Is it possible.....

[jdurso]

That my tech installed my Suhr Aldrich pickups backwards or wrong? OK here's what's up....

First off the pickups themselves so pretty amazing as I've posted in another thread BUT.... BUT.... from what i've read and heard, the pickups are suppose to have a very open sound. Now I find the pickup in the neck position sounds very open, very punchy and actually LOUDER than the bridge pickup. I really didn't notice it at first but I only played it for a few hours after getting the pickups put in before I went on a business trip. After I've been back I've been doing a lot of tube experiementing, hence a lot of playing. Now here's what I'm hearing from the bridge: instead of having a nice wide open sound as i expected, it sounds somewhat compressed, especially in the low end. When i hit the low E string it almost sound like I have a compressor infront of the amp and it's actually less loud than the neck pickup, which i've never experienced before in any guitar ever. This compressed sound actually seems to help leads and higher notes, but thats not why i got these pickups.

So is it a bad installation job? Could he have installed them backwards (in the wrong spot... flip flopped)? Or is that just how the bridge pickup sounds? I love the open sound of whatever is in the neck right now and wish the bridge sounded that open. Its almost as if the pickup in the neck is smoother than whats in the bridge and from my experience its always been the other way around. So before i start tearing things apart to see if my assumptions are correct, does this sound feasible?

 

[nomad100hd]

maybe lower the pickup

 

[jdurso]

Yeah i was going to try that. i still think that either something with the installation is wrong or its just the way the pickup sounds. I'm going to bring it to my usually guitar tech sometime this weekend... worst case i have him check out the whole guitar, set it up if need be and throw some fresh strings on.

 

[Turumbar82]

it sounds like the pickup is out of phase

check this place out for a good scientific descprition
http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/pickcomb.htm

"Reversing the coil connections reverses the polarity, and may be necessary on one pickup to allow the standard "in-phase" connections. Your ears are a good guide - if you expect an in-phase sound you should hear a full, slightly nasal sound. If you get a hollow, middley sound with a volume drop, you probably have pickups with opposite polarity, and need to reverse the connections on one pickup to restore normality."

 

[jdurso]

it sounds like the pickup is out of phase

check this place out for a good scientific descprition
http://users.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/pickcomb.htm

"Reversing the coil connections reverses the polarity, and may be necessary on one pickup to allow the standard "in-phase" connections. Your ears are a good guide - if you expect an in-phase sound you should hear a full, slightly nasal sound. If you get a hollow, middley sound with a volume drop, you probably have pickups with opposite polarity, and need to reverse the connections on one pickup to restore normality."

How would i check this other than my ears? Some of the sound descriptions are a little ambiguous or at leats not really what I think I'm hearing. I hear a very compressed sound which i wouldnt call hollow but would say it sounds middley. Almost sounds like somone has chopped off the highs and the lows and i'm getting all mids (again sounds like, there are lows and highs, they're just not very pronounced or dynamic).

I spoke with the Suhr dealer i got the pickups from and he mentioned an easy way to check if they were installed in the wrong cavity (flip-flopped). So i'm going to check that first, but other than using my ear, is there another way to check if the bridge pup is out of phase? Just keep in mind i have no soldering iron and have never wired a pickup in my life.

 

[nomad100hd]

u'll just have to take it in since you lack skills! girl like guys with skills bow staff skills, ect It be that the bridge pickup has a 4 conductor and that is wired out of phase or wrong.

 

[jdurso]

u'll just have to take it in since you lack skills! girl like guys with skills bow staff skills, ect

Haha... yeah I'm wanting to learn but really dont have the time. I knwo sounds like a lame excuse but sometimes i barely have time to play let alone tear apart a guitar and figrue out how to properly wire a pickup. Maybe my company will lay me off, give me a decent severance package this way i can learn all these things in my down time between jobs

It be that the bridge pickup has a 4 conductor and that is wired out of phase or wrong.

I'm going to bring it in... my usually guy John is one of the best guitar techs I've had work on my guitars. he owns his place with his buddy Dennis, one of the best Boogie repair techs on the East Coast. both guys are a huge wealth of knowledge and always get me back my gear in better shape then when i bought it. So I should have been patient and had John do the installation, but thats me being inpatient.

 

[nomad100hd]

well pickups are easy so you should have been okay with who you had do it.

 

[jdurso]

well pickups are easy so you should have been okay with who you had do it.

one would think... but it looked like he had a few new hired hands or apprentices because it was around the holidays and he had about 25-30 guitars going out a day, and to my knowledge he was a one man crew for a while (at least thats what my buddy who goes to him was telling me). He may have pawned the "easy" work on one of his new guys... who knows.

 

[fishyfishfish]

Yeah, have it looked at. Sounds like a simple wiring criss-cross.

 

[Rocky]

What guitar?

Suhr uses the same wire colors as Duncan. Find your wiring pattern on the Duncan site and redo it from their diagrams.

 

[jdurso]

What guitar?

Suhr uses the same wire colors as Duncan. Find your wiring pattern on the Duncan site and redo it from their diagrams.

