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Post by JohnH on Jan 3, 2017 0:33:12 GMT -5
Here are my notes about modelling pickups with multiple components, exploring how well they match or don't match test results and how more complex models can be optimised to get better matches. Pickup modelling JH 160103.pdf (831.53 KB) It uses covered and uncovered tests on a '57 Classic as a basis for modelling and comparison (thanks antigua and stratotarts) It's a bit too long for a post, se its in the form of a pdf. I hope it will be of interest to some.
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Post by ms on Jan 3, 2017 14:41:10 GMT -5
Here are my notes about modelling pickups with multiple components, exploring how well they match or don't match test results and how more complex models can be optimised to get better matches. It uses covered and uncovered tests on a '57 Classic as a basis for modelling and comparison (thanks antigua and stratotarts) It's a bit too long for a post, se its in the form of a pdf. I hope it will be of interest to some. Hey, thanks. I was just going over some of your stuff looking for this information over the weekend, and now you put it in one place! I think it is very useful to be able to express the pickup response in terms of a few simple ideal components. But I think it is also important to keep the "original three" all unchanged as you add more because they have such direct physical interpretation with measurement or simple calculation. For example, the coil inductance is the inductance measured at a low frequency. It includes effective of the permeability of the cores, etc., but it does not include the effect of eddy currents since they are significant only at higher frequencies, and thus should be represented by additional components. Eddy currents are a mutual inductance effect, and thus L2 and R2 should have physical significance as analogues of the leakage inductance and secondary resistance in an imperfectly coupled transformer, but if this were a perfect analogy, the effect of R2 should go to zero as the frequency does since the mutual coupling vanishes. But it does not, and thus I wonder if there is a more physically compelling way to do this. But I cannot think of what it might be! Again, thanks for writing it up.
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Post by JohnH on Jan 3, 2017 18:04:10 GMT -5
ms - thanks for those comments
I spent some time before thinking about how the values and measurements of the models and the real pickups relate to measured quantities. In the case of inductance, I'd like to know more about exactly what and how an inductance meter measures its reading, and how it will interpret reading an object that is more than just a simple inductor and may have several inductive and resistive paths, or at least a series resistance with the inductor.
I tried various ways of keeping L1 and L2 in some way relating to measured L, and it' snot obvious or consistent across different pickup types. This may well be a symptom of a model that is a simplified imperfect representation.
But, there are a few things that can be checked:
The DCR of the 6 part model is defined to always be exactly the true DCR, because R1 increases to keep it so, based on R2 and R3.
If we are concerned about inductance at 120hz, a check of the reasonableness of the model would be to compare impedances at 120hz between the whole 6 part model and also that of the measured R and L in series.
At 120 hz, an inductance of 4.83H has a reactance of 3.642k, and combined (by pythag) with 8.04k resistance gives an impedance of 8.826k. In the spreadsheet, I track the overall impedance of the whole network and if I set to calculate at 120hz, and remove the load components, the model impedance (uncovered) is 8.812k, ie very close.
So I think the model is doing a fair job of representing the low end of frequencies.
But I don't believe we need to treat the self-capacitance as such a fundamental quantity as the R and L, since it is derived to match the peak unloaded frequency, which is well up into frequencies range where the whole assumption of a three part model is breaking down. I think the C value, given we can't directly measure them, need to be whatever they need to be to best suit whatever model assumptions are in play, and to capture the effect of what is truly multiple capacitance across various parts of the pickup.
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Post by JohnH on Jan 3, 2017 23:06:00 GMT -5
Based on ms' comments and my thoughts above, I think the 120hz Inductance measurement may be able to be used as another very positive fixed point, by using it to match impedance between model and real pickup at that frequency.
In the procedure above, I wasn't using he measured impedance at all, and it was fiddly, but the best answer settled in a place very close to being consistent with the combination of DCR and measured L at 120hz. If instead, I set that as a criterion, the other values converge much more easily and I get slightly different numbers, but very close and just as good of a match to the test plots.
