Pickups are more than magnets and coils. When you’re thinking about how they sound, consider all of the many elements that go into creating their tone.
Pickups, by definition, are magnetic microphones that lay under guitar strings. These devices are a fundamental piece of our musical instrument industry and, rightfully, get a lot of serious attention from guitarists/musicians. PRS has spent an inordinate amount of time, research, and engineering on these devices. They are complicated equations—a combination of magnetic materials, magnetic manufacturing/engineering methods, magnetic strength, physical dimensions and layout, coil winding for turning magnetic fields into electrical signals, coil-wire gauge and wire coating (type and thickness), wax potting to prevent howling and squealing (wax type and amount), electrostatic and magnetic hum protection in the form of pickup covers and cover material, cabling for attaching the pickup to the electronic controls of the instrument, pot values, and capacitor values and types.
The magic is in the interactive nature of all these factors … and then some. (This list is for passive pickups and does not include many aspects of active pickups.) Sometimes I see pickups boiled down to only a few factors, and I do not think that is a sophisticated enough view of these complicated and potentially beautiful-sounding devices.
As an example, it is thought that most players have an idea of the sound that humbucking pickups with alnico 4 magnets that are wound to 7.8k make. They’re historically associated with PAF humbuckers, but those qualities don’t fully explain what gives those pickups character. For example, if the pickup’s wire is standard-size 42 gauge, at 5,000 turns the pickup would have a resistance of about 7.5k. If you use 42-gauge wire that is undersized (which is a common inconsistency) and 4,800 turns, the pickup would still be around 7.5k. Because of the wire diameter and different number of turns, the pickups would sound different even though it’s the same magnet and same resistance. The wire matters; 7.5k is just the resistance of both coils. Just as wire diameter varies, alnico 4 purchased from four manufacturers sounds four different ways, so you have to compensate for that in other design areas as well.
If you think about the sound of a Strat, there is a “whistle note” (or you can think of it as a “ping note”) in every note you play. Think about playing on the neck pickup on a Strat; you can hear that whistle sound in every note. The pickup without a load is resonating at about 11k and at about 15 dB. Fifteen decibels is a lot. Imagine adding 15 dB of 11k (high treble) to your vocal at a gig! The potentiometers on a Strat, and those are 250k (which is a fairly low value for a volume and tone control), calm down how loud the whistle note is. When these single-coil pickups are built well, this whistle note can be very musical. Just think of Robbie Blunt playing “Big Log” on Robert Plant’s 1983 album The Principle of Moments. For us at PRS, getting the whistle note to be the right frequency and the right volume is very important. It is believed, for good reason, that an old PAF pickup can sound very much like a single-coil Strat pickup. That is because of the frequency and volume of the whistle note coming out of these vintage pickups.
“In the end, it’s really simple. Do you like the sound of the pickup? Will it do the job that you’re looking for the instrument to do?”
In the end, it’s really simple. Do you like the sound of the pickup? Will it do the job that you’re looking for the instrument to do? When David Grissom worked with us on our DGT pickups, he spent almost a year on them, and at the end of the process, he was adjusting the coil wire by 25 turns at a time until it was exactly where he wanted it. And that’s only the amount of turns. We also evaluated the magnetic type, strength, etc. I bring up all these parameters to give you an idea of how complicated it is to get all the specifications to dance well together. I like what’s going on pickup-wise at PRS and believe that our 2025 offering is gonna turn some heads. Normally, I don’t bring up what we do at PRS in these articles, but this time I think it’s worth mentioning, so stay tuned.
Consider all the types of pickups out there: humbuckers, covered humbuckers, P-90s, Strat single-coils, Tele single-coils, Gretsch Filter’Trons, Jazzmaster, P Bass, Jazz Bass, no-hum single-coils, and mini-humbuckers that make single-coil sounds. Within each one of these types, there can be scores of variations. How to choose? Simply try a pickup and see if you like it!
