Ed's Neck pickup: Recruited for duty.

[JimiJames]

What is the story on this?

They were great Live, but watching and listening to decent or best possible quality vid's:
Why, when I see him flip the selector switch to the neck, why does it sound like he's still using the bridge pup ?
(realize that his EVH is wired upside down (Gibson/Switchcraft 3-way)

For arguments sake, why does every one else neck pick up
sound like a neck pickup is being used...."Strattylyke"... Ed's doesn't ?
I really noticed this watching him perform his spotlight solo's.

I really don't care what comes with the "models for sale" focusing on "his" guitar and what he's got under-the-hood, there's something going on which really appeals to me, and like to do for myself. Who wouldn't, but not because it's Ed, but to have a humbucker neck pup that sounds like it's in the bridge is just awesome to me. I have Traditional Strat's for the "neck pickup sound" if I need it.

One of the hardest things to do if you are a dual pup user is to balance & match it up with a bridge, just like if your a traditional Stratocaster guy and finding a single coil bridge pup is pretty nerve racking.

What is also been buggin' me is that fricken original singlecoil's role in Franky. Dead ?... or....really really DEAD dead ?
....and his old Stratocaster with the H-S-S setup thinking that there's no tone (knob), and that his second knob back in the day was a second vol or blender.
IDFK ,man ?
Many times his magic humbucker sounded to me like
it had the best qualities a humbucker & singlecoil can offer.

The only other "mad scientist" guess I can come up with is
the two knobs controlling both coils. So, two knobs for one hummer... never tried that...

Sneaky bastahd



~Jimmie

[MrBeasty]

The man has weird tastes, I guess ... he obviously never liked traditional neck pick-ups.

I must say that it is often difficult to find a great pair of pick-ups. I have a LesPaul with a great neck pick-up but finding a good bridge pick-up to match it has been a nightmare ... Ed gave-up on finding a combo until the '90s when he had a custom set made by DiMarzio.

I, for once, prefer a single coil in the neck position, FWIW.

Ed's bridge pick-up had (reportedly) a shorted coil. So, it could still generate electric signal (reads at zero resistance, though) be in full humbucking mode (not like a split humbucker which disables the humbucking) and yet only generates output from one bobbin. Strange bird!

Nothing ever indicated the neck coil in the Frankenstrat ever worked.

I don;t think there is much craziness going on in Ed' guitars anymore. Just two (signature) humbuckers on a three position switch, followed by volume and tone, and a killswitch at the end ...

[Tone Slinger]

'Stay Frosty' ,off of the new album, is a strat. Ed said that was the only solo on the record that wasnt his 'stealth' Wolfgang.
I definately hear the neck pu on that one. Ed typically gets a very standard neck pu tone imo, though 'Stay Frosty' was pretty cool.

My favorite neck pu sound of Ed's is either 'I'll Wait' or 'When It's Love'.

If you have a neck pu you like, but are having difficulty getting a bridge pu to sound good, go SOFTER towards the bridge.
For ex. if you got an A5 magnet pu in the neck, go about 2k hotter at the bridge, with an A2 magnet.

If you are a '3 single coil. 3 knob strat purist' I reccomend NOT putting a full sized hb'er in your guitar. Put in a Duncan hot rail. The 250k on single coils and the 500k on hb'ers is solved with that combo, since the 'mini hb'er' hot rail is designed with the 250k pot in mind.

[motrock]

'Stay Frosty' ,off of the new album, is a strat. Ed said that was the only solo on the record that wasnt his 'stealth' Wolfgang.
I definately hear the neck pu on that one. Ed typically gets a very standard neck pu tone imo, though 'Stay Frosty' was pretty cool.

My favorite neck pu sound of Ed's is either 'I'll Wait' or 'When It's Love'.

If you have a neck pu you like, but are having difficulty getting a bridge pu to sound good, go SOFTER towards the bridge.
For ex. if you got an A5 magnet pu in the neck, go about 2k hotter at the bridge, with an A2 magnet.

