ShortScale.org

Its no secret that I love the SD Hotrail.
The first one I bought was almost 20 years ago and is still in my guitar. SD has changed them a little over the years and by far I prefer the old ones. It's the style that has a fabric coil cover and a large bottom plate. If I remember right I think I had to modify the bottom plate to fit it in the guitar (I might be wrong though). The newer ones are still great sounding pickups, but you need to enlarge the pickguard opening on vintage Mustangs (reissues are ok). I have never measured the output of any of them, but would guess that the older ones have a bit lower output and sound warmer. To me it seems that using rails instead of poles under the strings give the guitar a full tone straight across the fret board. No one string jumps out more than another when strumming chords, but the strength of your picking really plays a part durring leads.
The Hotrail can be split too. I've got one of my guitars set up with the "spin-a-split" using a 250k pot instead of a tone knob. Fully clockwise its a single coil and counter clockwise its a humbucker, you can also play it with any position in-between. I play with the tone pot wide open anyway, so not having one doesn't cramp my style.

Just thought I would throw this info into the mix with all the others.

sounds fun. how do you wire up a spin a split.


time to bust out the MSpaint for me

After looking at the diagram, I was wrong, its a 500k pot.

"SPIN-A-SPLIT"

More Cowbell wrote:I had a screamin demon and lil 59 in my mustang and hid them under the stock covers.

I played this mustang and the lil screamin demon is my favorite sounding single coil sized humbucker I've ever heard!

rodvonbon wrote:After looking at the diagram, I was wrong, its a 500k pot.

"SPIN-A-SPLIT"

this looks like fun. i am totally doing it to the JB in my soapshire

ElCapitan wrote:the single coil tends to sound like ass though.

It sounds pretty "ass-y" on my 80s Contemporary Tele.. very thin and anemic on a clean tone.. but actually sounded pretty damn good on my Squier Double Fat Tele Deluxe- I think because it split to the inner coils (ie, not the coils closest to the bridge/neck), rather than the outer coils ala the Contemporary.

Although actually, I spun the bridge pickup in my Contemporary around so it was now splitting to the inner coil.. not a huge improvement, still way quieter.

Maybe the Squier just had specially designed pickups or something..

rodvonbon wrote:After looking at the diagram, I was wrong, its a 500k pot.

"SPIN-A-SPLIT"

This is actually way cool- would be great to dial in just a bit of the other coil for a more singley sound, but still have that beef kinda there.

so hot pickups , (not that I know what this means), are say 6.0 6.0 6.3...some vintage are 5.9 5.9 6.2...then there is 5.8 5.8 6.1

what does all that really mean?

I'd love to get a real old style strat "quack" sound without the noise

turtle wrote:so hot pickups , (not that I know what this means), are say 6.0 6.0 6.3...some vintage are 5.9 5.9 6.2...then there is 5.8 5.8 6.1

what does all that really mean?

I'd love to get a real old style strat "quack" sound without the noise

Hot refers to how loud they are... Since, certain places of the string are quieter than others, they make louder pick ups to compensate. They are measured in ohms... So, basically your mid and neck are gonna be around the same, but the bridge is gonna need be a lot hotter... Other wise, when you have stratocaster, and you wanna replace only the bridge pup, then look for somethin' close to matching it's impedance... Guitar Fetish lists this info...

If anything I said sounds like jibberish, jus lemme know, I think I rambled.

well basically I want to buy a new set of pickups. I've had texas specials...lace sensors MIJ MIM and sdjr

I want a vintage sound quaking sound

and no not jibberish at all

turtle wrote:well basically I want to buy a new set of pickups. I've had texas specials...lace sensors MIJ MIM and sdjr

I want a vintage sound quaking sound

and no not jibberish at all

Quacking? Tell me 'bout an artist and then go find the pups he used...

ok, I've been resisting this thread because I don't want to beat the GFS 64 staggers to death but seriously, they are awesome. they have quack by the bucket load.

http://www.shortscale.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15795

what is the difference between Alnico 5 and 3 magnets?

mage wrote:ok, I've been resisting this thread because I don't want to beat the GFS 64 staggers to death but seriously, they are awesome. they have quack by the bucket load.

http://www.shortscale.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15795

so what did you mean by wiring it the other way? I really want the extra "quack" in the number 4 spot...if that's the one between bridge and middle.

yeah, I don't know what the difference is between all the different kinds of alnico. the higher the number the better?? I dunno.

I don't really think that is a "vintage" quack you would be getting in the 4 position. vintage strats only had 3-way switches.

wiring it the other way: To explain it simply, in the modern strat they have switched the ground wire for the signal wire (on the middle pickup --ed.) to get hum canceling in the 2 and 4 position. in a vintage strat there is no hum canceling and the pickups are out of phase in the 2 and 4 position except that there is no 2 and 4 position, you would have to get the switch to "stick" between one of the 3 positions.

I think the vintage quack is more like the middle position with the tone rolled off a little bit.

I did not find these pickups to work well in a hum canceling set up. I preferred the out of phase sound you get when you "wire it the other way" (the vintage way). but that's just me. most people would probably not find out of phase that useful. These pickups, though, are the real deal. Definitely worth trying out.

you can do so much with just switching, tapping and adding other parts.

i swapped/sold all my sd's for tom anderson single coils - they look like SD Qtr Pounders and are rated at around 14.3... very loud. They're also tapped (three wires from the bottom), so you can reign them back to 7.0 'vintage' territory. I've hooked them up to a scratchplate that had a blank area where the 5-way switch was meant to be, and put in 3, 3-way switches, so each p/up can be Full/Off/Half for some ridiculous number of combinations.

.. i also felt the 'full' tones a bit middley so added a torres super-mid cut. it's a push/pull pot that acts like a normal tone pot when pulled up, and a passive mid-shifter otherwise (no idea how it works - something about inductors??...) - so around '5' it's the same as the tone pot fully open, at '1' it pulls all the mids out, and at '10' it acts like a mid-boost.

works great for me.. now if only i could replace the body and neck with some warmoths...