So, to generate 6 component values, my 6 facts would be to match DCR, Impedance at 120hz, and frequency and height of two peaks.
This was my previous best 6-part model of the uncovered 57C pickup: L1 = 5.22H, L2 = 30H, R1 = 8.56k, R2 = 205k, R3 = 368k, C1 = 116pF
based on the above change, it becomes: L1 = 5.10H, L2 = 33H. R1 = 8.46k, R2 = 290k R3 = 368k C1 = 118pF
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Post by ms on Jan 4, 2017 6:32:24 GMT -5
Based on ms' comments and my thoughts above, I think the 120hz Inductance measurement may be able to be used as another very positive fixed point, by using it to match impedance between model and real pickup at that frequency. Yes, exactly. That is how I use it, and I have not seen any pickups for which it is not true. (But always on the look out for exceptions and improvements!) In the low frequency range eddy current effects should fall off with the square of frequency, and thus go away fast as the frequency goes down ( MutualInductanceLoading.pdf (65.82 KB)).
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Post by JohnH on Jan 4, 2017 14:21:11 GMT -5
Based on ms' comments and my thoughts above, I think the 120hz Inductance measurement may be able to be used as another very positive fixed point, by using it to match impedance between model and real pickup at that frequency. Yes, exactly. That is how I use it, and I have not seen any pickups for which it is not true. (But always on the look out for exceptions and improvements!) In the low frequency range eddy current effects should fall off with the square of frequency, and thus go away fast as the frequency goes down ( View Attachment). There's a powerful result there if I'm understanding it right. In equation 8, setting aside capacitance, the pickup seems to be represented by just 4 variables, being resistance and inductance as measured, plus hidden parameters Rse and T representing eddy currents. Presumably these could be derived from measurements too? Add another parameter which is a capacitance, to make 5 variables.
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Post by antigua on Jan 4, 2017 14:38:02 GMT -5
My humbucker measurements are all at 120Hz. The first Strat ones were 1kHz, but Strat pickups have such low eddy currents that I get nearly the same reading at 120Hz or 1kHz. I noticed that with pickups such as Filter'trons, the amount of eddy current losses caused the 1kHz inductance values to be way off. I'd like to purchase an LCR meter with an even lower test frequency.
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Post by ms on Jan 4, 2017 15:10:01 GMT -5
Yes, exactly. That is how I use it, and I have not seen any pickups for which it is not true. (But always on the look out for exceptions and improvements!) In the low frequency range eddy current effects should fall off with the square of frequency, and thus go away fast as the frequency goes down (). There's a powerful result there if I'm understanding it right. In equation 8, setting aside capacitance, the pickup seems to be represented by just 4 variables, being resistance and inductance as measured, plus hidden parameters Rse and T representing eddy currents. Presumably these could be derived from measurements too? Add another parameter which is a capacitance, to make 5 variables. It is not quite that simple since both Rse and k can vary slowly with frequency. The skin effect, or rather its variations with frequency, is the culprit, changing Rse directly, and k through changes in the current flow geometry. But this should still be useful. For example, suppose you have Lcoil, Rcoil, and the impedance as a function of frequency and want C. You can use the impedance measurements well above resonance where C dominates the impedance, over a limited range where k and Rse can be considered constant. I use non linear least squares fitting to do this, getting the C values on the plots that I show. They seem good, but I do not consider any of this proven yet.
Also, k and Rse are very hard to measure accurately. The errors are correlated, etc. I think the best way to judge the effect of eddy currents is to measure the deviations of the impedance vs frequency from the values that would exist with just Lcoil and Rcoil. That is, find the capacitance, take out its effect, and plot the modified impedance. Then look at the decrease in the imaginary part and the increase in the real part compared to the impedance without eddy currents, that is, just the inductor with its series resistance. This is also on my plots, but how accurate is it?
