Ibanez Sas36fm - Duo-bucker Pickup

[Marzocchi705]

I just picked up one of these today and i have to say for a £379 guitar its pretty darn good. Its H-S-S but the humbucker is splitable so i can get a wider range of tones. The humbucker is what Ibanez call a duo-bucker, its a regular humbucker, just one of the coil's is stacked so esentialy its a 3-coil pickup, you use one of the stacked coils as your single coil sound and the other + the normal coil to work as your humbucker. It realy is closer to a true single coil sound than just spliting a humbucker.

The neck is a 3pc set-in job with a thickness close to a wizard but not quite (one of the reasons i got this over a RG550, other than the lower price tag), its 22frets on a rosewood board, the set up that the shop did on mine was spot-on, no buzz, and about as low as you could want to go, i can rip this thing up faster than i could on my les paul, which is a good thing.

So what do you guys think of this guitar? oh and befor i forget, heres a pic of it.

http://www.ibanez.co.jp/eg_l_page.php?PAGE_ID=482&COLOR=CL01

[Daniel Sorbera]

you use one of the stacked coils as your single coil sound and the other + the normal coil to work as your humbucker.

the way I read the article when it came out is you use both stacked coils for the single coild sound and all the coils for the humbucker sound. They we're saying using both coils cut out the hum (obviously it would be just a stacked humbucker)

I'm not sure if thats right or wrong, but that was what I gatherd from it after looking at a diagram.

BTW those guitars are sweet! I played one at a local music store a while ago and thought it was really awesome

[Pott]

This doesn't make much sense to me.

If the single coil is in fact a stacked coil, it still wouldn't sound like a 'true' single coil. I don't have the experience to back it up, but I can't see how it'd sound more like a SC than a split humbucker.

[thegarehanman]

This doesn't make much sense to me.

If the single coil is in fact a stacked coil, it still wouldn't sound like a 'true' single coil. I don't have the experience to back it up, but I can't see how it'd sound more like a SC than a split humbucker.

It's because a humbucker's sound doesn't come totally from the fact that it has two coils. It's actually much more than that. First, the shape of the windings impacts the sound. This is partially why a single coil with short, wide windings(like a p90) sounds different than a pickup with narrow, tall windings(like a tele neck pickup), granted the magnet arrangement is playing a part in their sounds as well. Another thing you have to consider is the resistance of the collective coils. A humbucker traditionally has more resistance than a single coil, but measure the resistance of just one coil on a humbucker and(*most of the time) you'll see that a humbucker's single coil has less resistance than a traditional single coil. This is a contributing factor to why a split humbucker often does not sound exactly like a single coil. I imagine ibanez's 3 coil humbucker has one coil just like an other humbucker, with simular resistance, and the other two[stacked] coils probably have a slightly higher resistance when combined.

peace,

russ

[Primal]

This doesn't make much sense to me.

If the single coil is in fact a stacked coil, it still wouldn't sound like a 'true' single coil. I don't have the experience to back it up, but I can't see how it'd sound more like a SC than a split humbucker.

It's because a humbucker's sound doesn't come totally from the fact that it has two coils. It's actually much more than that. First, the shape of the windings impacts the sound. This is partially why a single coil with short, wide windings(like a p90) sounds different than a pickup with narrow, tall windings(like a tele neck pickup), granted the magnet arrangement is playing a part in their sounds as well. Another thing you have to consider is the resistance of the collective coils. A humbucker traditionally has more resistance than a single coil, but measure the resistance of just one coil on a humbucker and(*most of the time) you'll see that a humbucker's single coil has less resistance than a traditional single coil. This is a contributing factor to why a split humbucker often does not sound exactly like a single coil. I imagine ibanez's 3 coil humbucker has one coil just like an other humbucker, with simular resistance, and the other two[stacked] coils probably have a slightly higher resistance when combined.

peace,

russ

Also, a humbucker will pick up different harmonics because its picking up the vibrations from a wider length of string. A stacked single-coil will pick up the same harmonics with both coils.

[Pr3Va1L]

there's the pickup's width (along the strings, that is) too... (and as primal said the distance between the coils, hence why something like a tele with both pickups in series doesn't sound like an HB)

There are so many factors too... The power of the magnets, the depth of the coil......

Edited April 6, 2006 by Pr3Va1L

[Pott]

I wasn't commenting the humbucker sound, but the single coil sound. What sounds more like a single coil?

A split bucker?

A bucker wired in parrallel?

A stacked single?

Again, I don't really see the interest in this. I haven't tried it, and my experience with this is limited I'll admit that though. The explanation about the mismatched coils makes perfect sense though, but then if one of the coil is wound like an SC, why stack it to make it LESS like one? Just so it's humbucking? It's not secret that no humbucking SC sound 100% like a single coil...

[Marzocchi705]

I dont realy know about how it works but it does sound like a single coil when the vol. pot is pulled up and it does sound like a proper humbucker when the vol. pot is pushed down.

Heres the blurb from ibanez

True Duo™ humbucker. Original Ibanez design (Patent pending) triple-coil construction (one single with one stacked) makes Ibanez the first to achieve switching between genuine single-coil and humbucking tone in one pickup.

I just asumed that there using one of these stacked coils as the single sound.