nuke

Well, if you want to go down the deep side of the rabbit hole, I just picked up a used set of ThroBak pickups and installed them in my Gibson custom shop R0 in place of the Custom Bucker 3 p'ups they come with. It is shocking how different they sound than the Custom Buckers and how different they sound than the SD '59 pickups that came stock in my 1998 H150. I measured the inductance, capacitance, field strength and so on, and I have notes on all the pickups I own, including the HRW's in my 2001 H535. Despite being in the range of low-output PAF on every parameter, the ThroBaks are just shocking how bright, clear, harmonic and punchy they are. That goes for the Seth Lovers as well, which are a touch brighter and clearer than the 59's, but man. The only humbuckers in my collection that come close to the ThroBak are the HRW's, but they are a different style of pickup being hotter wound and the bridge especially so. I do know that ThroBak acquired a vintage winding machine from Heritage, that was left over from the Gibson days. ThroBak uses a variety of the same exact winder machines that Gibson used, even some of the actual winders from Gibson. If you know ThroBak at all, it all sounds like absolute hype, but the product performs. I've witnessed hands-on several examples, including my own now. I have no temptation to replace the HRW.

I been trying to set hands upon a Morgan Shadow Fuzz. I've heard a couple, but have never had a chance to use one in person. They seem to clean up well, and live on the edge-of-break-up sound really well. Vertex Effects youtube channel has an interview with Just Ostrander, with a really good demo of it. The one I have and really like is a very rare, hand-built Noel pedal, the red one. It isn't really a fuzz, it's a mosfet distortion though. I had an original Fulltone '69 a long, long, time ago. I liked it but found I wasn't using it much. When the price went bonkers on those, I sold it.

You know he's an expert pronouncing the name in the original French. 😆

Yeah, the thing with Dumble amps is no two are identical. He built each and every one of them for the particular artist. It's not "a" Dumble, in the sense of one Fender Twin Reverb being a member of a large population of such amps produced. It's "your" Dumble if he made it for you. If you buy someone else's Dumble, it's still that artist's Dumble. I've seen the insides of an ODS and a couple of Fenders that Dumble modified. He had some general approaches that evolved over time, but each and every amp he built was a work of art, intended for a particular person to play and tailored to suit that player. He also rebuilt amps when they got sold to a different artist, in fact he recommended that as a way to get the amp quicker, rather than a scratch-build. The Dumble estate and name are being curated by the Dumble preservation association and they're trying to make new ones with the name. I have some doubts, since the man himself isn't around anymore. I hope they can protect his name and reputation though. There are some "clones" of Dumble amps who's schematics have leaked out. ODS #182 is probably the most "cloned".

Pickup an old Peavey, even a solid state one. They're cheap as dirt and the better ones with the Black Widow speakers are killer good. Reliable as all get out too. And if you turn your back on it, it will be the only bit of equipment not immediately stolen from the stage. They have that "sound" too, even in gain mode. Heck, there's probably someone somewhere who's been trying to get one out of the garage for years with no takers somewhere. Music Man is another great one, but they seem to have a bit of a following, rarer and command a bit more money. If you're going all out, a Fender ToneMaster Pro and accompanying speaker is great. If you're playing live in modern "no stage volume" venues, they'll love you for it and probably forget whatever guitar you walked in with.

To be fair, Schaller made a lot of good pickups. They also made an enormous variety of them too. I think might still be in the pickup business, but they didn't get on board the retail market for end-user pickup swaps. That's driven a lot of growth in the market. I know back in the early 80's when I was a teen, not many of us even knew where the pickups in our guitars came from or who made them. It was sort of the EVH thing that got people talking about DiMarzio and their Distortion Plus. Prior to that, I don't think end-users really considered pickups other than what the manufacturer of the guitar made in house, or bought depending on whether they wanted to invest money in the machinery to make them, or just buy them. Schaller was in the parts business, bridges, hardware, brackets, tuning machines and pickups were just another item in the line catalog. They'd wind up whatever the customer wanted too. Even Gibson had some pickups made by Schaller and many components of pickups they bought from Schaller for their own production. It's pretty simple to make a pickup. The factory Heritage was housed in, certainly made Gibson pickups going to way back when, including the much coveted original PAF's. Heck, a couple of years ago I bought a pair of brand new humbuckers from China, for $14 a pair, including shipping to my house. Honestly, I can't even buy the raw materials and wire for that. They were OK too, nothing special, certainly worked just fine, as advertised. Even included the springs and mounting screws. Like I said, if I didn't like them so much, I'd open those HRW's right up for a look.

Yeah the cryo thing was a fad. They did strings too, and fret wire, and probably anything else one could dunk in a dewar full of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is pretty cheap actually. My wife's company gets it in the big, self-venting, metal cryo-tanks that are about 5 feet tall for their processes. It's much cheaper than gas cylinders if you're using a lot of nitrogen. You can still buy cryo treated guitar strings, fretwire, and vacuum tubes and who knows what else. Like I said, if you can dunk it, it's been sold as cryo treated. I wouldn't be surprised if someone sells cryo-treated picks. There are changes in metal crystalline and grain structure when they're dunked in liquid nitrogen. I'm not a metallurgist. I'm not sure what effect it would have on alnico. I do know that alnico magnets are used in sensing devices at both high and low temperatures, because they perform well at temperature extremes. That's in the data sheets from magnet manufacturers.

I can guarantee the HRW’s in my 535 are absolutely not degaussed. With an electronic gauss meter, they readout on the strong end of the range for alnico 5.

