Who makes pickups with custom color bobbins?

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CaseyCor

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My laser blue RG770DX is in dire need of new pickups, but the bright blue bobbins make it a bit difficult. I'm not set on a particular pickup set for this guitar, so I'm open to different builders. I need an H/S/H config, nice split coil sounds for clean/low gain playing, and your usual high gain modern-ish rhythm and lead sounds. The split coil sounds have to be good, for sure. The guitar is set up on a 5-way switch, with positions 2 and 4 splitting the bridge/neck humbuckers respectively.

I know Dimarzio still does the colored bobbin thing, but I'm looking for more options. I'm not against going with Dimarzio, just making sure I know what's out there.

I'm also in need of a clear pickguard. It's got a black guard on it now, installed by the previous owner. I'd like to put the proper see-thru guard on it at some point in the future. Recommendations welcome.

I really dig the recent PRS pickups that add extra turns to the split coil sounds. Takes care of the volume loss issue and sounds awesome. Does anyone else do something similar?
 
Dimarzio. They have blue, and tons of pickups that split well.
 
The PRS trick, if I'm thinking of what your talking about, can be replicated on any splittable humbucker. It's just using a resistor to only partially one coil to ground rather than completely to ground.
 
I can build pickups with blue bobbins like that. I'd have to wait to receive them first, so it would add to the lead time. (Normally I can get pickups made within a few days, but ordering bobbins from overseas means the lead time increases a month or so.) I have a couple designs for neck and bridge humbuckers which are awesome:

viewtopic.php?p=2029936#p2029936

I however don't have single coil designs, not yet anyway. (Also I currently have no parts for them.)
 
Ooh, now that's interesting. I am a big fan of your amp designs. I could always pick up a single coil from someone else, as long as it plays will with your 'buckers in split coil mode.
 
Oh yes, the humbuckers sound great split! Normally (for years) I haven't bothered with split or parallel wiring in my guitars, but I tried it for my humbuckers and liked it so much that I added series/split/parallel switches for each guitar. The volume is a hair lower with the pickup split, but not much lower at all, and it sounds really good. Sorry if it sounds like I'm bragging. :)

If you want to talk about the pickups, what you could expect from them, I'd be glad to call you. Email or PM me your number and a suitable time to call. Also your actual name so I'm not asking for your moniker when I call. :D
 
This RG is a lot of fun to play, but the pickups just suck. It's got the stock IBZ pups in it from 1991. I've never been a fan of them in any guitar. I find the single coil sounds a lot more pleasing than anything else. The bridge pickup is all treble, which works great for high gain leads but it's awful for chugging rhythm. This guitar is in Open C for recording some of the songs for the record I've been working on, and it can't handle the low C. There's just no low end chunk to it at all. It's super thin, no balls to speak of.

Switching to the 2nd position (bridge split + middle single) has more low end even. I get better high gain sounds out of my semi-hollow Ibanez w/ a GFS Crunchy Rails. That's a pretty badass pickup for being so cheap, although it's also pretty bright with that guitar (all maple semi-hollow body). I'm curious as to what that pickup would sound like in this guitar, but I'd like to keep the original aesthetic in tact. There's this cutting nasaly top end with the bridge pickup on my RG I just can't dial out.

The neck pickup has no clarity at all. It's useless for the smooth lead sound I need. It's all mud.

I use the split-coils for clean/mid gain sounds, so I need something that can be used a lot.

I'm playing around with lots of different amp sims and finding great sounds except for the treble issue. It's like I'm almost there on the tone, but the bridge pickup is holding me back. I'll play around with settings and get one step closer, but in the end, I've gone 2 steps back.

My main rhythm sound is Mesa Recto and Mark Series amps w/ a boost up front (a few different boosts). Mid gain sounds are Vox/Marshall based with a B.K Butler Tube Driver up front. I'm not running a ton of gain on my main rhythm sound, as I need a lot of clarity for some complex chords in my rhythm parts. There are some sections with fuzz sounds going on. Smashing Pumpkins kinda Big Muff sound.

Just for reference, some of my favorite guitar sounds...
Devin Townsend's recent live sound (Fishman Fluence/EMG 81 + Mesa Recto basically) - Really big tone with lots of delay, and yet super clear.

Black Album-era Metallica (Do I really need to fill this in?) - Heavy without over-saturation, the low end really hits you when you listen to this record cranked up. Live bootlegs from this era sound killer

Dean DeLeo (Stone Temple Pilots) on Purple (Demeter and Vox) - Such a great mid-gain sound. Chewy with a lot of cut and character to it. He never really pulled this tone off live, though. The opening bit of "Meatplow" is so good. I really like the guitar sound on "Kitchenware and Candy Bars" right when the electric guitar kicks in for the first chorus.

