Prototyping the ToneNerd “The Whiskey”

Man these sound great and I'm planning an order! In your guys opinion, best one for a bright Floyd equipped guitar. Sounds like we all like similar music based on these clips
 
chris lykins said:
Man these sound great and I'm planning an order! In your guys opinion, best one for a bright Floyd equipped guitar. Sounds like we all like similar music based on these clips
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I'd say it depends on your amp, music style, and body wood and what production pickups you tend to like right now, along with anything you like to change in your tone. I'm still limited in models, but I try to be upfront if what I have is going to work for you.
 
After A/B ing it with the Aldrich, I like the clean tone on mine by a far mile. For gain tones, the Aldrich seams over compressed whereas mine seems just right from a compression standpoint, but mine lacks mids in comparison to the Aldrich. I'm going take another shot in trying to give mine more mids with the same number of winds without loosing low-end.

I'll also try this pickup with an A8 to give some mids
 
It has been so long since I have heard an Aldrich but I remember loving the tone. I'm curious to see what you do with your pickup and how you get it to sound man.
 
chris lykins said:
Man these sound great and I'm planning an order! In your guys opinion, best one for a bright Floyd equipped guitar. Sounds like we all like similar music based on these clips
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You won't be disappointed.
Do you want to tame the brightness, or let it ring out?
Want tight, fast attack or something with a lil give?
80s hair, 90s grunge or modern metal?
 
chris lykins said:
Man these sound great and I'm planning an order! In your guys opinion, best one for a bright Floyd equipped guitar. Sounds like we all like similar music based on these clips
Click to expand...
From one old thrasher to another I’d recommended the Psykes. It’s thick, raw, on the darkish side, and has a mean low mid grunt. It’s a pretty sinister sounding pickup.
 
scottosan said:
After A/B ing it with the Aldrich, I like the clean tone on mine by a far mile. For gain tones, the Aldrich seams over compressed whereas mine seems just right from a compression standpoint, but mine lacks mids in comparison to the Aldrich. I'm going take another shot in trying to give mine more mids with the same number of winds without loosing low-end.

I'll also try this pickup with an A8 to give some mids
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I totally agree about the Aldrich being over compressed. That, and it sounded like it had a layer of hair around it, for lack of a better description. Hahahaa
 
Its a luxxtone with I think their old school pickup. Not the biggest fan of this arcane pickup. Play most commonly through a Shiva 20th. More traditional metal, rock. More percussion, light on the hair, more mids. It can have some give. I have an old Afwayu that Ive never tried but Id love to support this site. For example I have another luxxtone with a 2nd degree BB and I like it a lot better but its a different guitar.
Just bigger sounding and tamed highs in general
Don't like the fur around the note on Distortion type pickups.
Pretty much what beyond black said in post 28!
That's a rambling answer.
Sounds like this model might be the one
 
scottosan said:
That 15.6k is around the sweet spot of the earliest JB’s. It’s hard to describe, but under the fingers it’s feel hotter than the 16.1 and 16.7k, but I think that might be because of the harmonics and overtones laying on top of the notes. It loves Jose based amps.

I have an Aldrich coming this weekend that I am going to do some A/B’ing with. I’ve only played my own pickups for so long, I’ve lost all reference to what some of the more popular pickups sound like. I’m thinking of trying an Afwayu as well
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I enjoyed the tones of the 15.6K one with the 6800 winds. Something about those tones was really nice, for me.
 
scottosan said:
My first models all focused on tightness and articulation. To be honest, that’s what a lot of people were asking for. For me personally though, I like a little more sag and bottom. Since I put orders on hold for a few weeks, it’s back to prototyping. I wanted a little more sag without a blanket on the top end, more low end, and to shift the resonant peak centered more toward the guitars natural frequencies. In the process of trying on various guitars, I went down the rabbit hole of analyzing the distances of the pickups in contrast to the breaking point of the high E at the bridge. There is so much inconsistency among builders and theirs pickup routing. For example, on my Les Pauls, it’s about 1 and 3/16 inches between the center of the pickup screws row and the string breaking point on the small E at the bridge vs up to 1 and 5/8 on some of my Floyd guitars. As a result, the Les Pauls with the route closer to the bridge sounded brighter. So, I tried to wind to accommodate for the differences. Lower winds for bridges further away and higher winds for closer bridges.

