# Multiscale Pickups



## Grand Rabbit (Mar 15, 2018)

Multiscale guitars have a plethora of benefits from ease of playing to tonal qualities, yet very few pickup manufacturers are doing anything to recognize this. 

You have Ormsby and Kiesel building their own multiscale pickups, but they don't sell them individually. 

The only pickup manufacturer who I've found to actually build pickups with multiscale spacing in mind is Elysian pickups, they have a model to fit a Boden 7 string, however from what I can tell these pickups only come in this kind of gaudy rectangular block as opposed to standard bobbins. 

Does anyone have any advice or experience on fitting their multiscale 7 builds out with pickups? I'm getting a bit wary of slightly tilting straight 7 string pickups in an attempt to fish out those crispy bass notes with misaligned pole pieces.


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## spudmunkey (Mar 15, 2018)

Keep in mind that for optimum pole alignment, you will either need to build your guitar around off-the-shelf pickups, or custom order pickups to have the angle that you need for your design. The fan of your scales, the difference between the shortest and longest strings, as well as the neutral fret location, will all change the angle of your bridge, and the end of your fretboard. So the question is... Do you want the pickups to align with the edge of the fretboard? With the bridge? One of each? Splitting the difference? Not all multiscale pickups are the same angles. Even on Keisel's own guitars, because of the way that they have chosen to build their multi scales, the six and eight strings are about 11 degrees, while their 7-string model is about 13 degrees.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Mar 15, 2018)

Someone could sell single coil blade pickups intended to be installed in pairs as an angled humbucker. That could he made to fit just about anywhere.

Otherwise just use EMG909s like Agile


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## KnightBrolaire (Mar 16, 2018)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> Someone could sell single coil blade pickups intended to be installed in pairs as an angled humbucker. That could he made to fit just about anywhere.
> 
> Otherwise just use EMG909s like Agile


that's basically the idea behind some of the cycfi pickups. they have modular pickups that can be tailored to each string.
they also have double/quad coil pickups that can be mounted on different baseplates. They even offer the ability to make custom baseplates.


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## KR250 (Mar 16, 2018)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> Someone could sell single coil blade pickups intended to be installed in pairs as an angled humbucker. That could he made to fit just about anywhere.
> 
> Otherwise just use EMG909s like Agile


The idea definitely makes sense. Though, I really didn't care for the tone of the 909's on my Agile. Tried out the 909X's, a little bit better. I've got a set of 909's just sitting around now. Agile is getting traded off shortly. Thought about trying to swap to an angled pickup then just decided to cut losses and spend the time on a future custom.


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## KnightBrolaire (Mar 16, 2018)

Grand Rabbit said:


> Multiscale guitars have a plethora of benefits from ease of playing to tonal qualities, yet very few pickup manufacturers are doing anything to recognize this.
> 
> You have Ormsby and Kiesel building their own multiscale pickups, but they don't sell them individually.
> 
> ...


other multiscale builders would be instrumental, merlin, fokin, and mjs custom pickups. Dominger also might do them, but don't quote me on that. 
Soapbars are the easiest route to avoid going with custom pickups -your options are limited to whatever you choose to throw in a soapbar cover, or lace/actives. It's more options than going with angled pickups.


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## Winspear (Mar 16, 2018)

BKP do 10 and 14 degree pickups. Guitarmony and Instrumental will build anything


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## MaxOfMetal (Mar 16, 2018)

You're not going to see ad much aftermarket support until things become more common on affordable production guitars.


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## Kaff (Mar 16, 2018)

IMHO, (single coil) pole piece deviation is so minor with <15 degree tilt that it's _fairly_ easy to DIY a slanted humbucker from any uncovered passive pickup. The bare minimum you need is some 1mm brass sheetmetal, drills, sheetmetal shears and pliers to fabricate your own baseplates.


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## lewis (Mar 16, 2018)

I would probably buy 4 single coil pickups, and mount them together and angled. Even if 2 of them were "dummy" ones that were not hooked up/working.
At least the Aesthetic would be right.

In fact I might do this in the future just to try. Harley Bentons 2018 fan fret models went this route with slanted open coil humbuckers, so If I grab one as another project, it would be a cool mod to try.