Brother Cane on Seeds - Another low/mid gain sound. Old Fenders and Marshalls

The Black Dahlia Murder - Miasma (5150 and Recto as far as I'm aware) - One of the few "modern" sounds I really dig. It's super tight and percussive without coming off as too dry or over-processed. Again, there's a lot of clarity without sacrificing the high frequencies.

Petrucci - Metropolis Pt.2 and Train of Thought (Mark Series, of course) - Heavy without gobs of gain, keeping the sound really clear and well defined. I'd like to combine this kind of sound with a modern, more saturated tone.

There're tons more examples, of course. I could go on and on..I didn't even hit any Marshall based tones.

I'll post a clip up here tomorrow so you guys can hear what I'm talking about. I'm sure some recommendations can be made. I wouldn't be surprised if some slight tweaks to one of your existing designs end up being perfect for me James.
 
I have a variant of Design 1 that I use in my own guitars. The 5th and 6th strings have the standard pole pieces as the normal Design 1 but the rest of the strings have different pole pieces which keep the attack a bit rounder/softer. So you get the snap on the lower strings that you need for heavier stuff but the rest of the strings sound a bit more "classic", and it all blends together well (there's no sudden change in sound from one string to the next). It's not a huge difference but it's a nice bit of "frosting" for the "cake" of the pickup's base sound. :)

Design 1 in general (with C8 magnet) is great for heavier stuff while sounding somewhat natural/classic when you're not playing very aggressively or with very high gain. It's sort of like my high gain amps that way. You get to have a more classic response while also having modern aggression. For dark, smooth, or "flat" sounding guitars there's no reason to change the pole pieces at all (the standard ones help the sound be more responsive and cut through the sound the guitar has). But if the guitar is bright or really resonant in the mids you might appreciate the variant with different pole pieces that I personally use.

Whether it's the more "classic" aspect you might like, or a smoother aspect in general for those strings (since you mentioned Metallica, who use EMG pickups and thus have a somewhat smooth sound for the pickups themselves), I'd probably recommend this variant.

Design 3 for the neck pickup sounds like it would suit you well. It's got enough fullness but it's not too fat, it has nice "chime" to it but it's not too bright, it is nice for Petrucci leads (since he uses the neck pickup a lot), sounds very nice clean and also taps very nicely. It's a good match for Design 1 bridge pickup as well, not being too different in sound or output that it sounds jarring to switch from one to the other.

When I split the pickups (using only one coil) it sounds like nice single coils with good character; I can use the Design 1 bridge pickup split for VH-type sounds with overdrive and it's not too thin or weak (maybe it's a little "too single-coil sounding" for VH, but I like it anyway).

If you like the current middle single coil pickup, maybe just keep it in the guitar.

I do like the Crunchy Rails too. Being rail pickups in general they do get that glassy high end sometimes though. That's something my pickups don't have; instead there's good high end which helps the bite but it doesn't get "clangy" and fatiguing on the ears.
 
Wow, on paper that sounds like just what I'm looking for. Very cool! I'm eager to hear what these pickups sound like.

I really don't use the neck humbucker with high-gain enough. I guess I've just never had a pickup I was happy with, aside from a Fralin P-90. I would like to use it more.

I've always felt like I'm not happy with my tone across the fretboard. I get a nice tone from my bottom 2 heavy strings[[, but I'm not happy anywhere else. Big chords have no clarity or cut, turns to mush. Dialing in the clarity causes the opposite problem. I need to put together a list of some of my favorite pickups and see where that leads us.

I was just listening to Load/Reload and remembered how much I love that guitar tone. The sound on Load is pretty dark without being overly so, something I struggle with achieving. I tend to like darker sounds, with just enough treble to cut through. I'll turn a treble control until I can just start to hear it affect the tone, and leave it there. I like the brighter sounds, but I always end up with this scratchy, tiring high end that bothers me to no end. It's a pretty low gain sound too, to my ears. Reload is a bit gainer and brighter, and also sounds great. I think those tones have a lot more character than Master of Puppets/..And Justice for All. I do like the tone of those records a great deal, but they are both a bit flat to me. I really can't listen to Justice anymore to be honest. That record has some of my favorite Metallica tracks, great songwriting...but the production is tiring, to say the least. The drums sound great, but the guitars fall flat. So dry, very little punch. The Black Album/Load/Reload hit me in a way Justice doesn't.

I'm on a Metallica kick lately, if you can't tell. It's been a long time since I cared about Metallica, and it feels really good to be back in that camp. I wouldn't be a guitar player without Metallica. I actually found this board some 10 years ago now thanks to MontyJay over at the Metboards.