Anyway, I know it’s hard to tell with in room micing on a phone with YouTube, but this particular wind pattern adds quite a bit more low end compared to my original models, but without a blanket on the top end. Single notes on all three of the specs have a complex organic harmonic overtone and rhythm tones have much more body and low end without getting too loose. They all roll down nicely without much loss of top end. I have no treble bleed circuits in any guitars. There is a part with the red single hum buoyant where the humbucker is switched to out the coils in parallel

The first is 6800 winds @ 15.6k 44awg


The second is 7000 winds @16.1k


The last is 7300 winds @16.7k
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I'll take a 6800 winds one -- if you're selling? Need one for a Chubtone

Hope I'm still in the queue for one of your A8 models too.
 
scottosan said:
***Nerd Alert****

By looking at the DCR and inductance, you can get an idea of the turns per layer (TPL) of a pickup. This is basically how many rotations of the bobbin it takes for you to make a complete traverse from the left side of the bottom to the right while winding. Think of it this way. If you have a set RPM and you do a slow traverse, you'll have a higher TPL than if you do a fast traverse. A high TPL will be a tighter tone and anymore focused frequency spectrum and a higher inductance. A lower TPL results in a wider bandwidth and lower inductance. Your.output and feel is mainly determined by inductance and magnet. Assuming that you're trying to clone a pickup and everything is the same except for the TPL, if you match the resistance and you inductance is higher than the pickup you're trying to emulated, you know you need to reduce the TPL. What you can't reproduce by hand winding is the resonant peak, which is determined by inductance and capacitance A machine wound pickup will generally have a higher capacitance than a similarly hand wound pickup due to the near perfect parallel placement of subsequent been laid wires. To get an identical resonant peak , you have to increase DCR, or modify the TPL to shift capacitance. At that point, you may get the right resonant peak, but you changed the feel and output. This is were the science ends and you just have use you gut and ears.


For the 6800 wind whiskey, I'm sitting at:

Series Resistance – 15.98 K
Series Inductance – 8.23 H

The original late 70s JB is documented to be:

Series Resistance – 15.659 K
Series Inductance – 7.924 H

My thought process is to have a slightly higher inductance to compensate for less capacitance from hand winding.

In contrast, the new production JBs are:
Series Resistance – 16.555 K
Series Inductance – 9.614 H

My 7000 wind with rh same pattern measures at:
Series Resistance – 16.39 K
Series Inductance – 8.7 H

This makes me believe the new JBs have a much higher TPL contributing to the congested, honkey mids.
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This makes sense. The 6800 to my ears still has that mid-forward bump that JBs do.
Can you do clips playing the same riff like the Tesla one?
 
Scottosan it has to be hard for you to build a pickup that works in both a Mahogany Les Paul and an Alder Strat type. Les Pauls have that low end and I'm sure when someone wants that low end in a Strat shape, it could get out of hand with a Les Paul in the low end and get boomy.
 
romanianreaper said:
Scottosan it has to be hard for you to build a pickup that works in both a Mahogany Les Paul and an Alder Strat type. Les Pauls have that low end and I'm sure when someone wants that low end in a Strat shape, it could get out of hand with a Les Paul in the low end and get boomy.
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I think I'm actually going to offer this wind in all 3 wind counts as I think between the 3, you can tailor the clarity the lower wind will work in all 3 the hottest could get unruly in some setups. Since I'm already calling it the Whiskey, I can offer it at stock at 6800, a "double" @ 7000 and a "triple" at 7300.
 
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