Then you want to translate all that into the addition of the fewest possible ideal components. I think this is an interesting challenge.
I have been working on my pickup impedance meter, and will have some more to say in that discussion soon.
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Post by JohnH on Jan 4, 2017 15:45:50 GMT -5
My humbucker measurements are all at 120Hz. The first Strat ones were 1kHz, but Strat pickups have such low eddy currents that I get nearly the same reading at 120Hz or 1kHz. I noticed that with pickups such as Filter'trons, the amount of eddy current losses caused the 1kHz inductance values to be way off. I'd like to purchase an LCR meter with an even lower test frequency. I was just checking Fat50 and TV jones Classic neck, using the extra 120hz impedance correlation. The Fat50 matched up well, but the L1 model Inductance in the TV jones wanted to be 1.67H instead of 1.8H which was what gives the best match. That's based around a measured L of 1.503H. Do you recall if that measurement was at 120hz? The Filtertron/Gretch style pu's seem to be the most challenging for all these theories and have very distinct mid dip / eddy effects.
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Post by antigua on Jan 4, 2017 15:59:57 GMT -5
My humbucker measurements are all at 120Hz. The first Strat ones were 1kHz, but Strat pickups have such low eddy currents that I get nearly the same reading at 120Hz or 1kHz. I noticed that with pickups such as Filter'trons, the amount of eddy current losses caused the 1kHz inductance values to be way off. I'd like to purchase an LCR meter with an even lower test frequency. I was just checking Fat50 and TV jones Classic neck, using the extra 120hz impedance correlation. The Fat50 matched up well, but the L1 model Inductance in the TV jones wanted to be 1.67H instead of 1.8H which was what gives the best match. That's based around a measured L of 1.503H. Do you recall if that measurement was at 120hz? The Filtertron/Gretch style pu's seem to be the most challenging for all these theories and have very distinct mid dip / eddy effects. The TV Jones and other Filter'trons are all 120Hz. It might be that eddy currents are a problem even with the 120Hz measure when the steel/AlNiCo involvement is as great as it is with Filter'trons. In fact, it appeared to me that TV Jones measures some of their pickups at 120Hz, and others at 1kHz, because I see one measured number or the other on their website. I emailed them about it but I never got a reply. Your 1.6H value is probably correct, and if we can get better values for the rest, I'll update the posts. I'll go ahead and buy another LCR meter so that I'll have lower frequencies to work with.
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Post by antigua on Jan 4, 2017 16:45:04 GMT -5
The lowest test frequency I see in most $200 - $300 LCR meters is 100Hz, which probably isn't a great improvement over the 120Hz of the Extech.
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Post by ms on Jan 4, 2017 17:42:56 GMT -5
One thing that might bias intuitive interpretations here is that when eddy current losses are low, inductance measurement at 1KHz can be about 1.5% high because of the effect of the capacitance. It only takes 100pf to screw things up that much.
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Post by JohnH on Jan 4, 2017 18:06:26 GMT -5
I think a 120hz inductance value is fine for measurements. For my purposes, at 120 Hz, the impedance is starting to get measurably and calculably increased as compared to dc conditions, and that is better for getting numbers that are different enough to chew on so that the changes with frequency can be seen. At a lower frequency than 120hz, impedance is getting so close to DCR that errors could become magnified.
I just checked my model of the TV Jones Bridge, which worked out better wrt to impedance at 120hz than the neck one. A value for L1 of 2.25H that I worked out before got corrected only slightly to 2.3H, which is very close.
But one thing I think is worth saying again, is that I very much like how the basis of modelling includes in addition to meter measurements, matching to measured loaded output curves, rather than trying derive them from other properties. It means that the model is demonstrably accurate at least at this load point, which is typical of how the pickup will work. Even if the model is lacking in a full theoretical basis or absolute accuracy, it is unlikely to get too far away from being accurate enough at other load points in the region where it will be most used in a guitar.