I really dig Devin Townsend's more recent tone, but it can be overly bright and "scratchy" at times. It's gotten better lately, he's started to really dial everything in. Bringing the Recto back and adding in the Rhodes Artemis was a good move. He gets a huge high gain sound but he retains the clarity and punch I seem to be missing.

I'm deep in the tone search, for sure. I demand a lot of versatility out of my pickups, which can be a problem. I dig the sound of EMGs when I need "that" sound, but I kinda hate it for most everything else. I dig strats for clean/mid-gain stuff, but I can't justify having a guitar around that only does that one thing. I hate the idea of locking a guitar down to one purpose. I want to play this guitar and get that sound, and if I can't I get very quickly frustrated and pick up my Breedlove acoustic instead. It never lets me down, haha. I like my instruments to all do something different, with an overlap. This guitar has a particular character to it, but it can pull off the other stuff I do too if need be. That kinda thing. Sacrifices have to be made, but there is room to improve the disconnect. Plenty of other players have figured it out.
 
Well these ain't EMGs, that's for sure. :) The responsiveness is certainly not like an 81; it's definitely a passive pickup and it feels like one. But it's nice to have a touch of that smoothness of the 81 mixed in. Passive pickups can sound a bit grainy/dry sometimes. That's probably why I kept using EMGs and then going back to passives...lather/rinse/repeat, for years. D Activator is nice for a passive that sounds more 81-like, but even that's too close to the real thing for my liking nowadays. I like mostly a passive sound/feel. I found a way of getting just enough of that smoothness in there when I want it. With the latest Metallica album (since I appreciate it), it's nice to hear a touch of that sort of sound mixed in with what I consider my favorite pickup. I like earlier Metallica but I do prefer the tone from later albums (it sounds more "real" and "vocal" to me). I can't fault the engineering on any album though since I appreciated them all at the times they were released. I try to consider each album for what it was, not so much for nostalgia but just not to be too critical of production choices since that had an ebb and flow to it. I'm glad the albums sound significantly different anyway. Lately it's been a lot easier for people to have "instant recall" of sounds previously used in the studios (because of modelers, DAWs with presets which are used again, etc.), and I hear bands going down the same path in their recordings a lot more than previously. I miss how things were more different album to album, even if some of those approaches aren't what I prefer.

Townsend's sound is quite compressed so I'm not sure how much the pickups are responsible for what's going on that you're not keen about.
 
I am definitely interested based on what you've had to say here. I would love to check out your stuff and maybe work on something new.

I'm not sure how much of (my issues with) Devin's sound is from his pickups. His tone has gotten better now to my ears after switching to the Fishman Fluence stuff, but he changed a lot of his gear around.

This is an old video of his, and it's a great example of that high-end fizzy thing I can't stand. This is pretty much the exact issue I'm having. I like his clean tone a lot, but the high gain sounds are kinda gross.



His sound is a lot better here. This is closer to my kinda jam, but it's a bit light on the low end and a still a bit shrill. Go to about 2:20 or so. Where'd the clarity go? When he plays those big suspended chords, it turns to mush. I can't pick out the individual notes at all. This tone is heading in the right direction for me, but it's not quite there.



I know this has more to do with the amp(s) and other equipment he's running. I'm just trying to bring some context to what I'm talking about. His sound is pretty close to what I'm looking for, but it lacks the punchy low end and is a bit mushy/shrill. A bit too much gain for my liking. I need the clarity ala the aforementioned Metallica tones. Devin's tone sits and stirs in the room intriguingly, James Hetfield's storms in and punches you in the gut. I need to find the happy medium :thumbsup:
 
Well a pickup is only part of the equation, so I can't promise "my pickups will do exactly what you want"...although I think they will, if you use amps/settings that make sense. They're not flat/grindy sounding like that. However if you're using a setting like he does (I assume he's using some boosted high gain amp setting based on what I've read in the past), you're not doing yourself any favors. :) Metallica doesn't use sounds like that from their amps, so that's a part of it. (edit) I should also mention that boosting a modern high gain amp with a pedal can rob the natural/full low end too. (/edit)

But yeah Design 1 (especially this version I'm talking about) has good articulation and thickness, with modern aggression but also capable of sounding/responding in a vintage way, which is a rare thing.

Drop me a PM or email if you want to talk further. I'll check back here at some point but I have things to do over the next few days that'll keep me out of the house for most of the day.
 
He's a tubescreamer type pedal as clean boost + Recto guy. One of my favorite sounds. I loved my tone when I ran a clean boosted Single Rec into a V30 cab. I don't add any gain, just goosing the input level to tighten the low-end . I don't find a need to boost Mark series amps. I don't play with nearly as much gain as Devin does, nor am I trying to perfectly ape his sound. He's just a good example of the vibe I'm going for, and he seems to have the same issue with high frequencies.

I'll shoot you a PM here in a bit.
 
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