Lollar Pickups Blog

Welcome to the Lollar Pickups Blog, where we share in-depth information and stories about the pickups we build.

Tag Archives: tech

A Humbucker By Any Other Name

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This is probably what you pictured when you read the word “humbucker”…

The term humbucker probably brings to mind the “Gibson” sound, or rather – and more specifically –  the “Patent Applied For” or “P.A.F.” sound. The pickups made by Gibson in this narrow time frame, spanning from the late ’50s to early ’60s (though the patent was officially awarded in 1959) have become synonymous with what a humbucker “should” sound like. Never mind the fact that rarely would you ever find two P.A.F.-era pickups that share the same exact sound, but that’s a whole other topic unto itself. Because of this, what is now considered a traditional humbucker has become as much form as it is function.

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Welcome To The DULLhouse

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We get asked all the time, “Why does my old pickup sound dull?” There are many reasons the tone can suffer on vintage pickups.

These p'ups aren't just *playing* dead... They're dead!
These p’ups aren’t just *playing* dead. They’re actually dead!

We can’t resurrect or improve every beaten, tired, old pickup that we come across. Some of them, like the ones seen above, are just too far gone. Only a complete rebuild, with brand new parts could bring them back to life, but at that point, you may as well just replace it! You can’t shine a turd, as they say — and even if you could, you’d still just have a shiny turd. But, just maybe, your dull sound isn’t the turd you thought it was, so in this edition, we’ll address the possible causes and potential solutions.

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Tone Chasin’: The Skinny on Capacitors and Potentiometers (Or Caps and Pots)—Part 2

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By Jason Lollar

In my previous post, I wrote about choosing the best pots for your sound (If you haven’t done so already, you can read it HERE). In this post, I will focus on capacitors (or caps), the different types/values, and how they work to affect and influence your guitar tone.

Choosing the Right Capacitors

Tone capacitors are wired to the tone pot so the signal from the guitar pickup will pass high frequencies to ground when the tone pot is rolled down. The higher the value of the cap the wider the range of frequencies that get rolled off to ground. With lower value caps only the highest frequencies get cut off.

As a secondary effect, the higher the value cap, the more frequencies are rolled off with a shorter throw on the pot. So, with a high value cap the tone control can act more like an off or on switch. With a lower value cap, you can throw a lot farther on the pot, so you can dial in the tone with finer adjustment.

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