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so the fender wide-range humbucker and the gibson mini-humbucker are both humbuckers with less bass. do they sound all that different from eachother?

i've played ""authentic"" reproduction wide-range pickups, and they seem to have a sort of resonant peak in the high mids? they sound really nice and chimey with a pick, but they don't work as well for fingerpicking in my experience. so i'm looking for something halfway between that and a warm/dark sounding paf humbucker.

are mini-humbuckers basically the same sound as the wide-range? are they halfway between wide range and paf? any thoughts appreciated!

Yes, mini-humbuckers're pretty bright sounding. Jazz people like mini-humbuckers. Don't know nothin' about half-way inbetween though.

What about a brighter PAF? A4, low wind, unpotted

The set of vintage WRHBs I had sounded a lot like Jazzmaster pickups to me - not as piercing relative to a Telecaster pickup, but more clear than a PAF-style humbucker.

The closest I've come to mini-hums were Lollar Firebirds, which are quite bright and aggressive without being shrill.

Lollar Firebirds are awesome. Tighter and more focused tone than WRHBs to my ears. Lollar gold foils might be an interesting option too.

thank you all for your thoughts!! seems like the mini-humbuckers and firebird pickups are even brighter than i realized o.O i'll check out the gold foils, but a brighter paf might be what i'm looking for after all haha

Yeah, I think you may be looking more for an underwound PAF - or a PAF wound with thicker wire (like 41 awg). Smits in the US, and Gemini in the UK are two makers that deal in suchlike. Maybe check out the DiMarzio "Humbucker from Hell" (an attempt to satisfy Eric Johnson's quest for a brighter, more articulate humbucker, not, as the name might suggests, a shredtool). Or, if you have the budget, the Lollar ElRayos (38 awg). The McNelly Chaplains are also supposed to use thicker wire (the Chaplain name is supposed to be a reference to Charlie Christian pickups that originally used 38 awg wire, although, given the prevalence of Jesus chanting in their demos, I'm sure they have other reasons for the name). There are some others that do it too - searching for references to Charlie Christian and Humbucker, or 38, 40, or 41 awg can help in the finding.

But like others have said, underwinding with plain old 42 awg will get you a bit more high end in the balance.

Although, I'll also say there are differences in Gibson mini-humbuckers, with the Firebirds (the OGs, not the over-hot circus props in most latter day 'birds) being the brightest and most single-coil like (two Alnico bars as "polepieces"), the Johnny Smith styles you usually see hanging from the end of the neck or pickguard on a jazzbox in between (one alnico bar coil, the other more PAF style), and the Les Paul Deluxe style mini-humbuckers (look like, and are constructed like, mini-PAFs) being the least bright, and most, well, PAF-like. Those are the one's I'd look at if I were you...and were continuing my search beyond low-wound PAFs.

One of the nice things about the PAF style, especially if you are finger-picking, can be just a little softer attack (all other things being equal) compared to other pickup designs, especially with weaker magnets, that takes away the snap or twang that can make fingerpicked passages seem more uneven.

nice in-depth response!

thanks bud!

Dandolin wrote:Yeah, I think you may be looking more for an underwound PAF - or a PAF wound with thicker wire (like 41 awg). Smits in the US, and Gemini in the UK are two makers that deal in suchlike. Maybe check out the DiMarzio "Humbucker from Hell" (an attempt to satisfy Eric Johnson's quest for a brighter, more articulate humbucker, not, as the name might suggests, a shredtool). Or, if you have the budget, the Lollar ElRayos (38 awg). The McNelly Chaplains are also supposed to use thicker wire (the Chaplain name is supposed to be a reference to Charlie Christian pickups that originally used 38 awg wire, although, given the prevalence of Jesus chanting in their demos, I'm sure they have other reasons for the name). There are some others that do it to - searching for references to Charlie Christian and Humbucker, or 38, 40, orm41 awg can help in the finding.

But like others have said, underwinding with plain old 42 awg will get you a bit more high end in the balance.

Although, I'll also say there are differences in Gibson mini-humbuckers, with the Firebirds (the OGs, not the over-hot circus props in most latter day 'birds) being the brightest and most single-coil like (two Alnico bars as "polepieces"), the Johnny Smith styles you usually see hanging from the end of the neck or pickguard on a jazzbox in between (one alnico bar coil, the other more PAF style), and the Les Paul Deluxe style mini-humbuckers (look like, and are constructed like, mini-PAFs) being the least bright, and most, well, PAF-like. Those are the one's I'd look at if I were you...and were continuing my search beyond low-wound PAFs.

One of the nice things about the PAF style, especially if you are finger-picking, can be just a little softer attack (all other things being equal) compared to other pickup designs, especially with weaker magnets, that takes away the snap or twang that can make fingerpicked passages seem more uneven.

oh wow, thanks so much for all the info! that softer attack (from the inherent humbucker compression?) is exactly what i'm going for. and i prefer to go with smaller makers if i can, so those recommendations are especially helpful!

absolutely - I'd love to hear more on what you're zeroing in on....

Another one to think about - the Zhangbucker O-Bucker - haven't found a demo, but his description sounds so on-point for you. He's a pretty responsive guy; I'm sure he'd be happy to listen to your goals and give some pointers....

the most recent thing i looked at was, the creamery hollow body humbucker, though that seems a little too standard. the zhangbucker o-bucker looks really promising, thank you for sharing! and the mismatched coils probably make it good for splitting too.

but before i throw money at anything, i decided to order some tbx tone controls for my current seymour duncan jb pickups (which to me sounds like the most standard paf around, even if they call it hot and articulate). i'm wondering if i just want a paf that's less rich and full, rather than one with more treble, so maybe cutting the bass with a tbx will give me a better idea of what i'm going for...

definitely recommend trying cutting bass with humbuckers
it's funny, I never like JBs for cleans when I'm playing one, but I was in a band with a guy who had a JB/Jazz set in a tele build, and I really didn't mind his cleans on the JB. Also - wiring a JB in parallel creates some great clean tones imo (filtertron-ish), so maybe switching options could get you closer to what you want. I personally consider the JB less open/more mid-pushed than a garden variety PAF, so there's another data point for maybe just trying that. Jim Soloway, the former guitar maker is a real fingerstyle jazz purist and he went through a lot of pickups in a search for clarity/balance/articulation, including firebird style, and he seemed to settle for a while on Dimarzio 36th Anniversary PAFs, and I took a note to try those someday....

so to followup on this, i ended up trying a parallel wiring switch. i also tried a modified version of the tbx. together, they give me exactly the sounds i'm going for, no new pickups necessary.

the stock tbx control really isn't much different from a no-load pot. so i ended up using the Phostenix, which works as a true bass cut in the upper half of the tbx: https://sites.google.com/site/phostenix ... ne-control

works really well to get bright humbucker tones, which is great for dirt pedals that sound woolly if you feed them too much bass. more guitars should really have bass cut controls for that kinda thing, but i guess it would hurt the pedal market too much XD

Totally off topic but why then were the 70s telecaster bass v2 pickups so much like mudbuckers? I haven’t played any of fender/squire new stuff with pickups that look like them for fear of the same soul crushing disappointment caused by the new “mudbuckers” that Gibson/epiphone put in their vintage-esque basses..