Hi,
Hank's recent interview in The Guitarist magazine (May 2014) mentioned the possible use of Neck + Bridge pickups on some tunes. In the thread on this site concerning that article, Phil Kelly mentioned that the late Dick Denney had told him that he did do such a modification, but unfortunately we have no information on when that might have been done.That led to an interesting discussion on whether Stars Fell on Stockton might have been a possible candidate, amongst some other tunes. In the absence of any documentary evidence I thought it might be interesting to try the tune using the middle pickup neck + bridge pickups to see what differences might result from the one I posted using the middle pickup, and to see which was closer to the original. I had a spare switch pot of the right value and so I fitted it to my Strat so that I could get the Neck + Bridge combination wired in parallel (It might have been interesting to also try a series connection but that would have required a much more complicated switch than available to me and possibly also Dick Denney).
I spent a fair amount of time finding the best settings and mic position and finally came up with the attached sound files (2004 American Strat, CS54 pickups, 12-52 Elixirs, TVS3, AC30 clone, SM57 mic). One is the old one using the middle (M) pickup (with a couple of tweaks), one is using the combination (BN, apologies for the wrong note!) and the final one is a comparison of some short phrases with the original, the order for each segment being: Shadows, BM, Shadows, M. The latter were picked at random so as to try to not bias the outcome as much as possible. The might need to be spread over a few postings to avoid upload limits.
In general, It was interesting how close the M and BN sounds were after some equalisation, the main difference being a slightly more "juicy" sound for the BN combination but more tonal variation from note to note due to the phase cancelling or reinforcement of the two pickups that varies from note to note, particularly noticeable in the upwards or downwards runs. My feeling is that the BN combination is possibly more interesting to listen to, but overall the M recording is probably closer to the original, lacking as it does that marked tonal note to note variation. However, I am sure that others might form a different view!
All I need now is a vintage Strat and AC30, the Abbey Road studio, some condenser mics, Malcolm Addey and an 18 year old Hank!
Paul.