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Post by antigua on Jan 4, 2017 18:12:14 GMT -5
Yeah there are at least two potential uses for the modelling, 1) to see how a pickup or wiring scheme will work out before you implement it, or 2) the demonstrate correlation between the real and the theoretical, and you still have a value proposition with capacity #1 even if you were to completely neglect #2.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 21, 2017 20:38:48 GMT -5
Yeah there are at least two potential uses for the modelling, 1) to see how a pickup or wiring scheme will work out before you implement it, or 2) the demonstrate correlation between the real and the theoretical, and you still have a value proposition with capacity #1 even if you were to completely neglect #2. There's a third use that might be interesting - that is, emulating a given known pickup response (to a "good enough for rock 'n' roll" level or better) by changing external component values (mainly, load C and R) of another measured pickup with a higher native self-resonant frequency and Q. That's really the "thang" I'm pursuing right now to increase the tonal versatility of the instrument. So, it's "tone engineering" where you can craft the pickup response the way you wish for a particular instrument or music style. I suppose though, that that's a more targeted restatement of Antigua's use case #1 above. With this thread, I'm being struck with the point that thanks to you guys, all the pieces are in place for a full "engineering loop." Modeling/simulation, real world measurement, understanding the effect of the various components, and getting repeatable, predictable results. Antigua, JohnH, ms, stratotarts and a couple of others --- you guys with your work and postings have just about written the definitive book on "Guitar Tone Engineering 101" as well as provided or assembled the tools and methodology. This is crazy good stuff and I'm sure I'm not the only one who vastly appreciates it. -Charlie
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Post by antigua on Jan 22, 2017 4:12:14 GMT -5
I'm happy that you can find a practical use for this data so quickly. I think it's a lot of fun. I just can't believe there is such a need for data that is at the same time so easy to gather. And then on the theory side, people like Lemme and Jungmann have already dispelled myths decades before they became myths, but their work simply isn't "accessible" for one reason or another. Easy problems to fix, IMO. The whole situation reminds me of an amusing rant I read a few months ago:
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 22, 2017 23:28:36 GMT -5
LOL Antigua, I have called some of the vintage and custom guitar folks "cork-sniffers" for a while now. And Winter NAMM is just winding up which has a lot of folks/companies catering to that market.
It always gets me how custom builders will create wondrous works of art and skill , hundreds of hours of work into a wonderful, playable physical instrument, and then just slap a set of Duncans, Lollars, etc. with a completely standard type set of tone and volume controls (albeit maybe expensive pots and caps), and call it a day for the electric tone of the instrument, it seems. They won't even check tolerance on the pots and caps and hand-pick to get better values and avoid the results of tolerance stack-up.
Yes it will probably sound OK to good, but if a small bit of time were put into engineering and voicing the electric tone instead of blindly repeating a 60 year old set of formulas, I can't help but think that the results would be better and more satisfying for the buyer/end user. Otherwise it's chasing magic rabbits from hat to hat and/or trying to convince the buyer that the rabbit is in the hat that you are selling.
