Thats right. The super distortion was made to get the front end of the 60-70's amps all excited, and clip them into distortion. There werent really amps with gain knobs, so the pickup would be way over powered to clip the signal and therefore get that heavy/metal sound. As the years went by, they started adding gain knobs, so high output pickups werent as necessary. Today, they are obsolete (in a way), but in this world of "more must equal better", people buy on the basis of output rather than tone.Stiltzkin wrote:well, for one thing, the Super Distortion was design to distort the guitarsignal to the amp in an early stage,
since most players back then were using non-master Marshalls which would only get LOUD AS HELL when
they turned it up whereas the PAFs/T-tops were merely amplifying the signal.
To get more output, you have to get more windings on the bobbin. Eventually, you run out of space, so you go to a thinner wire. Thinner wire sounds "darker". Of course, over winding doesnt just change the output, but also the tone. More windings = more mids, and a drop off in the bass and treble ends. This then gets counteracted with ceramic magnets (as in the Super Distortion), which "artificially" boosts the bass and treble, but also has a stronger magnetic pull than Alnico magnets. That extra magnetic strength creates a larger magnetic field, which the string excites, creating the signal. The stronger the magnet, the louder the signal. So, comparing the Super Dist to a PAF, you have many more winds, and a stronger magnet. The adjustable pole pieces in the Super Dist are also a different alloy to the regular non adjustable poles in a PAF, and that creates a slightly dirty signal (all the components of a pickup effect the sound, some more than others). Of course, this a hugely simplified explanation of how a pickup works...