EVH Tone - Pickup Roundup

[EJSLPlexi]

Speculation on the 78 my friend-there is NO proof ed ever used it. Anywhere. Again...hype and speculation.
The ONLY pickup Edwardo ever put his name on that MIGHT be A2 is the frankenstein bucker. And until I see it in spec print on his website.... I doubt that is either. I have not had the chance to play it. But it was brighter than than the wolfs were LIVE and I know without a doubt the wolfs are A5.
All the rest were A5. Ebmm, pv, Evh wolf, charvel art, striped series, all A5. I know because I have played them. A2 and A5 are distinctly different.
.

Fender/EVH support says:

Bridge: average ~14k, Alnico II

Neck: average ~16k, Alnico II

Pete thorn also confirmed Alnico II in the EVH wolfgang set but what would he know

[dirtycooter]

Anyone know a metallurgist?? Maybe to settle this what we need is metallurgical testing.
And can I ask when your wrong if I can get an apology??
What would we care to wager here?? Anybody else want in on this??
I am bettin this will be educational and valuable for everyone. Knowledge is power
I know your gettin all heated up about this A2 thing being IT. There is not one solid piece of evidence anywhere that proves this. Period. I know because I have been lookin at all this for years. Years! It all boils down to nowhere absolutely legitimate ever on the A2 thing. I asked for facts-not someones opinion. Those are two very different things. So you talked to some jack at evh and he said..... what? On the phone? Can I see the email??
Somebody can say what they want to. But posting a spec by the manufacturer legitly has not happened. NOT HAPPENED.
But I talked to so and so and they said such and such......
LEGIT SPECIFICATION IS NOT POSTED. WHY????
Pickups are a murky area and manufacturers would like to keep it that way. It perpetuates a market when you sell confusion. And also not be held to strictly legally to their specifications.
I am done arguing this A2 thing. I am ready for metallurgy. And then it will all be over with but the cryin.
Anyone like Thorn has not a whole lot to loose in this game. He gave an opinion that may never have the potential to effect him adversly if he is wrong. Maybe if Friedman or Suhr weighed in on it. But I bet neither will touch this with a ten foot pole.

[dirtycooter]

Heres an experiment
We need a pickup winder guy that has all the tools to adjust mag strength and measurement.
Two wolf pickups
One gets a known A2 replacement mag to the same mag strength as what was taken out of it and put in place of it.
School will be in session then

We need two wolf or two franky pickups. One to butcher and one to compare.
Then someone with a magnetizer/degausser and a way to measure its magnatism of the original and bring the new A2 mag to the same strength. Simple magnet swap but a direct comparison of all things being equal other than material of the mag.
THAT will be the cats ass test and I am ready to donate $50 toward this project.

[Tone Slinger]

When you listen to playbacks it is easy to be fooled by a pickup. Hell, even a different amp (through the same cab though) can be hard at times. Same with guitars. I will say this, just simple things, like striking a open A power chord (ala ERUPTION) 'can' distinguish things like the bridge being used. Try and clean up on a floyd guitar via the guitars volume, do the same on a Fender. This difference completly undermines a pickup.
David Bray has his own thing going on style-wise, he isnt trying to play an exact cover of a VH song. Leotis prolly has his own thing going on too, but in his clips he is going totally for copying Ed.

I do think that Ed was using a pu very similar to a Duncan '78 on that '78 tour up through the second tour (in Franky). I know I've seen evidence confirming that Ed's strat was striped up prior to the first albums recording but the pickup is Still under speculation, though Im more and more thinking Seymour had a go with Eds Es335's paf earlier than I thought (say May or June '77) .

[Tone Slinger]

Plus, you add to the equation that Ed combined 25 watters with jbl's on VH1 along with the fact that his 12xxx was still 'pre fat cap' and one can see how the SAME pu could have been used through the SAME guitar through the SAME amp on both VH1 & VHII.

The v1b combo of 800/.68uf(or 2.7k/.68uf) along with the v2a combo of 800/.68uf gives a very bright and tight feel on the strings, regardless of the guitar or pickup. Now put a fat cap over v2a (330uf electrolytic) and your gonna get more width lower mids, bottom, but, your also gonna lose a bit of that thinner tight edge and bite.
Ed, I think, had that main top serviced prior to that first tour and its exact spec was forever changed as compared to VH1, simple as that may be.