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Post by antigua on Jan 23, 2017 0:33:56 GMT -5
It's pretty subjective for the most part, so I don't blame them with going for the "average" pickup with a known name brand on the face. What bothers me more is that I've seen a lot of "hot" pickups come stock, as if we're all heavy metal shredders. All of the Zemaitii I've bought to date have come with fiery hot humbuckers and single coils. I know Ronnie Wood played a Zemaitis once, but we're not all trying to be Ronnie Wood. Then I just measured the pickups out of a Fender Mexico Strat made this year, over 4H inductance and 7.0k DC resistance per pickup. I imagine the loaded resonant peaks are going to land in humbucker territory.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 23, 2017 9:27:23 GMT -5
It's pretty subjective for the most part, so I don't blame them with going for the "average" pickup with a known name brand on the face. What bothers me more is that I've seen a lot of "hot" pickups come stock, as if we're all heavy metal shredders. All of the Zemaitii I've bought to date have come with fiery hot humbuckers and single coils. I know Ronnie Wood played a Zemaitis once, but we're not all trying to be Ronnie Wood. Then I just measured the pickups out of a Fender Mexico Strat made this year, over 4H inductance and 7.0k DC resistance per pickup. I imagine the loaded resonant peaks are going to land in humbucker territory. I'll bet they will, too. There's always been attempts to lower the resonant peaks of Fender type single coils, to make the distortion sound "better" or less "weedy." Bill Lawrence stated some years back that his first hand knowledge was that the "secret" to the "pickup" part of Jimi Hendrix's unique Strat tone (e.g. "Purple Haze") was an extra long, extra crappy (high capacitance) cable which would shift the pickup resonant peaks down closer to 2K or so. Jimi would also reportedly switch to a shorter, "better" cable for cleaner sounds in the studio. That's amazing though, that Fender would put a 4 Henry single coil pickup in a Strat. That's in the territory where you could put in a parallel inductance a la Lawrence Q-Filter, and still have enough output in "clean sound" mode. But why you wouldn't use a humbucking pickup when you are in that inductance range, for noise reasons, is beyond me.
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Post by antigua on Jan 23, 2017 10:33:25 GMT -5
I'll bet they will, too. There's always been attempts to lower the resonant peaks of Fender type single coils, to make the distortion sound "better" or less "weedy." Bill Lawrence stated some years back that his first hand knowledge was that the "secret" to the "pickup" part of Jimi Hendrix's unique Strat tone (e.g. "Purple Haze") was an extra long, extra crappy (high capacitance) cable which would shift the pickup resonant peaks down closer to 2K or so. Jimi would also reportedly switch to a shorter, "better" cable for cleaner sounds in the studio. That's amazing though, that Fender would put a 4 Henry single coil pickup in a Strat. That's in the territory where you could put in a parallel inductance a la Lawrence Q-Filter, and still have enough output in "clean sound" mode. But why you wouldn't use a humbucking pickup when you are in that inductance range, for noise reasons, is beyond me. All true. The Mexican Fender singles achieve 4H in part due to their steel cores, but the DC resistance of 7k shows that they deliberately applied a lot of wire. Another example of forcing hot pickups on consumers are Epiphone versus Gibson Les Pauls. In the low cost Epiphone Les Paul they used to install "AlNiCo Classics" where you have a hot bridge measuring, it's is said, up to 13k, and 8.5k for the neck, while on an actual Gibson Les Paul they install "57 Classics" which come in around 8k for the neck and bridge alike. Apparently they got the clue that people did not want hot pickups installed stock, and more recent Epiphones comes with "Probuckers", which are lower wound than the "AlNiCo Classics".
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Post by ms on Jan 23, 2017 13:19:41 GMT -5
I'll bet they will, too. There's always been attempts to lower the resonant peaks of Fender type single coils, to make the distortion sound "better" or less "weedy." Bill Lawrence stated some years back that his first hand knowledge was that the "secret" to the "pickup" part of Jimi Hendrix's unique Strat tone (e.g. "Purple Haze") was an extra long, extra crappy (high capacitance) cable which would shift the pickup resonant peaks down closer to 2K or so. Jimi would also reportedly switch to a shorter, "better" cable for cleaner sounds in the studio. That's amazing though, that Fender would put a 4 Henry single coil pickup in a Strat. That's in the territory where you could put in a parallel inductance a la Lawrence Q-Filter, and still have enough output in "clean sound" mode. But why you wouldn't use a humbucking pickup when you are in that inductance range, for noise reasons, is beyond me. All true. The Mexican Fender singles achieve 4H in part due to their steel cores, but the DC resistance of 7k shows that they deliberately applied a lot of wire. Another example of forcing hot pickups on consumers