Pickup Mounting - Direct To Wood?

[Pr3Va1L]

well, read the topic...

so, what are the difference (if any) to tone by mounting the humbuckers directly to the wood, even if it's harder to do... (how do you get the height right?)

In a neckthrough, shouldn't it provide more sustain?

thanks!!

[GregP]

The fact that it's a neckthrough will alter the tone more than the fact that the pickups are direct mounted.

Direct mounting as a tone recipe is just voodoo, placebo effect, and bullsh** in my opinion. I know others disagree.

Greg

[n8rofwyo]

IMHO, mounting the pup directly to the wood is a great idea - asthetically. But to adjust the height of the pup you still need either a spring or a piece of closed cell packing foam. Neither of these are condusive to transmitting wave forms, so I would say that it really wouldn't make a discernable difference in the sound of the instrument. Unless of course you TRULY BELIEVE it will, at which point you are only hearing what you want to.

Nate Robinson

[GregP]

Right, aesthetics are another matter entirely, and on some guitars a direct mount with no mounting ring will simply look better.

[MartinP]

Some humbuckers (at least those of Seymour Duncan) have three holes per "ear", with only the middle one being threaded for height adjustment screw. Once I direct-mounted a JB (Trembucker) like follows: bored the 2 outer holes a bit bigger, put woodscrews through them and a short metalscrew through the center one. Turning and tightening wood- and metalscrews counteract and let you set the pickup's position perfectly. If someone is concerned abt. possible microphonic problems, we never had any. If there's a difference in sound, I really don't know as we never tried to mount the pickup on a ring or foam etc.. It worked very well so it was left as it was.

[Pr3Va1L]

so the differences are mainly cosmetic?

i guess there's a small difference in tone, like everything on a guitar, but its not much...

on MIMF i read a good way of mounting them to wood... depending how clean i'm able to make clean cavities i'll try it...

basically it's just calculating how much height you need, dig your cavity to that and then doing deeper holes for the little "legs" + 1/8"... Then just screw down until the back plate is all on the wood.

anyways, thanks for your advices!!

[ansil]

a nice ebony shim under it instead is always the way instead of foam of course thats if you have ebony lying around.

i switched years ago to driect mounting it and couldnt' be happier. perhaps you should look at the signal through an osiliscope and see if theres any difference.

[Mr Alex]

There IS a difference with direct mounted pickups, but most of the time the difference is so little you dont hear it.

Like ansil said, try it through an osiliscope, it is different, something to do with the pickups vibrating at the exact same frequency as the wood.

In theory you should get a massive improvement over a pickguard suspended pickup, and a big improvement over ring mounting. but things aren't always the same in practise though. It's worth doing incase your one of the lucky people who does get an improvement.

[GregP]

Of course there's a difference. But there's also a huge difference on an oscilloscope between a single note with a reverb that's 5% wet and the same note with the same reverb, but 5.1% wet. But that doesn't mean anyone's going to notice the difference.

I'd be curious to know which 'theory' should give you a massive improvement. The pickups vibrating at the same frequency as the wood won't give you any sort of tangible change to the magnetic field at all. What people seem to forget is that the only thing producing a signal is the metal of the strings interacting with the magnetic field of the pickup.

Teeny, tiny, miniscule changes can only be attributed to 2 things:

1. Adding mass to the guitar body by screwing a heavy hunk of gear right to it. This will affect the way the strings vibrate, and doesn't really have anything to do directly with the pickup itself.

2. The barely-detectable 'vibrating' of the magnetic field itself, as the pickup 'vibrates'. However, while we know that the whole body and neck ARE actually vibrating (you can feel it, and it can be magnified by touching your guitar to a door or a wall!), it's doubtful that having the pickups vibrating in unison is having any sort of beneficial effect.

Really, reason #1 is the only reason I can imagine as an even remotely logical explanation for any tangible changes in tone. And if you need an oscilloscope to detect them, then it's really a non-issue and aesthetics become the far more important deciding factor, I would think.

Greg

[frank falbo]

Yeah I have trouble with the "see, see I told you so!!! Look at the oscilloscope!" Because you could bump the pickup with your hand and change the angle of it slightly and you'll see the difference. To me, I can't imagine it would be physically possible to replicate everything about one method or the other and then measure them. You can't have everything set up and then say "okay hit the switch" and then all of a sudden the guitar toggles between direct mount and pickguard mount. It requires disassembly and reassembly. If you made a special interchangeable guitar for the test where you had an insert that you just stuck in there to lock the pickup against, then maybe you'd have something tangible. Pickups do only sense the string vibrations (or other metal like trem springs) unless they're microphonic. Even then, the actual string sound would greatly overshadow the acoustic resonance.

For all of you that say you can hear a difference, I'm glad for you. Have fun and keep working under that assumption. It's not like we're talking about world peace or anything that's actually important. I have ears that can hear lots of things others can't. But intellectually, I can't grasp how it would make a difference large enough for anyone to hear. There are too many variables when someone converts a guitar. Pickup height is the biggest one. How do you know it was exactly the same height? Because just 1/4 turn of that screw will make more of a difference in the sound than the direct mounting anyway. Plus I can't stand the idea that if I make changes in my action as my mood changes I'd have to shim the pickups or route them deeper.

[thedoctor]

I hear ya, Frank, but as a person who has actually made those completely adjustable guitar models to try stupid stuff on I can tell you that some of the most insignificant alterations produce fabulous results. The osillyscope can go play with itself but listening while a pickup is moved, a body-to-pickup connection is changed or string-spacing is changed can make you a believer in micro-adjusting.