[rgorke]

Ed was changing pickups on a regular basis. Just look at all the pictures. Going from one black pickup to another...you can tell by the degree of wax potting disaster melting. He also put a creme MM (it may be the same one that ended up in the Shark?) at one point.

(I tried to upload photos but I got a message "Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached")

[deacon]

anyone try KNE's bsk yet?

[BowerR64]

I thought the frankie was the black fender also with just a maple neck on it.

Why would it be routed like an early fender and why does it have the older vintage tremolo?

All the hardware from the frankie looks like old fender parts. Even the switch and the single coil it seems weird to put that stuff in there if he didnt need it.

He said in a recent video "the american dream" that he unhooked the single coil and wired in the humbuucker and didnt know if it would even work without the rest of the stuff hooked up but it worked.

It made more sence to me that it was orginaly a black guitar and he just wrapped tape around it and then painted it white.

If the franky isnt the black fender that orginaly started with a rosewood neck what happened to it? It seems to have gone missing the same time the white one showed up.

This is why i think part of his tone is 250k pots because thats what came in vintage 3 single coil fenders at that time.

What temprature does magnets lose their magnet pull? If he got it so hot that it melted the bobins could he have ruined the magnet as well?

Another question was that he had one of the pickups rewound by duncan, my thought was it was an over wound 58 between one of the albums and thats when his sound changed?

I like the sound of a 250k pot over a 500k though

[Tone Slinger]

The Franky was/is a 2 piece center seamed ash body. It isnt a very nice example of a bookmatched 2 piece center seam though. It appears to be an 'A' seam though, as opposed to a 'V' . In the one pic of it 'raw' before he painted it, you can see how the grain curves around the contours, denoting the area of the seam and its join style/seam.
It was unfinished first, then he painted it black. In both variations he used a rosewood board neck. The sharper, blockier profiles of the body ELIMINATE it as being a Fender. Just as we had gathered LONG AGO here on the forums, the Franky was bare, then black (both versions were VERY short lived) and then he taped it and painted it white and added the Ellsworth/Boogie Bodies neck and black paf. Ed disclosed as much in the Smithsonian interview. The body was sold at Wayne Charvels shop pre San Dimas. The shop was in Azusa at the time. These bodies are often refered to as 'Azusa's'. Speculation is that Paul Shecter helped Wayne out setting up his shop and let him (and Lynn Ellsworth) use his template (strat).

[rdodson]

Yep.

Lynn came out of the furniture business. Remember, no CNC machines back then!

[Tone Slinger]

Imagine being in that Azusa shop back in '77 with the knowledge we have NOW, and a couple grand.......leave with several ash Azusa bodies and Ellsworth necks

[rdodson]

Yes absolutely.

People talk about #22 and #28 being way "different" with #22 being so much closer to the Frank...yet for the pre-CNC days those bodies are so close.

Look at vintage Strats, especially the '50s ones...the necks and bodies are all over the board if that level of detail is the standard. Most modern 3rd party builders have a grail instrument they have blueprinted and that is why the strat bodies from the different makers are all different. Edenhaus/B.Hefner, USACustom, MK, Allparts...each have their own idiosyncrasies yet all are within the realm of what came out of Fullerton.

Today we blueprint, program the CNC and boom...clone after clone.

[rgorke]

So glad MY pickup thread is about bodies...that beings said, is there a side by side of #22 and #28 and Franky?

[rdodson]

So glad MY pickup thread is about bodies...that beings said, is there a side by side of #22 and #28 and Franky?

Sorry! Apologies.

#22

#28

[Tone Slinger]

Gotta say, Mitch (KnE) has gotten REAL close with his. Ed's particular Azusa seemed to have the top part of bottom/butt,right as it comes up to the forearm contour, sanded/cut out more than those two examples. I think Musikraft OVERSHOT this aspect. Rough grit sandpaper on a sanding block is all thats needed to approximate that on a KnE. I might try it myself on one of my KnE's.