If you are a '3 single coil. 3 knob strat purist' I reccomend NOT putting a full sized hb'er in your guitar. Put in a Duncan hot rail. The 250k on single coils and the 500k on hb'ers is solved with that combo, since the 'mini hb'er' hot rail is designed with the 250k pot in mind.

Seriously? Stay Frosty was a Strat? Huh... wow!

[Good Guest]

I think that pickup was a coil for a "Q" filter...hardwired with a fixed value resistor and capacitor ..it would be like the infamous MTC circuit that Ritchie Blackmore used except fixed....the magnets of the pickup would be removed and the pickup used as the inductor in a LCR "Q" tone control..just my SPECULATION..don't want anyone to think this is written in stone.

[Rich_D]

'Stay Frosty' ,off of the new album, is a strat. Ed said that was the only solo on the record that wasnt his 'stealth' Wolfgang.

Link or source? Not being a dick, I seriously want to read it. I thought I had read all he's said so far about new album/tour.

[Rich_D]

People here at metro experimented with blending a front single to their bridge hb. I'm not going to dig the thread up. woodytone.com also did an article on it but after a 10 minute peruse there I didn't find it. I got distracted by other stuff like I always do at fivecoyote's great site.

[fivecoyote]

hah! thanks man! This what you're looking for?

http://www.woodytone.com/2011/03/31/evi ... up-combos/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Good Guest]

I'll stick with the Q filter even more now reading on the woodytone site how their was a low reading on the single coil and how it was so far from the strings it was like not even being there...as a "Q" filter it would be doing what it supposed too tho...then there is the bumble bee with the tone cap and then there was the info from plexified (I think) years ago documenting how the guitars EVH was using had filters for the output, peaking certain frequency's.....

All this rings a bell with something tone slinger was saying on how EVH seems to have a band pass filtered tone going on...a "Q" filter would do just that...and would also confuse the daylights out of any would be pickup makers and other guitarists thinking coil taps and distortion pickups..yep confuse the piss out of them.

There is some stuff on the net using these filters but they use coils along with the pickup as a tone control for the pickup...none actually use the pickup as the inductor for their setup as a tone control for a hb pickup...EVH could of been the first.

Incidentally dimarzio lists the milli henry (mh) values of it's pickups..Seymour Duncan doesn't.

edited to say: even they don't list the inductance any more...jeez the pickup cloner entrepeneur even have the pickup makers in a hiding frenzy.

[jnewlyn]

Interesting perspective here.

[Bore Em at the Forum]

These are definitely some interesting perspectives. Though Ed never cites Blackmore as an influence, (and didn't appreciate being blown off by him)......it's important to remember that the 1976-1978 era was when Blackmore was spending lots of time in LA and holding court at the Rainbow. IIRC from the unauthorized Blackmore Bio, I think Rainbow w/Dio and Deep Purple w/Bolin were using the same facility for tour rehearsals.

This means their regular road crew (and local hires) were doing lots of work with the big names of the day. These guys, never well paid, certainly would have worked some local circuit gigs to make ends meet.

So something like the Q circuit/filter and other tips and tricks would have been quietly filtering out among techs, roadies, repair shops, etc, in LA at the time. It's not hard to imagine that Ed would come across some of the state-of-the-art tricks from "friend of a friend" sources, Jose, Wayne, etc. It certainly would explain why he had a bucket full of different FX pedals and was moving them around - trying out ideas that he was getting tipped off to.

Using the Echoplex in his signal chain (not just for echo) has Blackmore written all over it.

[Tone Slinger]

I agree, Ed was VERY much into Blackmore, from a technical point of view. Ed loved the tremelo picking and ascending/descending triplet licks, Whammy bar, etc.

RichD, I read that in a 'newer' magazine (June ?). Cant remember if it was a Guitar Player or what. It had a dual interview with both Wolf and Ed. It had diagrams showing both's amp/effect set ups.

Ed said there "Was a Strat lying around" and someone said "Hey try it out", or something like that. Ed said he used it on the solo's in 'Stay Frosty' . Here again, you would think Ed would be more specific, like , as to whether it was his strat or not. He was vague, saying "A strat was lying around, etc".