Does higher DC resistance mean a brighter or darker pickup?

[river251]

Are humbucker pickups with very high DC resistance brighter? Or darker? For example a pickup with 8K resistance compared to a pickup with 15K resistance? Thank you.

 

[charliechitlins]

Higher resistance is generally darker.
Changing the height of a pickup has a similar (though not exact) effect.
Lower often equals brighter/cleaner.

 

[DrewB]

A pickup wound to a higher DC resistance will be typically more mid-focused, not necessarily darker but most likely less bright. I say "not necessarily darker but most likely less bright" because a Duncan JB is more mid-focused than a PAF-type wind, but you certainly wouldn't say it's a dark pickup. Swap its AlNiCo V for an AlNiCo II and you can expect an overall less-bright sound. There's more at play than DC resistance, and more at play than magnet type. It's part art and part science...

 

[TM1]

Normally, the higher the D.C. resistance the less clarity the pickup will have. You can compensate for that (to a degree) by swapping magnets, wire gauge & wire type & the way it’s wound.

 

[Jim85IROC]

As others said, in general, as DCR goes up, all other things being equal, the inductance goes up too. The inductance causes a high frequency attenuation, and as inductance rises, the frequency where the attenuation begins lowers. That said, there are other variables that can impact this, like the type of magnet used, as well as how much variation there is in winds/resistance between the coils in a humbucker.

 

[Big Al]

No, no, no! You cannot make that comparison. 8k pups would be very different from 15k pups. You could not get a 15k read with coils wound with any type of 42 ga wire. Smaller diameter wire, larger ga. like 43 ga. will always read higher resistance for similar coils. The comparison, to have any real application should be between exact same make and model, say a makers paf model. Then you might say a 7.6k ohm read might indicate a clearer, brighter tone than one reading 8.8k.

Then it assumes the wind pattern, tension and coil offsets match.