K Ohm Pickups?

GLUGSTER · #1 01-20-2010, 03:34 AM

I own a Dean ML "Metal Man" bass. It has a passive pickup, a volume and a tone control (both 250K pots). When I measure the K Ohms of the entire circuit by plugging in a cable and measuring the two ends, I get 3.08 K Ohms. Most after market pickups have a higher DC resistance, more in the neighborhood of 6K-13K. Do these pickups have a higher output? I've tried to search for this, but can't quite seem to get a clear answer. I've read that Henries and impedance are better measures of output....I'm lost. An electrical engineers in here that can dumb it down would be great. Thanks for your time.

slyjoe · #2 01-20-2010, 07:10 AM

You aren't measuring the pickup's DC resistance directly. However, with 2x250K pots in parallel (125K total), the pickup resistance is still probably fairly close to what you measured. A 6K pickup will measure around 5.7K.

That said, higher DC resistance is sometimes correlated with higher output, but not directly. The output of a pickup is dependent on a number of things, including the magnets/material and the size and number of coil wires.

Does the output seem low? Your original post did not say if there was actually a problem.

**line6man** · #3 01-20-2010, 07:17 AM

DC resistance has absolutely no relation to output, it is simply the measure of a coil's opposition to a direct current.

If the pickups are using a large guage wire, their resistance may be low.

Since you were measuring the output, not the pickups, if the bass has two pickups, that is going to cut the resistance more-or-less in half. Plus, as slyjoe was saying, the value of the pots will also lower the resistance.

SGD Lutherie · #4 01-20-2010, 03:42 PM

The two coils of the pickup are probably wired in parallel, so each coil is about 6K. In series that would be 12K. It's kind of a Music Man style pickup, and it's common for those to be wired up in parallel.

GLUGSTER · #5 01-20-2010, 08:20 PM

The PU's don't sound very good, at all. I bought a Wilkinson MM pickup and I have to do some routing to get it to fit, but I think that it will be worth it. Since I'm going for a MISFITS bass tone, I will leave this pickup in series, seeing as how this is how Jerry Only did it.