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## bostjan (Mar 16, 2018)

Trouble with mounting multiple single coils is the spacing between poles. They are built with the spacing designed for static-scale guitars, so as you angle the pickup, the poles end up too close together compared to the strings.

The fact that there are half a dozen or almost half a dozen manufacturers making multiscale pickups an option, for me, is really amazing, considering there are only a couple production models out there.

But, here's my question: what exactly are you trying to find out there? I notice a lot of dissatisfaction from threads on the forum that eventually come out with the OP saying that he/she really just wants a specific Dimarzio in multiscale or something, and we all know that's not likely to ever happen.

If you live in the US, contact Elysian. If you live in the UK, contact BKP. If you live in Eastern Europe, contact Fokin or Merlin... Just see what they can do for you. Maybe they don't have anything off the shelf to give you the sound you want, but they might be able to tweak a few things for you and make you happy anyway.


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## Lemonbaby (Mar 16, 2018)

bostjan said:


> Trouble with mounting multiple single coils is the spacing between poles. They are built with the spacing designed for static-scale guitars, so as you angle the pickup, the poles end up too close together compared to the strings.


Angled BKPs have the exact same pole spacing as straight ones. It's just the standard bobbins mounted to different baseplates...


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## Winspear (Mar 16, 2018)

^ Didn't actually know that, didn't bother to measure when I downloaded the CAD file. The spacing comes out perfectly fine, however


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## Grand Rabbit (Mar 16, 2018)

Kaff said:


> IMHO, (single coil) pole piece deviation is so minor with <15 degree tilt that it's _fairly_ easy to DIY a slanted humbucker from any uncovered passive pickup. The bare minimum you need is some 1mm brass sheetmetal, drills, sheetmetal shears and pliers to fabricate your own baseplates.



This is intriguing. However, I'm not entirely aware of what that process would entail. Do you mean that I can actually remove the wound pole pieces from the original base plate and transfer them onto a new base plate?


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## bostjan (Mar 16, 2018)

Depnds on the tolerances and the angle. Most BKP multiscale pickups I've seen have not been angled as much as the bridge, but, in theory, this cannot work.

Just look at these pickups from @Fred the Shred 's Jaden Rose






http://www.sevenstring.org/threads/incoming-jaden-rose-fanned-fret-8-string.171950/

If the distance between two adjacent strings is "*s*", and the angle of the pickup off the usual axis is "*φ*", then the spacing between pole pieces "*p*" should be:

*p = s / cos φ
*
For example, if the spacing is 10.21 mm and the angle is 15°, then

*p = 10.21 mm / cos 15° = 10.21 mm / 0.96593 = 10.57 mm
*
The error in using the same spacing at .36 mm per string should be noticeable close up, especially on ERGs with tons of strings. If you go more extreme with the angle, say 30°,

*p = 10.21 mm / cos 30° = 10.21 mm / 0.86603 = 11.79 mm
*
That's definitely going to look way off.

EDIT: The BKPs for my Oni had to have everything but the winding supplied by Oni. I thought that it was just because they didn't offer angled pickups for multiscale guitars yet, but perhaps it is because the angle was too great. I've since replaced those with Oni pickups anyway.


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## Grand Rabbit (Mar 16, 2018)

lewis said:


> I would probably buy 4 single coil pickups, and mount them together and angled. Even if 2 of them were "dummy" ones that were not hooked up/working.
> At least the Aesthetic would be right.
> 
> In fact I might do this in the future just to try. Harley Bentons 2018 fan fret models went this route with slanted open coil humbuckers, so If I grab one as another project, it would be a cool mod to try.



That's a good solution but it would also be a costly one xD of course nothing about slanted humbuckers or a multi scale build is necessarily 'cheap' so that comes with the territory


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## Grand Rabbit (Mar 16, 2018)

bostjan said:


> For example, if the spacing is 10.21 mm and the angle is 15°, then
> 
> *p = 10.21 mm / cos 15° = 10.21 mm / 0.96593 = 10.57 mm
> *
> ...




