Gibson EB "mudbucker" thought experiment: why is it muddy?

[soapfoot]

A friend asked me the other day to speculate on why the Gibson EB pickup (colloquially called the "mudbucker" is so muddy.

I don't know very much about the pickup, as I've never dissected or measured one, but I do know:

It's a double-coil design with a very large number of windings on each coil, a total DC resistance of about 30k, and (anecdotally/logically) a very high inductance relative to many other electric guitar/bass pickups.

My first thought was that maybe the high high inductance shiftsthe pickup's resonant frequency substantially lower than a "typical" design, and that maybe the high resistance sharpens the Q enough to make this lower resonance more-noticeable, compounding the "muddy" impression.

But then I started to think about the input impedance of a typical amplifier in relation to the much-higher-than-normal output impedance of the pickup, and began to wonder whether this could result in a treble-robbing loading behavior?

I wonder whether any of the smart people here have any input--in the meantime I'll reach out to my friend and see if he can get me an inductance measurement on the pickup

 

[CJ]

all those turns means high capacitance which shorts out the hi end, and the DCR probably drops off a bit of hi end also. i like the sound, Jack Bruce, Felix Papperaldi (Mountain) , Glen Cornick (Tull), Andy Fraser (Free), Chris White (Zombies), Bill Wyman, Alan Woody (Govt Mule), John Perry (Caravan), Colin Pattenden (Manfred Mann's Earth Band) ,

the trick is finding a good amp to use with that bass. Like a Sunn Solarus or an Ampeg B-15,

 

[soapfoot]

They are cool!

My friend has several of them, and had the idea of a simple external box (or even something built into a cable connector) that would get the super-low-end under control a bit—it easily overwhelms some amps like the Fender Bassman

I was just brainstorming things I might try—a small coil in parallel to reduce inductance? Or maybe even a simple first-order high pass with a corner frequency right around 50Hz might do something worthwhile?

But I’m not sure there’s much non-invasive that I could do to reduce coil capacitance