The '59 Sound
Note that this post has absolutely nothing to do with that band from New Jersey. I'm talking about my Seymour Duncan '59 humbucker, which, I am extremely pleased to announce, has finally found peace in my strat.
Last year I went through a long phase of experimenting with pickups. The stock "Highway 1" gear in my strat was not what it could be. So I put in a set of fabulous GFS overwound single coils, and then replaced the stock HB with a "real" humbucker: a Duncan '59 (TB59 to be exact).
The trouble was that even through the '59 was an improvement on the stock HB, it still didn't sound right—a bit muddy, especially noticable when switching from the single coils (yes, I know it's supposed to sound different, but it shouldn't come across as straightforwardly 'worse'). The solution was to re-wire the guitar so that the humbucker runs through 500k pots instead of the 250k pots that Fender normally puts in a strat. I wrote this wiring solution up in detail elsewhere.
The result really has me stoked. It sounds FABULOUS now, especially through my tweed champ. The brilliance and balance of this pickup is revealed, and what you hear going from the singles to the humbucker is now what you would expect: the glassy, harmonic-rich fender sound and the fatter, warmer humbucker sound. But it's all there now, where it really wasn't with the generic wiring. The clincher has really been the pinch harmonics—I mean, they're actually there now, where they kind of weren't before. Playing straight into the Champ, even at a low volume, I can pinch and get all kinds of high-end dynamics that make me think of Billy Gibbons. Similarly, the attack I get from muted picking and raking sounds much more like what it should be.
Why do so many people live with fat strats with the compromised stock circuitry? Humbuckers require different pots than single-coil pickups, and the sound suffers if you try to just run it through. Maybe all those HSS people are just playing through enough distortion that it's not so noticable, but gee, don't they want it to sound good clean too?
Update:
I got with some friends the other night and had opportunity to turn everything up to 11. I was even more impressed with the sound I was getting from the 59. There was another loud strat in the room, and drums, and I had a great cutting tone. The 500k volume and tone pots gave me exactly what I wanted; I was able to dial in what I was getting out of my Champ (which, with its tiny speaker can tend to be pretty high-mid). Most impressed with the blaze of sound from chords hit on the top 4 strings. All in all, more evidence that this is indeed the right way to wire an HSS strat.
Last year I went through a long phase of experimenting with pickups. The stock "Highway 1" gear in my strat was not what it could be. So I put in a set of fabulous GFS overwound single coils, and then replaced the stock HB with a "real" humbucker: a Duncan '59 (TB59 to be exact).
The trouble was that even through the '59 was an improvement on the stock HB, it still didn't sound right—a bit muddy, especially noticable when switching from the single coils (yes, I know it's supposed to sound different, but it shouldn't come across as straightforwardly 'worse'). The solution was to re-wire the guitar so that the humbucker runs through 500k pots instead of the 250k pots that Fender normally puts in a strat. I wrote this wiring solution up in detail elsewhere.
The result really has me stoked. It sounds FABULOUS now, especially through my tweed champ. The brilliance and balance of this pickup is revealed, and what you hear going from the singles to the humbucker is now what you would expect: the glassy, harmonic-rich fender sound and the fatter, warmer humbucker sound. But it's all there now, where it really wasn't with the generic wiring. The clincher has really been the pinch harmonics—I mean, they're actually there now, where they kind of weren't before. Playing straight into the Champ, even at a low volume, I can pinch and get all kinds of high-end dynamics that make me think of Billy Gibbons. Similarly, the attack I get from muted picking and raking sounds much more like what it should be.
Why do so many people live with fat strats with the compromised stock circuitry? Humbuckers require different pots than single-coil pickups, and the sound suffers if you try to just run it through. Maybe all those HSS people are just playing through enough distortion that it's not so noticable, but gee, don't they want it to sound good clean too?
Update:
I got with some friends the other night and had opportunity to turn everything up to 11. I was even more impressed with the sound I was getting from the 59. There was another loud strat in the room, and drums, and I had a great cutting tone. The 500k volume and tone pots gave me exactly what I wanted; I was able to dial in what I was getting out of my Champ (which, with its tiny speaker can tend to be pretty high-mid). Most impressed with the blaze of sound from chords hit on the top 4 strings. All in all, more evidence that this is indeed the right way to wire an HSS strat.
posted by jmax at
2:34 PM
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