Interesting. It might look 'off' but the sound would probably still work, at least with the first example. 
Oni is one of my favorite builders out there, and his pickups are pretty much awe inspiring. I don't know anything about their sound, but simply the construction with those different curved corners on the bobbins is awesome.


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## bostjan (Mar 16, 2018)

Grand Rabbit said:


> Interesting. It might look 'off' but the sound would probably still work, at least with the first example.
> Oni is one of my favorite builders out there, and his pickups are pretty much awe inspiring. I don't know anything about their sound, but simply the construction with those different curved corners on the bobbins is awesome.



The sound doesn't care about the aesthetics, only about the amount of magnetic flux transferred from the pickup to the string and the change in that flux back from the string to the pickup.

A lot of multiscale pickups use blade pole pieces (Black Hawks, Impulses, etc.) or exposed bar magnets (Cepheus), mainly for aesthetics and convenience.

The Oni pickups I received were brighter and more lively than the BKP previously...and I ordered two of the brightest winds BKP made at the time. I was very pleased with the result. I went through a phase, thanks to this very forum, when I tried dozens of pickups to see what I liked, and the Oni pickups stand right up there with my favourites I've ever tried. I'm also very happy with the Elysians I ordered last year. Other boutique pickups I tried were of very high quality from the perspective of workmanship and durability, but I didn't click with the sound of them. The BKPs and EMGs I've tried have been satisfactory, but just didn't "wow" me. Duncans and Dimarzios vary from meh to wow, depending on the model. It's all just personal preference, though.

I recommended contacting Elysian, merely for the fact that they seem willing to work with the customer, and they are in the USA. If you're in the USA, then it should cut down on cost for you. If you lived in Australia, I would recommend, in a heartbeat, contacting Oni to see if they can make you some pickups. My concerns are that they might be super busy and then you have to deal with an international shipment.


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## Meet the Cleaver (Mar 16, 2018)

Ormsby sells just the base plate for their pickups so you can get any passive humbucker you like and mount it on that base plate and you're good to go. Obviously they only work for Ormsby's.


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## Kaff (Mar 18, 2018)

bostjan said:


> Trouble with mounting multiple single coils is the spacing between poles. They are built with the spacing designed for static-scale guitars, so as you angle the pickup, the poles end up too close together compared to the strings.


You're right but on a minor slant you can get away with standard spacing. I slanted my bridge pickup 11 degrees and did the math - on a 7-string humbucker the outer pole pieces (under low B and high E strings) will be 0,57mm closer to the centreline than the original. I recon I won't hear the difference or at the very least the benefits of getting a tighter low end on a multi scale outweigh the minor offset of the outer pole pieces.



Grand Rabbit said:


> This is intriguing. However, I'm not entirely aware of what that process would entail. Do you mean that I can actually remove the wound pole pieces from the original base plate and transfer them onto a new base plate?


You can check out my build thread for a more elaborate description of the process:
http://www.sevenstring.org/threads/first-build-multiscale-7.323749/#post-4839289


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## KnightBrolaire (Mar 18, 2018)

another option if you're building a multiscale or having one built is to have a half-fan instead of a full fan. if you set the bridge as the parallel fret you can use a regular bridge and regular non-angled pickups while still getting the benefits of a multiscale. As long as your spread between scale lengths isn't too severe it should be relatively comfortable as well.


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## Meet the Cleaver (Mar 18, 2018)

KnightBrolaire said:


> another option if you're building a multiscale or having one built is to have a half-fan instead of a full fan. if you set the bridge as the parallel fret you can use a regular bridge and regular non-angled pickups while still getting the benefits of a multiscale. As long as your spread between scale lengths isn't too severe it should be relatively comfortable as well.


You would think that 26.5 - 25.5 would be about the max for that. As a bonus it allows the use of a Floyd..... if that's your thing.


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## KnightBrolaire (Mar 18, 2018)

Meet the Cleaver said:


> You would think that 26.5 - 25.5 would be about the max for that. As a bonus it allows the use of a Floyd..... if that's your thing.


yeah you can't put a huge fan on it, but personally I don't like big fans anyways. A 2" fan is about the max I'd go based off the fretfind templates I've tried.


