pickups and resistance

[notCardio]

OK, I keep seeing the specs for pickups and would like to know what knowing the DC resistance would tell me. Does a lower resistance mean a hotter pickup? And does knowing the DC resistance help me in choosing pot values, or matching pickups? The Duncan website also lists the 'resonant peak' for each pickup. What does this tell me?

Newbie-ish questions, but I figure I'm not the only one who doesn't know and I'll volunteer to be the one to look foolish for the class.

 

[ocnor]

A higher DC resistance means the pickup was wound more times or with thicker wire and generally indicates a hotter pickup. A higher resonant peak means the pickup will be brighter sounding. Using a higher value pot raises the pickups resonant peak.

 

[Milnoque]

You have to be careful using any one value to get a sense of how a pickup will behave. Lower resistance and stronger magnets may be hotter than higher resistance weaker magnets for instance. Resonant peak does help you know about brightness but it doesn't tell you much about overall frequency response.

But Ocnor is correct and often that's all the information you have.

 

[ranjam]

You guys aren't quite right, but the end result (and intention) is that the one 'number' doesn't tell the whole story. Even knowing a few 'numbers' won't tell you how the pickup sounds in your guitar, as the body wood, the pickup position (neck, middle, or bridge), and other variables all change the tone slightly.
Basically, you can have 42ga. or 43ga. wire wound to the same DC resistance, and sound different. The 43ga. may be 'underwound', and sound thin in comparison. That's because the 43ga. wire has a higher ohms-per-foot resistance, and just winding to a final resistance will give you a pickup with fewer turns.
The impedance of the pickup is variable across the frequency spectrum. The frequency where the impedance is the highest is the resonant peak. The higher the resonant peak, the brighter the pickup, all else being equal. But the resonant peak is inversely proportional to the DC winding resistance, so any pickup maker has trade offs and balances to consider.
There's more, but who needs to know it all? You can look up magnet type, inductance, distributed capacitance, and whatever else you can think of. It's fun in a nerdy way, but doesn't tell you what the pickup will sound like. You have to go with experience and some knowledge. You know what a PAF sounds like with Alnico II magnets and maybe 5,000 turns of 42ga. wire. Or you know what a Strat pickup with 42ga. wire on Alnico V magnets sounds like. Go from there.

 

[notCardio]

Thanks for the responses. And ranjam, I understand what you're getting at, but if you don't already know what a certain pickup with a certain wire and magnets sounds like, sometimes specs are all you've got to go on. For instance, I've got a guitar with a DiMarzio PAF Pro in the neck, and I wonder if it's hotter than a Duncan '59 that I bought cheap. Yeah, I know, try it and see, but I don't want to go through the hassle of replacing it just to find out that it's not very different. But you see what I mean., anyway. I realize that I won't know for sure until I do it, but I would like to be able to make an educated guess.

Thanks again, guys.

 

[ranjam]

Larry DiMarzio doesn't give out too much information, but enough to compare with Seymour. And I'd imagine they'd be very close. The DiMarzio has 8.4K of of DC resistance using 42ga. wire on Alnico V magnets, while Duncan has 8.13K, using 42ga. on Alnico V magnets. That's the bridge model. Dimarzio won't do it, but Duncan offers a neck model, wound down to 7.43K of DC resistance. And the resonant peak goes up from 6K to 6.8K with the neck pickup. So you 'see' where the neck pickup doesn't lose a lot of output (and that's still OK, since the same pickups tend to sound louder in the neck position), but gets some top end back (the higher resonant peak), and shouldn't sound muddy like high gain pickups in the neck position would. The DiMarzio would likely sound just a little hotter, and their propaganda even has the PAF Pro under the 'Medium Output' list.
That's just looking at numbers, but when you've swapped dozens of pickups in the same guitar, you'll get a sixth sense of what you should like.

 

[JCH]

Bill Lawrence sez- "Judging a pickups output by resistance is like judging a mans intelligence by his shoe size"

Anything, and everything done to a pickup will alter it's tone in one way or another. Since there's no way of measuring how something sounds we all have to rely on someone else's biased opinion. A good cook can tell by looking at a recipe how something will taste, just as an experienced winder will have an idea how something will sound, but there's no exact measurement for flavor, or tone. You have to judge for yourself, and find out what works best for you.