Hb-4s

[Simon Barden]

That bridge pickup must sound pretty harsh and overly trebbly that close to the bridge. A shame they didn’t install it just a bit further away for a more balanced sound. The Harmony H59 I restored had a pickup in the same position and it was by far the worst sounding of the three pickups on it.

[Rabbit]

That bridge pickup must sound pretty harsh and overly trebbly that close to the bridge. A shame they didn’t install it just a bit further away for a more balanced sound. The Harmony H59 I restored had a pickup in the same position and it was by far the worst sounding of the three pickups on it.

You've done it now Simon. The smoke alarms are going off as my brain has just gone "poof". I always knew that the sound from bridge and neck pickups were different, but I never realy knew why, or gave it much thought. Your comment about "trebbly" suddenly made something click. It would make sense there would be that effect. The string doesn't move much at the bridge compared to the neck, so peak to peak distance is smaller, but frequency is higher. It's a good things the kit has the pickup a bit further away, but still kinda close. Would the distance between the two cores of the coils in the humbuckers make the sound more balanced in the bridge position?

[Simon Barden]

You need to visualise the harmonics of a string vibrating. Plenty of diagrams and videos online. The fundamental vibration has its peak amplitude in the middle of the string, with almost no movement at the very ends. The second harmonic has two amplitude peaks at 1/4 and 3/4 distance along the neck, so whilst the movement near the ends is greater, it’s still relatively small. Third harmonic has amplitude peaks at 1/6, 1/2 and 5/6 distance. Fourth harmonic at 1/8, 3/8, 5/8 and 7/8.

So as the harmonics go up, the first amplitude peak moves nearer and nearer to the bridge. So a pickup right by the bridge picks up very little of the low harmonics, as the string vibration amplitude at that point is very small, and a larger proportion of the higher harmonics, as their amplitude is relatively greater at that point. So right by the bridge the sound is very bright with almost no bass to it. The further the pickup is away from the bridge, the more of the lower harmonics it picks up relative to the upper harmonics and the more bassy it sounds.

The string amplitude generally a lot greater at the neck pickup position, so will generate more output from the pickup, which is why bridge pickups normally have more coil winds and a larger DCR value than neck pickups, in order to help get similar outputs (also adjustable by pickup distance from the strings)

The string length changes every time you fret at a different position, so those amplitude peak positions also change with each fret, Which us why there’s no single optimal position for pickup output.

A single coil pickup will sense string movement strongly over maybe 1cm of string length, and more weakly over say another 5mm either side of that. So even if there is a harmonic node (with no string vibration) right by the pickup, it will still sense some string vibration of that harmonic.

A humbucker with its two coils will sense overall over a much wider length of string vibration, so will get a much different mix of string harmonics. But you also get partial phase cancellations occurring at higher frequencies because of the separated coil positions, where for wavelengths shorter than the distance between the coils, you can get the string moving in one direction over one coil and in the opposite direction over the other coil. So you get partial or even total phase cancelation of some higher harmonics, resulting in less treble in the pickup sound. The resonant peak of a humbucker is also at a lower frequency than that of a typical single coil due to higher inductance and DCR values, which is another reason why humbuckers have a thicker sound with less treble and clarity than single coils.

[fender3x]

It's pretty battered now, wasn't in great condition when I bought it nearly 30 years ago and it was my main gigging guitar for most of that time. It's largely retired now.

You and I have a different definition of "battered". Sweet guitar and it looks like it's in great shape.

[c0ffinspire89]

I still need to finish the body, but I scraped the binding this weekend and it really pop now! I scraped a little into some of the stain, so I touched that up, which now requires more scraping. I said a few choice four letter words, but overall it won't be much more work, and scraping is oddly soothing for me.




The new pickups came in a couple of days ago. I can't wait to get them hooked up, but that still a ways away at this point. As I thought, the pickups are long enough, but not as wide as the pickup ring, so some work is needed there. I also noticed that when I try to tighten the mounting screws, the screws slip and the pickup ends up even with the ring. Could that be because there is so much movement between the ring and the pickup where they don't touch, so it causes the screws to slip?

My thought was to either make a totally new pickup ring using 3-ply black pickguard material, or just add white pearloid pickup material on top of the existing pickup ring that fits the dimensions of the pickup and shares the same mounting screw holes? This will be my first time making pickup rings, so I wanted to ask before just jumping in. Thanks everyone!

[c0ffinspire89]

Another first for me on this build is adding a veneer to the headstock. I didn't have any luck finding any spalted maple veneers, but I got my hands on some beautiful ebony. My plan is to darken it to match the rest of the neck/headstock. I have a questions about the veneer though. It's just short of 3.5mm thick, which seems thick to me. What would be a good thickness to aim for? The posts on the tuners are not very tall, so I don't want to add much more density to the headstock. Below are a couple pictures for reference, thanks in advance for any advice!

[Simon Barden]

You really want the thin veneer, that’s between 0.6 and 0.8mm thick. 3.5mm is far too thick without sanding most of it away to that sort of thickness or you will have trouble with tuner post height. Adding a 0.8mm fibreboard veneer with paint and clear coat on top on my two SG and my ES-1 builds only left the bare minimum of post below the hole showing with the vintage Kluson tuners I fitted on them, barely enough to get 2 wraps on my bottom E strings.

If you can’t find anything thinner that’s suitable, then I’d stick the ebony on and after clamping and leaving overnight, trim it back to the headstock shape and then sand it down until it is the right thickness. I think it will be much easier to sand in place than on its own as a sheet.

[c0ffinspire89]

Thanks for the advice Simon! That was my thought as well, that it was way too thick. I recently bought a small hand plane, that may work better than sanding. My thought, if I get the courage to do so, is to add a bevel to the edge of the veneer. Would that be best done while it is still thick, and then sand/plane down once the bevel is created?

I also appreciate the advice on gluing it first, the only other approach I could think was from Crimson Guitars to attach masking tape to my table and back of the veneer, then super glue to tape together. I somehow managed to get a weekend off work, so I hope to make some real headway and hopefully be able to attach the neck and body next week!

[DarkMark]

For an alternative veneer gluing method, post 126 on page 13 of my 3rd build (GR-1SF) in the link below worked well for me.

[c0ffinspire89]

Thanks DarkMark for the advice! Luckily, due to some dowel gluing errors on my part, there was enough of a divot already created to use as a guide for the marks like you showed in your previous build diary. Got it all set and glued in.

I have added some pictures of my current status on the neck. After a fit test on the neck to see how the black looks, I learned I wasn't as crazy about the front headstock being black as I thought I would be. I think it would look better if it matched the color of the front of the body, but I can live with it. To help add some color, I bought a brass nut and cut a new truss rod cover out of pearloid material to contrast the black headstock and match the pickguard/control panel. There is a black spot on the front that looks different than the rest, but I think that should go away with another coat or two.

On the backside you can still see the dowels that I used to plug the original tuner holes, but I took a picture with the new tuners in place to show it's not quite as obvious once they're in place. Sorry for the bad picture taking, my phone is terrible and I was really tired haha.