No difference at Input 1/Instrument level between medium and high output pickups

S

Steven Persson

Inspired
Hello!

One thing that confused me a bit is the level of the input 1/instrument level on the I/O-page in the setup. I recently changed pickups from Solar Humbuckers (medium output) to DiMarzio D Activator pickups that are very hot. It's said you should "tickle the red" and with the Solar Humbuckers that was around 95%. When chaging out these to the DiMarzios I figured I probably needed to lower that significantly. But the my guitar still tickles the red - it's not fullblown red as I imagined it would be.
On Leon Todds setup video, he's on 20 % and tickling the red - that's 75% lower than my guitar!

Can someone elaborate on this?
 
You can say the EMG 81 is a pretty hot output, but IME it seems the DiMarzio Crunch Lab is hotter. Yet, nothing comes close to the Seymour Duncan Blackouts which are Hell hot. As Cliff pointed out, pickup output seems to vary depending on the company. I have my Input set at 10% with both EMG 81 and Crunch Lab "tickling the red" while the Blackouts have a very strong output. All three are working good with the Axe.
 
AJ Vargas said:
You can say the EMG 81 is a pretty hot output, but IME it seems the DiMarzio Crunch Lab is hotter. Yet, nothing comes close to the Seymour Duncan Blackouts which are Hell hot. As Cliff pointed out, pickup output seems to vary depending on the company. I have my Input set at 10% with both EMG 81 and Crunch Lab "tickling the red" while the Blackouts have a very strong output. All three are working good with the Axe.
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Yeah, I got Crunch Lab in my other guitar as well. Still tickling the red at 95% so how yours tickling the red at 10% is confusing to me. Could do something with the electronics in the guitar?
 
AJ Vargas said:
Yet, nothing comes close to the Seymour Duncan Blackouts which are Hell hot.
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You got that right. I got a set in one of my Ibanez RGs. Holy fu@k. Any preset I've made with a DiMarzio Evo or super distortion is feedback city. I don't really care for them personally.
 
OrganicZed said:
Pickup height, string gauge, and how heavy the player hits the strings all can affect output level.
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This is exactly what I was going to say. To get the high output you do have to set your pickups closer to the strings. I'm tickling the red art 10% with my medium output Saturday Night Specials by Duncan, and that's only because they are set very close to the strings. I used to have them flush with the pickguard, and at that height they tickled the red at 90%. I'm using D'Addario Balanced Tension 9s, slightly lower tension strings than normal 9s, for context. My picking is all over the place, adjusted for what I'm playing.
 
Okay, okay...well my strings are 11-56 in C-standard. The D Activator and Crunch Lab pickups are ⅓ of an inch from the strings, but I reckon that was the case with the Solar Humbuckers as well. But that might explain the case.
 
Steven Persson said:
Okay, okay...well my strings are 11-56 in C-standard. The D Activator and Crunch Lab pickups are ⅓ of an inch from the strings, but I reckon that was the case with the Solar Humbuckers as well. But that might explain the case.
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If they are at the same height, then I'm with Cliff on this one. 🙂 Output is often described in terms of resistance, but Scott Lawing, who makes the awesome ZexCoil pickups, writes that inductance is the only real measure of it. I have no idea myself haha. But if what he writes is actually the case, then I'm thinking one or both companies might be using the wrong measure. I know that on DiMarzio's site they list resistance, and they have their own output scale, I guess, that is different than that: e.g., the Air Classic Bridge lists a resistance of 8.62 Kohm, but an Output of 226; I don't know what that 226 is. Maybe someone can weigh in on resistance vs inductance.
 
AJ Vargas said:
You can say the EMG 81 is a pretty hot output
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My two EMG81 guitars are less "hot" than my passives (mainly JB/Nazgul/Dimebucker) and far less hot than my Fluences. Probably due to the inherent compression the EMGs have at 9V. But they do the EMG "thing", which is unique. It's about sound and feel, not raw gain.

It's why volume and gain knobs exist.
 
I find the EMG 81 to be more of a medium to slightly-hotter-than-medium output pickup.

Actually, tonally, my 81 I've had for years has always sounded and felt like something between a single coil and humbucker to me.
 
rossipedia said:
My two EMG81 guitars are less "hot" than my passives (mainly JB/Nazgul/Dimebucker) and far less hot than my Fluences. Probably due to the inherent compression the EMGs have at 9V. But they do the EMG "thing", which is unique. It's about sound and feel, not raw gain.

It's why volume and gain knobs exist.
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Which is exactly what should be happening, passive pickups don't have internal clipping
 
rossipedia said:
I feel like there's a part of the equation here I'm missing, because this always feels weird to me. How do you get higher output at higher resistance, when higher resistance reduces voltage? Maybe I'm looking at things backwards...
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Typically the resistance is higher because there are more turns (wraps) of wire around the pickup bobbins. The more turns around the core an inductor or transformer has, the more output voltage it produces for a given variation in the magnetic field it is in (to a certain point). That's why hot pickups are sometimes called overwound. They are literally over-wound with extra wire.

The coil is only one part of the equation though. The strength of the magnetic field is just as important. That's where your different pickup magnet types and strengths as well as string gauge and pickup height come into play.
 
mr_fender said:
Typically the resistance is higher because there are more turns (wraps) of wire around the pickup bobbins. The more turns around the core an inductor or transformer has, the more output voltage it produces for a given variation in the magnetic field it is in (to a certain point). That's why hot pickups are sometimes called overwound. They are literally over-wound with extra wire.

The coil is only one part of the equation though. The strength of the magnetic field is just as important. That's where your different pickup magnet types and strengths as well as string gauge and pickup height come into play.
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Ahhhh ok. So output voltage and DC resistance are related due to both being properties of how much wire is used. In my head a pickup's resistance seems like a irrelevant property since the pickup itself is generating alternating voltage for it's given resistance.

But I guess it makes sense to focus on that since it's a static value for a given pickup. You can't really rate a pickup on the output voltage it produces I guess.
 
When comparing similarly designed pickups, yes. There are many variables that determine the pickups actual output, so comparing resistance is really only useful when most of those other variables are the same. For example, if you use 42 gauge wire on one pickup and wind it to 8K DC resistance and use 43 gauge wire on another and wide it to the same 8K resistance, the higher resistance per foot of the smaller 43 gauge wire will cause you will end up with less overall length of wire on that coil (less turns). The thinner diameter also means that the coil size itself will be slightly smaller as well. Both of these will affect the output and tone of the pickup even if all the other factors are identical between them. Another example would be if you had two identical pickup coils with the same wire and DC resistance, but one uses weaker Alnico 2 magnets and the other uses stronger Alnico 5 magnets. Again, same resistance, but different outputs and tones.
 
To make matters even more complicated, the further a pickup is from the bridge, the hotter the output will be, other things being equal. So the same pickup will have different output levels on different guitars.
 
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