are Epiphone versus Gibson Les Pauls. In the low cost Epiphone Les Paul they used to install "AlNiCo Classics" where you have a hot bridge measuring, it's is said, up to 13k, and 8.5k for the neck, while on an actual Gibson Les Paul they install "57 Classics" which come in around 8k for the neck and bridge alike. Apparently they got the clue that people did not want hot pickups installed stock, and more recent Epiphones comes with "Probuckers", which are lower wound than the "AlNiCo Classics". I think people mostly do want hot pickups (that is, high level with increased overdrive capability, reduced high frequencies, and lower levels of resulting high order intermod distortion) because distortion is mostly what rock guitar playing is about, but it cannot be too harsh. Let's see, is this the exact 50th anniversary of the recording of Purple Haze? Not quite, but close. Where did those high frequencies from the strat go? How about a low impedance input fuzz face using a low beta germanium transistor? (In that case the cable would make little difference.) But wherever they went they were really gone and replaced by harmonics and intermods from the first few guitar harmonics. What happens when you give a couple of powder blue strats to some guys used to playing with much less lively guitars? You get Nowhere Man.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 23, 2017 13:53:27 GMT -5
All true. The Mexican Fender singles achieve 4H in part due to their steel cores, but the DC resistance of 7k shows that they deliberately applied a lot of wire. Another example of forcing hot pickups on consumers are Epiphone versus Gibson Les Pauls. In the low cost Epiphone Les Paul they used to install "AlNiCo Classics" where you have a hot bridge measuring, it's is said, up to 13k, and 8.5k for the neck, while on an actual Gibson Les Paul they install "57 Classics" which come in around 8k for the neck and bridge alike. Apparently they got the clue that people did not want hot pickups installed stock, and more recent Epiphones comes with "Probuckers", which are lower wound than the "AlNiCo Classics". Yes, I actually had a bit of trouble trying to find inexpensive test bridge humbuckers that were about 8K DCR and about 4 to 5 H. So many of them are 12K to 16K DCR. That's why I went to rails for the first two instruments - so that I could get a "neck" wind of about 8K, use the same PU for the bridge, and not have to worry about 50mm versus 52mm polepiece spacing. I have absolutely no use for a "hot" bridge pickup because I'm trying to get Fendery sounds out of the pickup , and I need from 1 to about 1.5 Henry in parallel coil mode for that. Standard "vintage" wind PAF clones are right in the ball park as long as they're 4 wire. From there you can go down in resonant frequency with capacitance and get traditional Gibson HB flavors, bright to dark. Keeping the Q down with resistive loading so that the resonant peaks are anywhere from 6 to 7.5 dB over the tuneable range, gives very good tonality at both ends - it looks like you don't have to dynamically vary the Q to go from Gibson-y to Fender-y.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 23, 2017 14:21:08 GMT -5
All true. The Mexican Fender singles achieve 4H in part due to their steel cores, but the DC resistance of 7k shows that they deliberately applied a lot of wire. Another example of forcing hot pickups on consumers are Epiphone versus Gibson Les Pauls. In the low cost Epiphone Les Paul they used to install "AlNiCo Classics" where you have a hot bridge measuring, it's is said, up to 13k, and 8.5k for the neck, while on an actual Gibson Les Paul they install "57 Classics" which come in around 8k for the neck and bridge alike. Apparently they got the clue that people did not want hot pickups installed stock, and more recent Epiphones comes with "Probuckers", which are lower wound than the "AlNiCo Classics". I think people mostly do want hot pickups (that is, high level with increased overdrive capability, reduced high frequencies, and lower levels of resulting high order intermod distortion) because distortion is mostly what rock guitar playing is about, but it cannot be too harsh. Let's see, is this the exact 50th anniversary of the recording of Purple Haze? Not quite, but close. Where did those high frequencies from the strat go? How about a low impedance input fuzz face using a low beta germanium transistor? (In that case the cable would make little difference.) But wherever they went they were really gone and replaced by harmonics and intermods from the first few guitar harmonics. What happens when you give a couple of power blue strats to some guys used to playing with much less lively guitars? You get Nowhere Man. Yep, some good points, Mike. The "hot" pickup isn't just for higher signal level pushing an amp, but also rolling off higher harmonics that would intermod and clash when the signal is distorted. That reminds me also of why only octaves and fifth chords (power chords) using only a couple or three strings sound OK under heavy distortion - it's the same reason. There are supposedly some pickups that can sound good both clean and distorted. I wonder, if those beasts exist, could we apply the modeling and analysis tools and find out why?
