos, is when all you want to hear is what the pickups sound like and the knobhead doing the video is just playing through an amp with death metal-like distortion! :mad: Aaaarrrghhhh!!!

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Even some OEM vids are like that. That's fine for a bit of the vid, nuts for anything not called "super distortion" at the very least. Some guys even do that with bass pickups. Why?!? I always resent this most when I have to listen to a couple of Youtube ads first.

Mick, are you using 250 or 500k pots with the Firebuckers?

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500k's dozy.