Seeking opinions on aesthetics. Swept Wing pickup spacing.

[niksureal]

This seemed a reasonable place to post this. Hopefully that is fine.

Been considering putting another pickup in my Swept Wing but feeling like its gonna look weird. Mine is short scale and the originals are long scale so the available space is more cramped. I tried to mimic an original with the spacing of the neck pickup since it is a bit farther than a Fender style guitar, for example, and there was no plan for a bridge pickup. But it seems maybe I shot myself in the foot.
Really just looking for opinions. I am leaning toward that it looks weird/bad so don't feel you need to say it looks fine.

I understand this is a pretty rough visual but it gives an idea.


Another option I am weighing is putting the second pickup very close to the neck pickup, just totally abandon normal pickup placement.

[ChrisDesign]

It’s personal preference. I would put a Humbucker in the bridge, spaces the same distance from the saddle as a Gibson SG.

[mgeek]

Been considering putting another pickup in my Swept Wing but feeling like its gonna look weird.

If the purpose of having a second pickup is for tone variation, sticking it right up against the other one would seem a bit pointless.

How about using a totally different type of pickup, something a bit smaller perhaps? Either way my choice would be to get it as close to the bridge as possible, almost touching

[countertext]

I would locate it very close to the bridge, but at the same angle as the neck pickup.

[niksureal]

thanks for the responses.
yeah the point would be using a different type of pickup (not humbucker haha). just so i can switch things up on the fly. the pickup currently in it is definitely not lacking brightness or too heavy on the bass frequencies. i have just been liking some different things lately. i am thinking making the bridge pickup angled would have same issues as original post but be less vintage accurate. which if im going that route, making it close to the other pickup seems maybe more attractive to me.
thanks everyone!

[ChrisDesign]

Been considering putting another pickup in my Swept Wing but feeling like its gonna look weird.

If the purpose of having a second pickup is for tone variation, sticking it right up against the other one would seem a bit pointless.

The tone will be different if you butt pickups up together. Just think of the Les Paul Custom with three pickups. Those pickups all sound different despite being next to each other.

[jvin248]

.

Choose the pickup position you want for tone. Think of a Strat with three identical coils (middle is reverse wound but the same specs) and how the tone changes when switching from neck/middle/bridge. An LP and SG sound different with the same pickups because the SG has 24 frets pushing the neck pickup closer to the bridge nearly as much as a Strat middle coil vs neck coil tone.

Curious what pickup you are planning for. A Dynasonic style?

What is the pickup you have now? A humbucker with a designer cover? Goldfoil type P90 style? Or something else under there?

I have a Tele Esquire/Junior with a single bridge humbucker that I split out to individual coils and use a 4-way switch for 'neck'/parallel/'bridge side'/humbucker and it covers a lot of tonal ground. If your current pickup has two coils and four wires you can do the same. Even a typical push/pull tone pot mod can give you single coil tones and is the way I do it on another Junior I have because I didn't want to cut the top to put a blade switch in it. Or change so you do have a four wire humbucker style, and adjusting screw pole heights you can alter the character of one or both bobbins and when switching you'll have multiple voicing for the guitar.



.

[jorri]

+1
Chose based on tone.
There are numerous sweet spots manufacturers have used. It can impact as much as pickup choice.
Like a mixing engineer remarked, the best way to separate a mix is have one guitar on neck, one on lead, and doesn't matter if its a different amp, guitar, pedal, that's more important.

The technical part of sweet spots is due to it not being like it goes from 0-10 like a volume control.
There are harmonics and nodes. So you will get a node at every whole number subdivision (1/2,1/3,1/4,etc) and a stronger point for midway of those nodes. At a node the overtone is effectively silenced as it is where the wave doesn't vibrate.
Generally placing a bridge pickup will be further from the fundamental, and lowest harmonics' strongest points of vibrations so there is more of a pronounced effect.
But sometimes fender have placed pickup positions exactly on nodes (like, there is one harmonic that does not sound on a jazz bass neck pickup!).

You can also tilt, reverse tilt or keep straight.
The start, tele and Jag bridge pickup is effectively the same, but the position is different for all an determines more of their sound.

Simple way: find a guitar model you like and copy it.
I think this guitar may look and sound good with something slanted like a Mosrite personally

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Something like this looks like it should work nicely. Make the pickup wider than the bridge but narrower than the neck pickup so the whole look goes from narrow to width...



If you can make another matching cover (maybe even switch the parallelogram round so it's narrow to wide / wide to narrow, if you know what I mean) it should look super cool & not cluttered at all

[niksureal]

The tone will be different if you butt pickups up together. Just think of the Les Paul Custom with three pickups. Those pickups all sound different despite being next to each other.

true. but definitely looking for different pickup type

Choose the pickup position you want for tone. Think of a Strat with three identical coils (middle is reverse wound but the same specs) and how the tone changes when switching from neck/middle/bridge. An LP and SG sound different with the same pickups because the SG has 24 frets pushing the neck pickup closer to the bridge nearly as much as a Strat middle coil vs neck coil tone.

