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Please help me understand these ODD Multimeter readings (pickup impedance)
- Thread starter Jjango
- Start date
Well, does it? (Sound good, I mean.)As to the Novak pickup, it's a mystery unfortunately. He offers two version of his mudbucker, Vintage and Fat. When I asked the eBay seller which Novak pickup was in the bass, he said “Neither of those! I had him wind something special!"
When I asked him what special meant, he said "I have no idea. I don't know a thing about electronics! I just told him to make it sound good."
First off, thanks to everyone who replied in this thread! My apologies if I didn't respond to each and every post, but I assure you, I read and considered every one of them, and each one helped me find my way to a solution. So, thank you!
In short, my multimeter now appears to be working perfectly! Here's how I was able to reach that conclusion:
With the assistance of fig, I was able to discern that the Dingwall pickup was, in fact, giving the CORRECT reading. But what about the weird readings I was getting from the other pickups I tested?
A Mudbucker should measure around 30-31k. However, I sent some photos of the pickup to Curtis Novak, and he told me that the pickup was NOT a mudbucker, but his EB-AA pickup, which uses a mudbucker case but with different innards. Because of this, the 7.1k reading it was giving was, in fact, CORRECT. Thanks for taking the time to help me with this, Curtis!
Seeing as how both the Dingwall and the Novak were giving correct readings, I decided to test out another pickup with a known-manufacturer-specified reading. So I yanked one of my Dimarzio Area J pickups out of my Geddy, and measured that. Dimarzio says it should measure 7.8k, and mine read as 7.78. So the reading for the Dimarzio was CORRECT, also.
My Rickenbacker toaster pickup read as 7.17k. Posts on the Rickenbacker forum say this pickup should read between 7k and 13k, so I suppose the reading on my Ric pickup was CORRECT, albeit on the lower end of the spectrum.
This means that 4 out of 5 of my pickups were giving correct-as-per-specs readings. I think that's pretty conclusive.
So what to make of my Fender Japan Jazz Bass pickups that measured 4.93k instead of the more common 7.2k to 8.5k range of a Jazz pickup? Who knows? But thanks to the responses in this thread, I've learned that measurements can vary considerably depending on things like the kind of wire used, bobbin size, etc, etc.
So thanks to all for helping this bonehead figure out how to use a multimeter correctly!
In short, my multimeter now appears to be working perfectly! Here's how I was able to reach that conclusion:
With the assistance of fig, I was able to discern that the Dingwall pickup was, in fact, giving the CORRECT reading. But what about the weird readings I was getting from the other pickups I tested?
A Mudbucker should measure around 30-31k. However, I sent some photos of the pickup to Curtis Novak, and he told me that the pickup was NOT a mudbucker, but his EB-AA pickup, which uses a mudbucker case but with different innards. Because of this, the 7.1k reading it was giving was, in fact, CORRECT. Thanks for taking the time to help me with this, Curtis!
Seeing as how both the Dingwall and the Novak were giving correct readings, I decided to test out another pickup with a known-manufacturer-specified reading. So I yanked one of my Dimarzio Area J pickups out of my Geddy, and measured that. Dimarzio says it should measure 7.8k, and mine read as 7.78. So the reading for the Dimarzio was CORRECT, also.
My Rickenbacker toaster pickup read as 7.17k. Posts on the Rickenbacker forum say this pickup should read between 7k and 13k, so I suppose the reading on my Ric pickup was CORRECT, albeit on the lower end of the spectrum.
This means that 4 out of 5 of my pickups were giving correct-as-per-specs readings. I think that's pretty conclusive.
So what to make of my Fender Japan Jazz Bass pickups that measured 4.93k instead of the more common 7.2k to 8.5k range of a Jazz pickup? Who knows? But thanks to the responses in this thread, I've learned that measurements can vary considerably depending on things like the kind of wire used, bobbin size, etc, etc.
So thanks to all for helping this bonehead figure out how to use a multimeter correctly!
The Novak not-a-mudbucker sounds great, actually! But the multimeter reading I was getting from the pickup had my head spinning!
You might have been suffering a little paralysis-by-analysis. If the readings don't make sense but the pickup sounds good, sometimes the appropriate response is to shrug your shoulders and just go with it.
A cheap and cheerful meter sanity check would be to test any handy potentiometers... tolerances are usually very loose, but you get some ballpark reference (and the nominal value is usually printed on the side) 
