Put M-3 california pickups in my Hallmark C60

[Hydra19]

I changed my Hallmark custom pickups and although those sounded nice, these have a crispier sound. I also changed the pots to 500k. I've been messing around a lot with the pickup and polepiece heights on the pickups and seem settled on this for now.

Excuse my playing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arwHUWZ- ... e=youtu.be

[raygun85]

Which pickup model are those?

[Hydra19]

hi, they're your pickups, I was the one asking for the live in japan tone

I'm still fiddling around with everything, something may be wrong with the trem bar, it doesn't seem as smooth but that's another thing/

The pickups are a defintive improvement in what I was going for, clearer, but the treble strings seem weaker than the bass on the bridge pickup, not as much punch or presence, but i am using 9's. I got the pickups quite high and the polepieces pretty low, but not sure on the optimal balance between these.

I read somewhere it was preferable to lower the bass side of the pickup and raise the polepieces while on the treble side it was better to have the polepieces lower but the pickup higher. Right now it's not touching anything when depressed at the 22nd fret, but just barely.

The polepieces line up better than the hallmark pickup. I'm still in the honeymoon fase, getting adjusted to the new sounds of the guitar so it'll be even better when I set the pickups better. The same weekend I also finally replaced the pickups in my Jaguar so I'm going back and forth between these guitars and loving it! Like 2 new guitars, I'm still getting used to the new dynamics so I'm not 100% where I want to be yet but am happy with the improvement in sound.

Thanks for the delivery in time, the prompt and informational replies to my questions too

[Hydra19]

actually i just replayed the video and didn't find the treble lacking, and come to think of it, I play more through my headphone amp and an effected setting with possible compression and to boot, my heahphones are monster gold, which are known to be bassy so that'll explain it, while playing through the amp there is enough treble, and more on tap.

what would raising the pickup and lowering the polepieces as opposed to lowering the pickup and raising the polepieces do on mosrite style pickups? They can be closer to the strings than most fender pickups

[raygun85]

I don't remember your order specifically...I was trying to be discreet. I guess what I was really wanting to know was whether these were RC-100's or RH-100's? Aesthetically, you can't tell them apart. Tone wise, the RC-100's have a lot more treble. That's why I was curious. How long ago did you order? We stopped actively promoting the RC-100's like, 3 or 4 months ago. In the video, they sound to me like RH-100's, but due to countless contingent factor (i.e. type of camera, amp, picking dynamics, room placement, how many flies are on the wall...etc...), I could be wrong.

I was just curious because you mentioned them having a lot more treble. I think the RH-100's definitely have a much higher resonant peak than the production Hallmark pickups, but they also tend to have more volume (or output), despite giving similar readings in terms of DC resistance. Of course, DC resistance does not tell even half the story when it comes to tone and output, so the readings make for a pretty subjective comparison.

[Hydra19]

thank, they're rh100's. i fiddled around more and found a setup and balance I like now