pickups used in early fender lap steel guitars

I now do all of my basic measurements on a Quadtech 9600 LCR meter, which I’ve been able to automate to do full frequency scans between 20 Hz and 1MHz. Among other things, over this pandemic I’ve done a lot of work to automate and improve my measurement capability. In guitar pickups, Stratocaster style single coils tend to have higher Q and PAF style Humbuckers tend to have lower Q. A pendulum with a low Q will stop swinging rapidly after a push. A pendulum with a high Q will swing for a long time before it stops. Q is the Quality Factor and it’s a measure of the extent to which an entity will resonate. After getting it fully measured, I started comparing it to my closest analog, the stock Z-Core5 Underwound (ZVU5), and I was surprised by what I found.īut before we get into that let’s back up a bit and talk about one of the most important measures of pickup performance, the electrical parameter known simply as “Q”. The poles are slightly shorter to accommodate the flat, solid cover, but otherwise this is effectively a ’63 Strat pickup wound to mid ‘50s specs. The ’63 Champ pickup has 3/16” diameter AlNiCo5 pole pieces, as well as the same pole piece spacing, flatwork dimensions and coil height as a standard Strat pickup. I suspected this might be the case, but I was pleasantly surprised to find what amounts to a flat pole, low wind Strat pickup. As soon as the guitar showed up, I took the pickup out to measure it.

Pickups used in early fender lap steel guitars