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## Grand Rabbit (Mar 18, 2018)

KnightBrolaire said:


> another option if you're building a multiscale or having one built is to have a half-fan instead of a full fan. if you set the bridge as the parallel fret you can use a regular bridge and regular non-angled pickups while still getting the benefits of a multiscale. As long as your spread between scale lengths isn't too severe it should be relatively comfortable as well.



Definitely an interesting approach. I've thought of doing this, but as I already have a Mera 7 string multiscale bridge I'm just going to go with the old faithful 9th fret for the perpendicular.


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## warped (Mar 18, 2018)

I ordered a pair of SFTY3 pickups from Instrumental pickups for my multi-scale 7 string. Ethan from Instrumental pickups confirmed all my measurements, built the pickups and shipped them to Australia (including a perfect router template with the correct pickup spacing relative to neckline/bridge/centreline/etc. The pickups sounds amazing, install was a breeze, and they look great without the pickup tabs on the side (mine mount with screws straight through the bobbin to the body).


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Mar 18, 2018)

I can vouch for Instrumental as well... Ethan Spaulding built some for a guitar I made for a friend a couple years back, absolutely mind blowing pups. Made to match the string spacing and scale of that guitar. I will be buying some for my next multiscale I'm building this year.


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## crackout (Mar 19, 2018)

Lemonbaby said:


> Angled BKPs have the exact same pole spacing as straight ones. It's just the standard bobbins mounted to different baseplates...



Depending on the fan, you will see 'misalignment'.
11° still seems okay.


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## Lemonbaby (Mar 19, 2018)

crackout said:


> Depending on the fan, you will see 'misalignment'.
> 11° still seems okay.


I'm not arguing on the correctness of trigonometry as we know it. I just took the BKPs I have lying around and measured the distance between the pole pieces...


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## A-Branger (Mar 19, 2018)

Grand Rabbit said:


> You have Ormsby and Kiesel building their own multiscale pickups, but they don't sell them individually.



no idea about Kiesel, but with Ormsby you can buy the pickups they build at their shop. Go to the website, they have different models. But ofcourse only in the angles they use. Or you can buy the baseplate so you can adapt your pickup into it.

Theres no industry standard as everyone uses not only a different fan, but a different parralell fret possition, and a different spacing from the bridge, which all makes different pickup angles. And then you have things like the new LTD (and others brands Ive seen) where they use the same angle for both bridge and neck, instead of different angles

and multiscale instruments are still pretty new in the mass production guitars, so theres no much point for a big companies like Dimarzio or SD to offer solutions for a non existing market when theres isnt a standard yet and every brand uses different angles, and not many uses passives. Most stick to the easy way out of active soapbars


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## crackout (Mar 19, 2018)

Lemonbaby said:


> I'm not arguing on the correctness of trigonometry as we know it. I just took the BKPs I have lying around and measured the distance between the pole pieces...


True, I thought I'd give a visual representation of the 'slanting without adapting distances'-concept.


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## bostjan (Mar 19, 2018)

crackout said:


> True, I thought I'd give a visual representation of the 'slanting without adapting distances'-concept.


I think the dissonance here might be simply between people saying "meh, close enough" and people saying that it'll never look perfect that way. There is a whole spectrum of options in between perfect and bad, so both stances are correct. Two singles as a humbucker isn't going to be perfect, aesthetically, nor tonally, unless you are going for the "two single coils as a humbucker" look and sound. There are cases when it may be a better option than an angled humbucker, when you take cost into the equation.


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## lewis (Mar 19, 2018)

ive genuinely decided to go single coil pickups, and then use 2 covered single coil pickup covers to act visually as the rest of the humbucker, but will be blanks obviously.

Thats my way around this issue. Good luck OP with your quest.


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## ElRay (Mar 19, 2018)

KnightBrolaire said:


> ... they also have double/quad coil pickups that can be mounted on different baseplates. They even offer the ability to make custom baseplates.


Joel has streamlined the product line tremendously. The Sidewinders, duals, quads, etc. are being phased-out. He's focusing on the Nu Capsule (single string pick-ups) and the Modula (Stero-splits), with the expectation that this will allow time to finish the Infinity Sustainer.


