Pickup musings...

I was A-B'ing my DX (with new Wilkinsons) versus the ST (with used 45's from eBay) and although the Wilkies are quite good, the 45's are a notch above.

MMK45's rule baby!    

Taken all the brass away from a Thunder I with MMk45's
Bone nut, steel bridge/saddles.
Sounds very good indeedy. Obviously slightly brighter but brings the 45's to life.
The reason for doing it,,, older strings sound real dead on brass.

You may recall I put steel saddles on my recently restored Thunder IA (mainly 'cuz I was too cheap to buy brass ones!). And yup, brighter, and it really rattled the windows! Lots o' balls.

MMK45's rule baby!    

 Is it true they were based on Dimarzio super distortions from the same era??
-never owned an example of either. (yet)

Very similar.

You thinking of replacing the crap one's already...  
What year is your awaited one? Do you know?

I don't know the year, I'll try and find that out when it arrives. If I like the pups I'll keep them and have them wax potted. If it's a ubc I will probably replace the humbucker, if not all the pups. I have a question though... I just watched a video with a guy showcasing a white spectrum fx on youtube. It has ubc pickups with rail/blade style pole pieces on one end and regular poles on the other of each pup... These seemed to sound pretty good in the vid and were referred to as " the last generation ubc's." Did westone actually fix the ubc design in the end and make good ones right before they went out of business??? I'd love to know the story of those things, they look super cool.

Click Here to read about the UBC humbucker.

Welcome and that is a beauty. Congratulations

.... and I think you'll find that the 'blade' is just a cover, not an actual blade!! However, as already noted, it IS an MMK45 and theregore avery good pick up.

As an aside in this off-topic UBC musing, my ST - an 87 - has a plastic bottomed pick up and according to either TP or David Blair may well be one of the UBCs they got right; it certainly sounds the goods!! I must dig it out and run it past a meter....

Afraid not John...  

  I'm not too bothered by the whole UBC issue, to be honest; whatever the ST has sound alright to my ears, and lets face it, once the signal is compressed and EQed then has echo, reverb and whatever other FX applied, I defy anyone to pick the difference between the humbucker signal from the ST and the LX/MX or X300.

Too true...
Can take an Affinity Strat and make it sound OK with all the effects you can get these days.  

Yeah, but if you have to invest all that dough on effects and electronic do-dads why not get a decent pup in the first place?

In my case because I was always a 'colourist', not primarily a player of lead lines, in that I would try to match sounds to the songs/tunes, e.g. trying to cop Andy Summers sound for Police numbers, or even as simple as Hank Marvins sound for Shads covers.

I've been through the "fingers-guitar-cable-amp" thing a couple of times and found it exhilarating in the short-term but ultimately frustrating as the sound palette thus is necessarily quite limited!

corsair wrote:  I'm not too bothered by the whole UBC issue, to be honest; whatever the ST has sound alright to my ears, and lets face it, once the signal is compressed and EQed then has echo, reverb and whatever other FX applied, I defy anyone to pick the difference between the humbucker signal from the ST and the LX/MX or X300.

OK... I've been and measured the pickups in the ST by Barrys' quick'n'dirty method...

Spectrum ST

Bridge (humbucking mode) - 20.1KΩ
  "       ( coil split mode)      - 17.1KΩ

Neck (h/b)                         - 20.0KΩ
Neck (s/c)                          - 17.0KΩ

Middle on 3 way                  - 17.1KΩ

By way of comparison,

Raider II (MMK45 equipped)

Bridge (h/b) - 10.7KΩ
Bridge (s/c)  -  5.2KΩ

Middle (3 way) - 5.4KΩ (3.5 split)

Neck (h/b) - 10.8KΩ
Neck (s/c)  -  5.4KΩ

Vantage VA900 (MMK53 equipped)

Bridge (h/b) - 11.4KΩ
Bridge (s/c)  -  5.8KΩ

Middle (3 way) - 5.7KΩ (3.9 split)

Neck (h/b) - 11.0KΩ
Neck (s/c)  -  5.6KΩ       

Now, those values seem awfully high for the ST to me, but is IS very powerful sound; quite articulate so I don't know what to make of that!

I tried measuring the LX and GT as well but the meter went nuts and was giving values in the hundreds of KΩ; was I holding my mouth wrong??! 

Wowser!! You could jump start your tank with that ST pickup!!     No wonder you're not bothered by the UBC controversy.
 What are you feeding it anyway?   

I must say though, that split reading  is very odd and might (dare I say it?) indicate that you have a true UBC??

I don't know, Barry, and therein lies my confusion...

HOW MUCH...  

I'd measure those from the control cavity. Might be wired wrong??

That's extremely high.

Whoa Nelly they be some HIGH numbers on that ST!!!!