I have access to liquid nitrogen at my wife's company. They use it in their 3D metal printing sintering oven to eliminate oxygen during the sintering process. I would be hesitant to dunk a whole pickup in the stuff. I don't think the metal would be harmed, but I think it would embrittle the plastic and damage the solvent cement Schaller used on the bobbins. Also, like I said, the literature indicates that cryo exposure results in a 10% loss in magnetic charge in alnico 5. My HRWs show very good field strength and no lack of charge. Maybe he yanked the magnets, dunked them and then recharged them? Who knows. It wouldn't be a difficult trick to pop out the magnet from a Schaller pickup, dunk it in liquid nitrogen and re-assemble it. Were I going to undertake this procedure in a production environment, I'd order the pickups uncovered from Schaller, and the covers separately in nickel and gold or what not, Then pop out the magnet, do the deed, re-assemble, attach the covers afterward and then wax pot them. If it weren't such a PITA to disassemble them from a semi-hollow 535, I'd pop them out, do all the electrical measurements, and a Bode plot with the exciter coil and integrator on my digital oscilloscope. Here's my post on the subject when I acquired the 535 a few years ago: ^^^ that's someone else's guitar photo in the thread... At the time, I measured the set in my 2001 535 as being quite similar to the Duncan SH-2 "Jazz" set. The other thing that was different are the pots used with the HRW. My 2001 535 had 500K volume and 250k tone pots, with .022uf capacitors. The typical values used with humbuckers are 500k/500k and 0.022uf. My 1998 H150 with factory Duncan 59's in it, had the 300k volume and 100k tone pots, factory from Heritage. Same as used in the Norlin era Gibsons. That made that guitar pretty dark. Until I wore out a pot and replaced them with normal 500k all around. Perhaps some of the "mystique" is picking out a slightly different tone pot. 250k vs 500k for the tone pots would be like rolling the tone knob down to about 7.5 to 8 on a 500k pot when wide open.

Greg Koch is a real hoot. Just when I think I figure out something he's doing, he does something else that blow me away.

He twangs on some other ones too! Go check out all the videos in the recent guitar selection episodes he’s got going on now.

Well, I went and looked at the engineering data for alnico 5 magnets at cryogenic temperature. At liquid nitrogen temperature, the literature says they work in the cold, but there is a permanent 10% loss in magnetization after exposure. There are actual applications of magnets in instruments in cryogenic equipment. Alnico 5 is grain-oriented when cast. While the metal is cast, the cooling process is designed to orient the grains in the direction of intended magnetization. (anisotropic) Not sure what benefit, if any, of cryo treatment. Other than it makes a good story.

3 peace neck??? 😁

My Gibson R0 with CustomBucker 3 humbuckers have unbalanced coils (per Gibson) and they have a noticeable amount of hum pickup that other Gibson p'ups do not. (and just for fun, I recently yanked out the alnico 3 magnets and replaced them with alnico 2 magnets, which so far I'm happier with) My 2001 H535 with HRW's exhibits no hum, so I don't think the coils are unbalanced. I pulled out the Gauss meter and measured the magnetic field strength and polarization. One of the unusual things about Schaller pickups is the screws are "north" and the slugs are "south" which is the opposite of Gibson and most other humbuckers. The bridge and neck read about the same in terms of strength, and I'd estimate they are alnico 5 and strongly charged, with excellent field strength. Not the highest I've ever seen, but a bit more than most I've measured. The HRW's are definitely made from Schaller components, from the base plates to the covers and bobbin spacing, even the screw threads. But, Schaller could have simply supplied Heritage with the raw components, right down to empty bobbins for Heritage to wind themselves, and loose parts for them to assemble as they see fit. Or they may have supplied them wound or in any other state of partial assembly. I did check the electrical characteristics, the bridge is pretty hot, much higher wind than the neck. I wrote down the inductance and capacitance of the coils and If I didn't like the HRW's so much, I'd open them up. Schaller pickups are very well made. I'm working on several at the moment for a friend doing some restorations on 80's and 90's pointy shredder guitars. I just had one apart to replace the wire with a 5-conductor cable. I had them completely disassembled to clean up the baseplate and solder the ground shield. One characteristic that I've found is they are consistently wound, with very little variance pickup to pickup, and usually have low capacitance windings, so even hotter winds are nice and bright. I tend to wonder if Schaller built their own winders. They were certainly capable of that. If curious, maybe I can snap a picture of a Schaller pickup disassembled for repair.

Well after some time playing the Seth Lovers, I'm a bit on the fence. They're less aggressive than the SD59's, but perhaps a little more in the bright and clear direction than I was thinking. I like them pretty well for the most part, and that tinge of harsh the SD59's I didn't care for is gone. I play pretty simple rig, just amp on the edge of break up, run the volume up and down for dynamics and adjust the tone on the guitar as I'm playing. I was pleasantly surprised how well the bridge does with some gain going on the amp, while the neck cleans up easy with some volume roll off without getting too dark. (50's wiring in my guitar, so it doesn't get dark as the volume rolls off). I'm thinking about trying a magnet swap in the Custom Bucker III p'ups in the Custom Shop Gibson R0. I already have a pair of Alnico 2 magnets on hand. Just trying to decide if it is worth the trouble. On the other hand, got to play a Custom Shop Gibson R9 (59 reissue) that the owner put a set of ThroBaks in as well as hear him play it a bunch. Holy smokes, that guitar sounds good, and he's a great player to boot. I also played a Collings I35LC (335-ish) with factory-installed ThroBaks not too long ago, that was fantastic. My H535 is a 2001 with HRW's in it and I wouldn't change a thing on it.