KnightBrolaire said:


> that's basically the idea behind some of the cycfi pickups. they have modular pickups that can be tailored to each string. ...


These are where the focus will remain. I definitely want to go this route. Depending where the product line is when I'm ready, I'll either go with the Nu, or the Modula. Regarless, I'll do stereo-out -- bass and treble strings will be on separate channels. Another idea is to add switching so I can send neck/bridge to separate channels.


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## ElRay (Mar 19, 2018)

Other options:

Use a tele bridge pick-up. There's enough out there that you should be able to find one that is more suitable (output-wise) as a neck pick-up. Here your options for more than 6 strings are a bit limited.

Along this line, there was somebody here that built a RH Multi-scaled Six with a LH Tele bridge.

There are also plenty of folks that will do custom winds. If you can make the bobbins, out-source the winding.


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## KnightBrolaire (Mar 19, 2018)

ElRay said:


> Joel has streamlined the product line tremendously. The Sidewinders, duals, quads, etc. are being phased-out. He's focusing on the Nu Capsule (single string pick-ups) and the Modula (Stero-splits), with the expectation that this will allow time to finish the Infinity Sustainer.These are where the focus will remain. I definitely want to go this route. Depending where the product line is when I'm ready, I'll either go with the Nu, or the Modula. Regarless, I'll do stereo-out -- bass and treble strings will be on separate channels. Another idea is to add switching so I can send neck/bridge to separate channels.


damn, I was looking into getting some quad rails. The modula and the nu capsule are really cool, and are obviously less constrained by specific string distances/bridge angles, which will be really helpful for multiscales.


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## Walshy (Mar 19, 2018)

I'm using 22 degrees for a fanned bridge humbucker on my prototype multiscale guitar and 18 at the neck. Neutral fret is nine and it's 25-26.5.

I did this because I wanted the pole pieces to be closer to the bridge and often on production multiscales you get the same angle for both neck and bridge, which isn't ideal, to my mind.

I figured it was time to have a go at winding my own pups to save money, so I'll let you know how I get on in the coming days.

You can see it on my Instagram a few pics back: https://www.instagram.com/chriswalshcustomguitars/


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## Bearcuda (Mar 29, 2018)

Hi, newb here. Was just wondering but I think I already know, why are these pickups angled anyway? Is it for trying to hit the sweet spot of tonal resonance on that particular string?


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## spudmunkey (Mar 29, 2018)

crackout said:


> Depending on the fan, you will see 'misalignment'.
> 11° still seems okay.
> 
> View attachment 59795



Great illustration. I think that only represents a single coil, though, right? If you do the same think for humbuckers, even if already slanted, your results could be much different, because non-slanted will be much much worse.


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## Lorcan Ward (Mar 29, 2018)

Bearcuda said:


> Hi, newb here. Was just wondering but I think I already know, why are these pickups angled anyway? Is it for trying to hit the sweet spot of tonal resonance on that particular string?



The pickups are angled so they sound like a straight pickup in a straight scale guitar. If you don't angle the pickups then you can end up with a pickup thats positioned more in the middle on the low strings. As a result you will get more bass, less highs, less attack and definition on the lower strings. An easy way to hear this is play a riff using the bridge, then switch to the neck and play it, notice the tonal changes, moving the bridge pickup away from the saddles will slowly start to shift the tone towards that of a neck pickup. All this undoes some of the effect of the fan, in a lot of cases you'd be better off with a shorter fan and correct pickup position than a longer fan in the low end with a badly angled bridge pickup.


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## lewis (Mar 29, 2018)

does this effect EMG/blade style pickups if they are straight in the body, yet the neck/bridge is fanned?


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## ElRay (Mar 29, 2018)

lewis said:


> does this effect EMG/blade style pickups if they are straight in the body, yet the neck/bridge is fanned?


Yes.

Another way to look at it is that a straight bridge pick-up in a multi scale guitar will sound like a Tele bridge pick-up because the pick-up is further from the bridge in both cases.

The advantage of bar/rail pick-ups is tat you don’t have to worry about pole misalignment. So, in most cases, you can just get an N+1 bar/blade/rail/standing coil (Q-Tuner)/Alumatone pick-up and angle it.


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