Repair And Restoration
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High Resistance for Gibson Mini-humbucker
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High Resistance for Gibson Mini-humbucker
I have a customer with a 2018 Gibson SG special with mini-humbuckers who is complaining about the pickups being too hot (distorting their amp too easily). I took resistance readings and, to my surprise, the readings are very high. The neck humbucker (see photo) reads over 16kohm and the bridge reads 23kohm. From the specs I’ve seen, mini-hums more typically come in around 6-7kohms. Has anyone seen this with Gibson mini-hbs that appear to be stock? Any idea what might be going on?
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3 Replies
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I wasn’t aware of it but a bit of poking around has thrown up a number of references to some reissue mini humbuckers and firebird pickups being made with ceramic magnets and wound for really high output. There are a few places noting resistances of 16k and 25k — pretty much what you’re seeing. I couldn’t find a definite reference that lead back to a primary source at Gibson but they kill things off on their site regularly.
I saW enough mentions to happily believe that this is a thing (despite the insanity of it).
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Thanks @gerryhayes appreciate you taking a look and replying.
I saw a few listings on Reverb for Gibson mini-HBs with these high readings, too, and also couldn’t find any official specs. I’m planning to re-wire the guitar for the customer (swapping out the PCB board). I’ll add coil-splits for the mini-HBs and see if that gives him some more flexibility with these beasts.
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I might also try, before complete rewire, adding a 500k trim pot from pickup hot to ground to try to tame the high output. The trim pot would give you tunability for the output level. I currently don’t have a guitar or the trim pot to test this idea
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