The Epi EB-0 has the classic mudbucker sidewinder design, but as you may know it measures a meager 1.2k unlike the old ones and a lot of the replacements. The neck pup I just bought measures a more respectable 9.6k, but it's not a sidewinder at all.
The Pickup "You just bought" is a Gibson TBPlus. Used in the SG, the EB-11 and the Midtown. Strange design with its aluminum plate and the fake pole screws. Tons of musically unimportant ultra deep bass, nice treble end but severe lack of lower mids and hence no punch.
Removing this aluminum spacer will give the PU a bit more clarity and more punch. Not much different to a DiMarzio model one. Not surprising - ceramic magnets and identical aperture. It is easy to turn this into a sidewinder - just use a steel blade and turn the (Mini-) humbucker coils toward it. I would experiment with the thickness. At present i am using a 4 mm blade of 1 cm height (rest of an experiment to mod an Epi sidewinder), but a thicker, possibly laminated blade might also be worth a try.
Against common belief, sidewinders do not sound muddy per se - the Gibson only does because it is strongly overwound.
The Epi sidewinder is indeed 1.2 kOhm. That is not "meager" - it is a low impedance design (lots of thick wire on the bobbins). The output of the PU is actually quite high (i measured peaks up to 4 Volts), and due to the low impedance it can be surprisingly bright. Biggest disadvantages:
a) lack of deep bass. So much that the bass sounds thin. . Solution: remove the pole screws and add a steel bar 6x6 mm (1/4" x 1/4"). Even better a few stripes of thinner material isolated from each other (nail polish...) This will increase the inductivity, and the lamination will reduce eddy currents and thus yield a stronger resonance. Quite interestingly also the treble response will be improved.
b) In an EB-3, the low impedance will overdamp the bridge PU if both are run in parallel. You might want to use a decoupling resistor in position 2 of the PU selector switch (of the Epi EB-3). You might want to add something close to 6.8 nF in parallel (switchable) in order to obtain a sound really close to Jack Bruces.
So my question is, how similar do these two pickups sound? I dig the EB-O's muddy tone for certain uses, but a better output would be appreciated.
It will open up a lot by the simple mod i just described. The TBPlus sounds more modern, pronounced lack of lower mids, pretty much highs, but very strong deep lows. Not good in band context, and You need a lot of amp power just to handle these musically irrelevant extreme lows. Turning it into a sidewinder will improve this and yield a much more balanced tone and also more attack.
Yes, i can well imagine this
TBPlus with sidewinder mod in an Epi EB-0. Should sound really nice. Number two the modified original pickup. Nice as well, not quite as bright. To me there is no number three and for.
The sidewinder mod will also reduce the output of the pickup and balance it a lot better with the bridge PU.
BTW: i would mount the bridge PU in MM position - 10% of the scale length from the bridge with pole screws toward the *neck*. Actually i did that in an Epi EB-0 and modified an Epi EB-3 accordingly.