Here’s part two of our look under the hood of the funky rhythm guitar master’s signature 6-string.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. In this edition, we’re continuing our journey through the Fender Cory Wong Stratocaster wiring, bringing it all together.In the previous installment, the last feature on the funky 6-stringer’s signature axe that we discussed was the master volume pot and the corresponding treble-bleed circuit. Now, let’s continue with this guitar’s very special configuration of the tone pots.
Tone pot with Fender Greasebucket tone system:
This 250k tone pot is a standard CTS pot with a 90/10 audio taper found in all U.S.-built Fender guitars. The Cory Wong guitar uses the Fender Greasebucket system, which is added to the pot as a ready-to-solder PCB. The Greasebucket PCB is also available individually from Fender (part #7713546000), though you can use conventional electronic parts for this.
Fender introduced this feature in 2005 on some of the Highway One models and some assorted Custom Shop Strats. The Greasebucket name (which is a registered Fender trademark, by the way) is my favorite of Fender’s marketing names, but don’t let it fool you: Your tone will get cleaner with this modification, not greasy and dirty.
According to Fender, the Greasebucket tone circuit reduces high frequencies without adding bass as the tone knob is turned down. Don’t let that description confuse you. A standard Strat tone control does not add any bass frequencies! As you already know, with a passive system you can’t add anything that isn’t already there. You can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent. Removing highs makes lows more apparent and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which is how a passive pickup behaves in a guitar circuit) and capacitors can create resonant peaks and valleys (band-passes and notches), further coloring the overall tone.
Cory Wong bringing the funk onstage.
This type of band-pass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked. The standard tone circuit in a Strat is called a variable low-pass filter (or a treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap.
The Greasebucket’s band-pass filter is a combination of a high-pass and a low-pass filter. This is supposed to cut high frequencies without “adding” bass, which has mostly to do with the resistor in series with the pot. That resistor means the control will never get to zero. You can get a similar effect by simply not turning the Strat’s standard tone control all the way down. (The additional cap on the wiper of the Greasebucket circuit complicates things a bit, though; together with the pickups it forms an RLC circuit, but I really don’t want to get into that here.)
The standard Fender Greasebucket tone system is used in the Cory Wong Strat, which includes a 0.1 μF cap and a 0.022 uF cap, along with a 4.7k-ohm resistor in series. These are the values used on the PCB, and without the PCB it looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Push-push tone pot with preset overwriting function:
The lower tone pot assigned to the bridge pickup is a 250k audio push-push pot with a DPDT switch. The switch is used to engage a preset sound by overwriting the 5-way pickup-selector switch, no matter what switching position it is in. The preset functionality has a very long tradition in the house of Fender, dating back to the early ’50s, when Leo Fender designed a preset bass sound on position 3 (where the typical neck position is on a modern guitar) of the Broadcaster (and later the Telecaster) circuit. Wong loves the middle-and-neck-in-parallel pickup combination, so that’s the preset sound his push-push tone pot is wired for.
The neck pickup has a dedicated tone control while the middle pickup doesn’t, which is also another interesting feature. This means that when you hit the push-push switch, you will engage the neck and middle pickup together in parallel, no matter what you have dialed in on the 5-way switch. Hit the push-push switch again, and the 5-way switch is back to its normal functionality. Instead of a push-push pot, you can naturally use a push-pull pot or a DPDT toggle switch in combination with a normal 250k audio pot.
Here we go for the wiring. For a much clearer visualization, I used the international symbol for ground wherever possible instead of drawing another black wire, because we already have a ton of crossing wires in this drawing. I also simplified the treble-bleed circuit to keep things clearer; you’ll find the architecture of it with the correct values in the previous column.
Cory Wong Strat wiring
Courtesy of singlecoil.com
Wow, this really is a personalized signature guitar down to the bone, and Wong used his opportunity to create a unique instrument. Often, signature instruments deliver custom colors or very small aesthetic or functional details, so the Cory Wong Stratocaster really stands out.
That’s it! In our next column, we will continue our Stratocaster journey in the 70th year of this guitar by having a look at the famous Rory Gallagher Stratocaster, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Players and their favorite 6-strings have a special relationship that allows them both to shine. Our editorial director shares three examples—and wants to hear about yours.
