Scott Henderson Discussion

[ItAllanLover]

Hi Scott, i want to improve my Strat, what's your suggestion for the pickups, considering that i need two single coil and an Hum for the bridge?
Right now i have 2 texas special and a JB....

Thanks a lot for your help, your advices are treasures!

[Scott Henderson]

This is a personal taste question, but maybe my opinion will help. Texas Specials are pretty bright, and the JB is high output and has a lot of midrange, so you're probably hearing a big tonal change when switching from the neck to bridge pickup. I like the change in tone to be more subtile - on my SSS guitars I use the same exact pickup in all three positions.

I like the Suhr ML's - they're not quite as bright as traditional strat pickups and they sound a bit fatter. I use a Suhr Thornbucker on my SSH guitar. It's an exact copy of the original PAF and it's very low output, so it matches nicely with single coils and it has a beautiful tone. Another pickup I like is the Duncan '59. It has more output and mids than the Thornbucker, but not nearly as much as the JB. If you want your SSH guitar to sound more even between the three pickups, I think you'll like the combination of ML's and the Thornbucker.

I should also mention that humbucking pickups sound better with a 500k volume pot, and single coils sound better with 250k. Suhr uses a mega-switch wiring which runs the single coils and humbucker the right way. Also the single coils should have a 0.22 cap on the tone pot, and the humbucker should have a 0.47.

[ItAllanLover]

Thanks a lot!

ML Classic or Standard?

http://www.suhr.com/suhr-guitar-pickups/ml-pickups/

[Scott Henderson]

ML Standard. The Classic is bright, similar to your Texas Special.

[ItAllanLover]

Great! Thanks again!

[Mojolang]

Here's another one - if you were going to use an HSSH - like in a Steve Morse, what humbucker would you use in the neck?

[Scott Henderson]

Again this is personal taste, but I really like the Duncan Jazz humbucker in the neck position - it's very clear sounding. If you want more midrange, like a Sco sound, I'd go for a '59 in the neck. If you want less mids, the Suhr Thornbucker is a more scooped sound. It sounds great in the bridge position of a strat, but I've never heard it in the neck position.

[countandduke]

For what it's worth, I too LOVE the Duncan Jazz in the neck of a guitar it's pretty much the only pickup I've liked in that position. Even with a lot of gain, it's a very clear sounding pickup but can warm up with the tone control rolled down...

I also like a 59 in the bridge but I also like my Suhr SSV pickup along with other Duncan pickups too, the Custom Custom is cool, the 78 pickup I thought was really close to the Suhr SSV among others and I even remember a Gibson 57 classic plus sounding fantastic in the bridge of an older Les Paul Custom I had...

Best,
Chris

[Travis]

While on the topic of an HSS Strat:

Scott, have you tried a any humbuckers in parallel (a typical humbucker is arranged in series for more output) in an HSS arrangement? I ask because I have found that to be a more musical sound with a Strat than that of a typical humbucker. A JB in parallel is a wonderful sound; I don't even have a switch to make it in series in one of my strats because it sounds so good.

I think Pete Thorn hipped me to it first, so I'm sure he or John Suhr could elaborate more on it.

[Scott Henderson]

I've never heard of that before so it's something John will have to explain to me. The way my SSH guitar with the Thornbucker is wired, I can't imagine it sounding better - all 3 pickups are around the same volume, and the pots are at 250k for the single coils and 500k for the humbucker. I'll ask John more about it.

[peter_heijnen]

I have had the bridge pick up of my faux HSH strat wired for series and paralel for ages and i love it too. Dimarzio sold their pups with installation guides for series/paralel wiring, that's how i learned about it in the dark pre-internet ages.

Seymour Duncan took the idea one step further with their P-rail pup and Triple-shot mounting ring. The P-rail is not your typical humbucker because it consists of one 'p90' coil and one 'ordinary' single coil. Instead of using push pull pots or toggles to switch the coils, you can install the pup with SD's Triple-shot mounting ring that has two mini switches on it. They allow you to switch from single coil to p90 to paralel to series. I love it.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/product-news/p-rails-now-available-with-triple-shots

Btw, is it ok to post that kind of links here?

[slyzspyz]

would a HB wired in parallel be similar to Robbie Robertson's strat which had the middle pickup moved next to the bridge pickup? ie two single coils next to each other, I think his were still wired normally, or with a series option

[Travis]

Similar maybe? I don't know what kind of pickups Robbie had but if they were strat pickups they would sound different than a standard humbucker. The magnet and bottom plate construction in a humbucker has a lot to do with its inductance and magenetic properties and thusly sound. Single could have rod magnets and have a much smaller magnetic field. I don't know exactly how but construction wise, they would be very different, so I would think that they would be pretty different tonally.

What's neat about parallel with a typically mid rangey and kind of muddy pickup like a JB, is that you get that extended high end that a single coil has, but you still have the mids of the humbucker coming through. But with lower output pickups this can make the pickup sound really, really anemic. Which is kind of what I think two stock strat pickups like Robbie's would be like. They'd have rewound pretty hot (8k+ a piece) but who knows?

It's a fairly standard Gretsch feature with their mini humbuckers too I think.

[countandduke]

"Muddy...". I've played a few JB's over the years and I didn't think they sounded muddy to me... I know it's very hard to talk about time and convey exactly what you mean using words but the JB's I've played had a healthy amount of mids, not a ton of bass and some "sizzle" on top. To my ears almost "honky" in the mids but I liked the extra sustain it provided with the extra output...

To me, and I know this is subjective, but "muddy" to me means lots of bass and low mids that can smear the clarity in the low register and I didn't get that from a JB. Cheaper no-name brand pickups would give that "muddiness", but I'll be the first to admit my ears are so NOT on s Scott or Holdsworth level...

Best,
Chris

PS. I mean NO disrespect...

[Travis]

No sweat Chris,

I meant it was a "muddy" humbucker when you compare it to say, a vintage Strat pickup, or even a more vintage spec PAF, like the Thornbucker Scott is using. A JB is a pretty hot pickup (15k+!), and the hotter the pickup is, the less high end it has as a byproduct of the overwinding. A hot humbucker wired in series (like a normal humbucker), used in strat with vintage spec pickups will be drastically different tonally when switching between pickups; with the high end being much more "muddy" and "murky" sounding on the JB; like a tone control is rolled off slightly. The difference will be even more so if you use a 250K load with all three pickups. You can easily make the load correctly change without a superswitch if you don't do the "tone control bypass" switching in the combined strat postions 2&4 like Scott likes with the superswitch. All you need is a 500k pot and a 470k resistor and it will make the load 250k in every position but the humbucker by itself.

However complicated all this is: I have found that vintage spec humbuckers, like the Thornbucker, don't sound nearly as good in the parallel wiring arrangement as the JB does. This is mostly because the JB is so hot, overwound, dark and midrangey as a series humbucker. The parallel wiring is lower output and brighter; almost like a Tele pickup. As for Scott; if you had a guitar with an overwound Suhr pickup like an Aldrich, that would be more of a contender for the parallel wiring than the Thornbucker.