Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

[zeegler]

Okay, I have my multimeter, but I've never had a reason to test output on pickups before. What setting do I use on the meter. Do I have to have the pickup disconnected (I am assuming yes). Any tips or pointers?

[sully]

Re: Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

set it to read ohms, then put the red tip on the pickup hot, the black tip to ground.

[zeegler]

Re: Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

Are you trying to be funny? [img]graemlins/poke.gif[/img]

What range do I use? Do I have to disconnect the pickups first?

[ January 12, 2004, 06:09 PM: Message edited by: jsullysix ]

[Twisteramps]

Re: Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

http://www.muc.de/~hm/music/pickups.html

FYI if you don't want to go to the link, measuring resistance isn't a 'true' measure of output, but it can be a general one.

Mounted in your guitar, the distance between the strings and the pickup are going to make the volume/output vary by a lot. Maybe plug your guitar directly into a PC sound card, and record a wav file that shows the waveform? Do that for each pickup in the guitar, and you can also measure sustain too from how long it takes to decay.

Pete

[sully]

Re: Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

Originally posted by zeegler:
Are you trying to be funny? [img]graemlins/poke.gif[/img]

What range do I use? Do I have to disconnect the pickups first?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">dude, i'm sorry! i wasn't tryin to be a smartass at all! i read the post, grabbed my mulitimeter and a disconnected jb, and that's how i did it! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

wow, i'm fighting hard against bein a moron, i meant to hit the quote button, but hit the edit button and originally put my reply in your post! [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

been at the computer WAY too long today!

sully

[axeman81]

Re: Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

by saying "output" I assume you mean output voltage...in which case measuring resistance is not the way to do it??!
If this is the case, I would try to measure voltage at the output jack.

Of course, if you are trying to find out if the pickup is OK, then you can measure the resistance value of it and compare to factory values which would give a good indication if it's OK or not.

- Rune.

[zeegler]

Re: Testing pickup output - someone give me a crash course.

Well I figured it out. I just used the 200k range. The pickups I was measuring turned out to be 10.9k, 11.3k, and 15.6k ohms. The 15.6 is the stock bridge pickup out of my Destiny. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]