[Saber]

Remove the strings on your guitar, plug it in, turn your amp on, and knock on the guitar. Then tell me whether your pickups pick up the wood vibrations.

Or just muffle the strings and knock on the guitar.

It won't prove whether direct mounting is better or not but the first method will prove that the pickup not only picks up string vibrations.

Edited June 3, 2005 by Saber

[GregP]

I guess I could try that. Sounds microphonic to me. I can't see any way a pickup is going to generate a signal unless its magnetic field is disturbed. If it's potted and non-microphonic, that's not going to happen with the strings removed as you describe.

Muffling won't count, because there are still vibrations happening despite muffling. That's how we can hear even small things like minor string noise. They're not what we think of as 'vibrations' the way we think of properly played notes, but of course they still are. The only way to test is your first way mentioned-- with no strings on the guitar at all.

Greg

[Saber]

All pickups are microphonic to a certain extent, even properly potted ones.

Edited June 3, 2005 by Saber

[GregP]

Then I'm willing to admit that there may be more to it than I first suspected. I'll try the no-strings thing next time I'm changing strings, and if there's a noticeable amount of signal produced, then I'll reconsider my stance on direct-mounting.

It's still not something I'd personally bother with, but I'd be willing to admit that other people might be experiencing more than simply voodoo, which is what I tend to dismiss it as.

Greg

[Saber]

Well... the thing is that the pickup will pickup some of the body's vibration whether it's direct mounted or on mounting rings. Whether the difference between the two mounting methods is significant is what's debatable.

[frank falbo]

Exactly. We're talking about the variable between the two, not just the theory that direct mounting can transfer some vibrations to the pickup. Here's the way I'd test it: I'd take a pickup, and put it up near the BACK of a guitar, so there's no chance of it getting magnetic signal from the strings. (or at least minimal) Then I'd direct-bolt it to the guitar, and see if there was any increase in the signal produced. Then I'd read that. Then I'd check that against the output level of the pickup installed properly. What it would probably show is that the difference in no mount vs. direct mount did produce signal, but way below the normal dynamic range of the guitar. So to say you hear the difference means you hear it "behind" the guitar sound itself, in the "phantom" area. Which is what I'm all about. I love debating the minutia of tonal nuances. I just think this particular variable isn't worth debating because 99.9% of the signal is magnetically based. Knocks and pings are indicative of microphonics, and that's a good point, but to me it's all about the ratios. I think the magnetic sound usurps the microphonic ones.

[GregP]

Right. I'm still skeptical that potted pickups transmit any of the vibrations in the absence of strings, period. THEN if they do, I'm willing to admit that at least direct vs. rings will impact the tone.

At that point in time, the debate really does become, is that difference significant?

Greg

[frank falbo]

They definitely produce some signal. I have a body here with no trem or neck on it right now. Knocking it hard (way louder than string vibrations) produces a very small amount of signal. Everything has to be cranked pretty loud to actually hear it, but it reads on the meters. So that's just it. I have to crank it to even hear it, right? So how much screamingly louder would it be if I actually played a note at that level? Plus, these are loud knocks that produce a spike, rather than the low murmur of a direct mounted pickup.

Hey you know what would be really cool? A guitar that was molded, like a Switch or an Ibanez from Luthite, but with metal dust whipped into the mixture. So you'd have a magnetically responsive guitar. Then the pickups would magnetically "hear" a minute amount of the acoustic vibrations. Or maybe just make a center block out of it. That would be very interesting. I'll bet a steinberger style made from that would sound more organic and less sterile. If Ned's reading this plan on seeing it in a couple years.

[Myka Guitars]

Frank, I like the idea of impregnating the guitar body with some ferric material. I will have to try that someday.

To keep on topic, I have tried an experiment using this guitar where I direct mounted the pickups. I then tested it by removing the screws and wedging foam into the cavity to hold the pickup loosely like a pickup ring would. The result was that I could play way faster, I swear! Seriously, I didn't anything that was anything like the hype. I never built another like that. I left it without rings just because it was a completed guitar that I didn't want to mess with anymore. Any imagined benefit of direct mounted pickups are more than completely outwieghed by the difficulty of adjusting pickup height. Funny thing is that even pickups in rings will vibrate with the body. It's not like the screws and springs isolate it somehow from the guitar (as if pickup rings induce some sort of zero gravity field). I think this is why the difference is slight, not much has really changed.

~David

[GregP]

Bazzacly.

PS, that guitar is the shizznit!

[frank falbo]

Frank, I like the idea of impregnating the guitar body with some ferric material. I will have to try that someday.

Not until after I patent it!

It has to balance between being strong enough to have a subtle (or not so subtle) influence on the overall tone, while not adversely affecting the magnetic field of the pickup, thus altering it's intended sound.

[javacody]

Have you guys seen the guitar where the guy put a pickup under his trem springs? (I know this is way off topic, sorry) He mixed it in with his regular pickups for a reverb effect.

[frank falbo]

That's why I wrap my trem springs with one rotation of electrical tape. That way the notes "stop" like a hardtail. Plus if you're using a noise gate you get a much cleaner cutoff.

[thedoctor]

I used to slide surgical tubing over the trem springs but something about the inside of a guitar made it a soft gummy mess after about a year. VERY messy.