Those of you who know me have been aware of this little pipe dream for years. Slowly but surely,
it is becoming more and more of a reality.
For those of you who don't know the backstory, a quick recap.
-in 2006, I ordered the guitar in my avatar. It's a now-defunct "ASAT special deluxe" in the now defunct baby blue. Sound aside, I fell in love with the oddly shaped soapbar pups with the quirky standoff pole pieces. I loved the clean, modern look of the rear mounter controls.
-in about 2009, I discovered the G&L Cavalier. I was so thrilled to know there were humbucker versions of these quirky soapbars, and even more thrilled they were offset/slanted. I don't know why, but I became obsessed with the look of those pickups. My dream became clear. I wanted a solid blue triple bound Rear mount ASAT with those slanty humbuckers with white covers. That vision has stayed in my head for over a decade.
-my 2006 ASAT would act as a prototype of sorts. I found someone who sold me a Cavalier bridge pup. My luthier installed it, and I(stupidly) tried to spray paint it white. Below is the "mark I."
-Right off the bat, I noticed a couple things. For one, the ASAT special's cavity is angled steeper than the cav. Cavalier routes are approx -11 degrees. The ASAT special is closer to -30. Also, the ASAT special bridge pup is elongated to compensate for the tilt and string spacing, so there were extra little holes on either side. Most importantly, I started noticing the main problem and the reason I don't think Cavs are around/coming back any time soon. That pickup doesn't sound very good. More on this later.
-my avatar is "mark II." I learned the only person in the world who offers a commercial product that's a humbucker that fits in an ASAT special cavity is a boutique builder called Rio Grande pickups. The pickup is the "tallboy" for ASAT. He solved many of the inherent problems with the cavalier pup, mostly by using traditional narrow slugs and making the coil very tall, hence the name. The pickup sounds really good, but has always been a temporary fix for my ultimate dream of having a slanty rear mounted ASAT HH. The project languished like this for years.
-I decided to resurrect the project, and got to work on reverse-engineering new pickups that look indistinguishable from cavalier pups, but solve the design problems of the HG platform. MFD pickups in general are an interesting, but crude technology. They are meant to be subtractive. pups are usually either high DCR/high inductance, or low DCR/low inductance. the former are loud and hot with a lot of bass and mids but attenuated highs. the philosophy here is that high frequency content is ADDED in gain staging. As you add saturation and drive, the upper harmonics are excited, giving you a balance and presence in the later gain stages. Cleaner pickups that shimmer and spank are the latter low-inductance, low DCR. Quieter and weaker but with much of the high frequency content intact so the pickup shimmers like glass while wide open.
MFDs are weird in that they're high-inductance, low DCR. powerful magnets make the pickup loud and hot, but the low winds keep the high frequencies. If you notice your ASAT special or L-series bass clip your input signal a lot, this would be why. Usually, pickups that are that trebly aren't that hot/loud. But there's the thing! Leo's PBD system was designed alongside the MFDs. It's essentially a SUBTRACTIVE system! It gives you more bass and treble than you'll need in most cases, and you sculpt to taste subtractively. This was right before active preamps really rose to prominence. It was kind of an abandoned taxonomic clade of modern electric guitar technology. this is why ASAT specials, L-series basses, etc, sound best when you roll a little treble and bass off. They are usually unusably spiky and clippy while wide open.
Anyway, the Cavalier pups face several problems. They have with them the high inductance/low DCR of all MFDs, but with the added strain of needing two coils to fit in the same dimensions as an ASAT special neck pup. The first solution was coil height. The pups are about 2/3 taller than ASAT specials.
However, this still left not nearly enough room for wire. The thick standoff pole pieces only allowed for a tall coil with very little wire, as opposed to the ASAT special's short, wide bobbin. Thick pole piece, but plenty of room for wire(even though it uses a relatively low wind as well.
Combine this with two giant ceramic magnets, and the result is a loud, quiet pickup...with a tone like an ice pick. I tried to like them and use them, but the cavalier bridge pickup has a transient response in the highs that just HURT. They cut your head off. If you roll the treble off, they immediately sound dead and flat. The only way to make them sound musical is with careful EQ sculpting with a graphic EQ and some careful gain staging. With some surgery and love, they can work, but they're unwieldy and do not possess a naturally music voice.
Continued in part II....
. However, it wasn't quite a fit, mostly due to a difference of vision and lead times, so I continued my search. 