Curious what pickup you are planning for. A Dynasonic style?

What is the pickup you have now? A humbucker with a designer cover? Goldfoil type P90 style? Or something else under there?

I have a Tele Esquire/Junior with a single bridge humbucker that I split out to individual coils and use a 4-way switch for 'neck'/parallel/'bridge side'/humbucker and it covers a lot of tonal ground. If your current pickup has two coils and four wires you can do the same. Even a typical push/pull tone pot mod can give you single coil tones and is the way I do it on another Junior I have because I didn't want to cut the top to put a blade switch in it. Or change so you do have a four wire humbucker style, and adjusting screw pole heights you can alter the character of one or both bobbins and when switching you'll have multiple voicing for the guitar.

i put a gfs surf90 in something recently and it just worked so well, was thinking of trying that. guess thats kinda dynasonic-y.
i made the pickup in it now. i used a broken blackfoil coil i had fixed with a random magnet i found. sounds really good, very bright and spanky. for a neck pickup that is. would probably be too much for a bridge pickup. if it were two coils id probably mess with the wiring before thinking of putting in a new pickup.

+1
Chose based on tone.
There are numerous sweet spots manufacturers have used. It can impact as much as pickup choice.
Like a mixing engineer remarked, the best way to separate a mix is have one guitar on neck, one on lead, and doesn't matter if its a different amp, guitar, pedal, that's more important.

The technical part of sweet spots is due to it not being like it goes from 0-10 like a volume control.
There are harmonics and nodes. So you will get a node at every whole number subdivision (1/2,1/3,1/4,etc) and a stronger point for midway of those nodes. At a node the overtone is effectively silenced as it is where the wave doesn't vibrate.
Generally placing a bridge pickup will be further from the fundamental, and lowest harmonics' strongest points of vibrations so there is more of a pronounced effect.
But sometimes fender have placed pickup positions exactly on nodes (like, there is one harmonic that does not sound on a jazz bass neck pickup!).

You can also tilt, reverse tilt or keep straight.
The start, tele and Jag bridge pickup is effectively the same, but the position is different for all an determines more of their sound.

Simple way: find a guitar model you like and copy it.
I think this guitar may look and sound good with something slanted like a Mosrite personally

i am not worried about getting a specific sound at all. just looking for new and more sounds. good info/advice though.

Something like this looks like it should work nicely. Make the pickup wider than the bridge but narrower than the neck pickup so the whole look goes from narrow to width...



If you can make another matching cover (maybe even switch the parallelogram round so it's narrow to wide / wide to narrow, if you know what I mean) it should look super cool & not cluttered at all

i dont mind that at all. just wonder how to accomplish that. use a p90 form factor? i dont have any tools/supplies for making something from scratch.

[garyptaszek]

Jag bridge pickup in the bridge position straight, or a P90. I dig mismatched pickups.

[Embenny]

The tone will be different if you butt pickups up together. Just think of the Les Paul Custom with three pickups. Those pickups all sound different despite being next to each other.

While I agree that the tone will still change despite pickups being near each other, it should be noted that you can't actually use the middle pickup by itself on those 3-pickup Gibsons. The middle switch position is the bridge and middle pickup out of phase, because they didn't think the middle pickup sounded different enough on its own.

[jorri]

Id say avoid being too visual. Pickup position is a defining feature of guitar sound so look up some distances some guitars use. There are lots of harmonic nodes around there which can vary the sound quite a bit.

As for putting them closer together, you likely get an interesting combined sound still, but yes it wont be like a rhythm/lead as much as you get from neck/bridge usually.

I like the image Porky posted in terms of pickup type. But why not have a standard bridge position a bit closer? It would probably look even better, then you can play around with tilt so is closer to the bridge on the treble side, symmetrical eith the other one.

[epizootics]

This one might be my favorite of yours! It must be a head-turner at gigs.

I like the shrunk looks of the photoshopped version PorkyPrimeCut posted. You could get that look with a mini-humbucker, but to my knowledge there are no plastic mini-hum covers. You'd have to get a black Firebird pickup cover (I've seen'em floating around), dremel out a section on top and add your insert, but nickel-silver makes that an uneasy job.

Alternatively, cutting out a plastic P90 cover could do it, but you'd have to have a pickup that allows for height adjustment from the sides or corners. I did something similar on this guitar:



It's a shame you're not in Europe (or maybe it's a good thing looking at the way things are going right now), I happily would've wound something weird for you!