PRS McCarty... havent had time lately to take it but i did check and the right pickups are in the right positions so it could either be a criss cross in the wiring or thats just how they sound. i'm starting to lean towards the latter because i've been trying to learn a lot more lead type playing and the tone seems to really open up in the hgiher registers. I guess when i thought "open" i imagined a very open overall sound but i've found the lower end is pretty compressed which i found if after experimenting with a boost and an OD that its actually an advantage because it keeps everything tight. The more understand the sound of the pickup the more i know how to adjust my playing to take advantage of it... its like relearning how to play and the cool part is my playing is getting more dynamic.

 

[Rocky]

I can tell you exactly how to wire Suhr pickups into a McCarty.


First thing I do is draw a diagram of the wiring as the guitar is stock....makes backtracking easy. In this case I can give you a link to the stock wiring.

http://prsguitars.com/csc/schematics/schem08/mccarty.pdf

Green and black are your ground wires. Attach them and ground them to the volume pot.

Next: Your hot leads (the hot is black on the suhr's) go to the toggle switch. note which side is for the bass pickup and which side is for the treble pickup. Hook up the black wires to their appropriate solder point.

Next: Solder the white and red wires together. They are your coil split wires. Put the red and white wires to the appropriate spots for the bass and treble pickups.

Easy wiring job.

If you ever decide to return ONE PRS pickup into the guitar you will need to reverse the green and black wires on the suhr pickup

 

[jdurso]

I can tell you exactly how to wire Suhr pickups into a McCarty.


First thing I do is draw a diagram of the wiring as the guitar is stock....makes backtracking easy. In this case I can give you a link to the stock wiring.

http://prsguitars.com/csc/schematics/schem08/mccarty.pdf

Green and black are your ground wires. Attach them and ground them to the volume pot.

Next: Your hot leads (the hot is black on the suhr's) go to the toggle switch. note which side is for the bass pickup and which side is for the treble pickup. Hook up the black wires to their appropriate solder point.

Next: Solder the white and red wires together. They are your coil split wires. Put the red and white wires to the appropriate spots for the bass and treble pickups.

Easy wiring job.

If you ever decide to return ONE PRS pickup into the guitar you will need to reverse the green and black wires on the suhr pickup

Thing is i didnt do the installation and while i'm sure i can figure it out, i dont have the tools or the experience to really trust myself doing it. BUT i will use this information to check out how the tech wired it up and see if he did it wrong. Thanks for the info Rocky.

BTW, the Aldrich neck pup complete nails the Slash tone. I was just playing along with Sweet Child of Mine and had to stop playing at one point because i couldnt differentiate my tone from his.

 

[Rocky]

I find my Aldrich pickups much clearer and articulate than the Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups that Slash uses.

 

[jdurso]

I find my Aldrich pickups much clearer and articulate than the Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups that Slash uses.

Very true. I'm dialing in the dirt with a boost and the amp, but man that neck pickup is just beautiful.

Do you find the bridge pickup compressed on the low end? Almost like the low strings sound choked? I figured I'd ask since you have the same pickups... I should also note i have the covered Aldrich's so i dont know if that makes a difference.

 

[Rocky]

I find my Aldrich pickups much clearer and articulate than the Duncan Alnico II Pro pickups that Slash uses.

Very true. I'm dialing in the dirt with a boost and the amp, but man that neck pickup is just beautiful.

Do you find the bridge pickup compressed on the low end? Almost like the low strings sound choked? I figured I'd ask since you have the same pickups... I should also note i have the covered Aldrich's so i dont know if that makes a difference.

None of those traits are like my Aldrich pickups and I have them with and without covers. The lows are VERY tight but not what I would call compressed.

 

[jdurso]

maybe lower the pickup

I just reread this post out of frustration and decided to breakup the screw driver and really see if i could get the sound i pictured in my head before i bought the pups by adjusting the pickup height. Well theres good news and bad news....

Good news first.... i noticed the pup height i had (or should i say was setup by my tech) was lower then what i had on my ESP. So for shits and giggles I raised the height almost 1/8 of an inch. Bam there it was... clarity, power, punch, tightness and a very open sound. So after about 15 minutes of getting the height just right i went on a chug fest for the last hour. Man what a difference about 1/8th of an inch makes. So with that i decided let me get the neck just right and after another 15 minutes i got the perfect clarity out of the neck by actually lowering it a little. I still may try the PRS RP Neck at some point and replace the EMG 81 in the bridge of my ESP with the Aldrich but for now I'm a very happy camper. Also the coil tap on both pups sounds 100x better than it did.

The bad news... I WASTED THE LAST 2 MONTHS SPECULATING AND GETTING FRUSTRATED OVER THE PICKUP HEIGHT!!!! AHHHHHHH!!! :evil:

Ok I'm done ranting.... thanks to nomad for motivating me to try adjusting the pikcup height before i drove myself crazy finding a new bridge pup (even though his advice was to lower the pup height).

 

[lerxst88]

well one way to tell if the pick ups are out of phase is if theres a significant volume drop and thinness when the two are on together. if youre only using one at a time then being in and out of phase doesnt matter and you should only hear the one pickup.

also a little trick i use to tell if a pick up is coming through and wired correctly is to run a battery powered drill over the pickup in question while plugged into an amp.

 

[jdurso]

also a little trick i use to tell if a pick up is coming through and wired correctly is to run a battery powered drill over the pickup in question while plugged into an amp.

What does that do? Or was this a joke that went over my head??