Gibson recently unveiled a new version of its Les Paul Studio model called “The One.” It’s a lighter, more versatile take on the Studio, with a chambered body and coil-splitting, among other appointments. That guitar’s audacious name got me thinking. “The One” suggests an instrument with playability and tone above others—a holy grail guitar.
It also suggests a highly personal relationship between player and instrument, like those enjoyed by artists and 6-strings like Neil Young and Old Black, David Gilmour and his black Strat, B.B. King and Lucille, Alvin Lee and his “Big Red” ES-335, and Elvin Bishop and the ES-345 he calls “Red Dog.”
Really, the concept of “the one” is deeply subjective. One guitarist’s perfect “baseball bat” neck is another’s pain in the fretting hand. My “one” could be your “zero.” Tastes, technique, and intentions vary. But I suspect we all have our own version of “the one”—a special guitar we relate to above all others, that we feel elevates both our playing and our sound. And if we don’t, we’re probably on the hunt for it. Maybe your “one” was just perfect from the moment it dropped into your hands: easy to play, great-sounding, versatile, and handsome, too. Or maybe it took some modifications to get there. But either way, now you can’t live without it.
I’m lucky enough to have three guitars that I consider my “ones.” (Is that cheating?) The first was made in 2015 by a boutique company in Pennsylvania called Zuzu, and it has an extremely distinctive look, like a weathered old barn door. The odd green color is a shade of Behr house paint called fishpond, and the pickups—a neck humbucker made by Zuzu’s Chris Mills that has a bit of a cocked-wah sound thanks to a .0047 μF-rated capacitor, plus a Porter Overdrive in the bridge—have coil-splitting, which gives me Les Paul-like tones in positions 1, 3, and 5, and Strat tones in 2 and 4. The neck is a nice shallow C shape—my favorite flavor. It weighs about 7.5 pounds, and sounds and plays perfectly, for me. I named it the Green Monster, in honor of my years in Boston and my shameless Godzilla fandom, and I’ve used it on every album and show since it arrived.
“My ‘one’ could be your ‘zero.’ Tastes, technique, and intentions vary.”
Next up is the “Dollycaster,” named after my late, beloved dog, Dolly. It required some reimagining to reach exalted status, having started life as a humble made-in-Japan Esquire reissue that I got used for $180. It also came with Duane Eddy’s signature on its otherwise bland blonde finish, so I decided to use it to collect the autographs of guitarists who’ve influenced me, as I’ve traveled and crossed paths with them. First, I got rid of the awful-sounding factory pickup and had the late luthier Jim Mouradian install a pair of ’60s Gibson humbuckers he’d acquired. Then, I had Jim install jumbo frets on the front of its shallow C-shaped neck. The final bit of customizing was a sticker of Dolly on the pickguard. It’s a great sounding and playing guitar that not only gets compliments for its sparkle and punch, but has ignited plenty of conversations as it’s traveled with me across the U.S. and in Europe.
And the last of my “ones” is a 1968 Les Paul Standard, acquired just before the ascent of Slash elevated prices of the model. It looks a lot like the cherry sunburst ’68 Standard played by Dick Wagner, although the original tuners were replaced with more dependable Gotoh machines. Otherwise, it’s stock and it rocks, with gorgeous tone and feel. As you might guess by now, it also has a slender-ish C neck—which Gibson first employed in the late 1960s. There’s only one drawback to this delightful guitar: It weighs 12.5 pounds. I remember playing joints where four 75-minute sets were required, and putting it on my shoulder for the last set was painful. So, unlike the Green Monster and Dollycaster, it only travels to the studio these days.
I love these guitars the best because they look and feel great, and I play with more comfort and confidence when they’re in my hands. I’m guessing you have guitars that you love just as much—guitars that, as Adrian Belew said about his signature Parker Fly in our recent Rig Rundown, make you play better.
Now it’s time to share. Drop me a line and a photo about your “ones” and why you love ’em and play ’em. And don’t be surprised if they end up in a photo gallery at premierguitar.com. After all, in the universe of guitars, there’s a lot of great “ones” out there.