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Post by antigua on Jan 23, 2017 14:29:51 GMT -5
I can't say I agree. I think that those ridiculously over-wound pickups such as the SDS-1, Super D, JB and SSL-5 et el were an 80's thing. Now you see people going for Seth Lovers on the PAF side, or Lollar Blackfaces on the boutique side. Kids of the past might have been planning to cover Metallica, but I think guitars are appealing to a different demographic these days. Besides that, amps offer too much gain anymore, you don't have top push no front ends. Yes, people want "sweet highs", but even more, they don't want muddy chords.
The boutique market owes Fender and Gibson a debt of gratitude for putting trashy pickups in their import lines. The verbiage they use, note separation, articulation, clarity, chime, jangle, are all qualities that track with a lower wound pickup, they've used this sales pitch to sell $300 pickup sets to teenagers for years, decades even.
All I say for sure is that these hot stock pickups, the Fender Mexico and and Epiphone, have had a bad reputation in the community, while the Probucker's on Gibson's side, and the Tonerider AlNiCo OEMs in the Fender Vintage Vibe have received praise.
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Post by ms on Jan 23, 2017 15:03:49 GMT -5
I can't say I agree. I think that those ridiculously over-wound pickups such as the SDS-1, Super D, JB and SSL-5 et el were an 80's thing. Now you see people going for Seth Lovers on the PAF side, or Lollar Blackfaces on the boutique side. Kids of the past might have been planning to cover Metallica, but I think guitars are appealing to a different demographic these days. Besides that, amps offer too much gain anymore, you don't have top push no front ends. Yes, people want "sweet highs", but even more, they don't want muddy chords. The boutique market owes Fender and Gibson a debt of gratitude for putting trashy pickups in their import lines. The verbiage they use, note separation, articulation, clarity, chime, jangle, are all qualities that track with a lower wound pickup, they've used this sales pitch to sell $300 pickup sets to teenagers for years, decades even. All I say for sure is that these hot stock pickups, the Fender Mexico and and Epiphone, have had a bad reputation in the community, while the Probucker's on Gibson's side, and the Tonerider AlNiCo OEMs in the Fender Vintage Vibe have received praise. Certainly there is an increased reverence for the past, but then you have to get rid of the high frequencies in order to get the sound you need. There is a reason why the boutique winders introduced the hot pickups way back when when Fender and Gibson still thought that people wanted good high frequencies for playing clean. (Look at some of those old Fender ads with short haired clean cut guys in tuxes smiling happily as they play their strats.) I still sometimes read of how that guy on the Eastern shore of Maryland who makes those really good expensive guitars cannot make a decent pickup. No, he just knows what his clientele needs.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 23, 2017 23:48:48 GMT -5
I can't say I agree. I think that those ridiculously over-wound pickups such as the SDS-1, Super D, JB and SSL-5 et el were an 80's thing. Now you see people going for Seth Lovers on the PAF side, or Lollar Blackfaces on the boutique side. Kids of the past might have been planning to cover Metallica, but I think guitars are appealing to a different demographic these days. Besides that, amps offer too much gain anymore, you don't have top push no front ends. Yes, people want "sweet highs", but even more, they don't want muddy chords. The boutique market owes Fender and Gibson a debt of gratitude for putting trashy pickups in their import lines. The verbiage they use, note separation, articulation, clarity, chime, jangle, are all qualities that track with a lower wound pickup, they've used this sales pitch to sell $300 pickup sets to teenagers for years, decades even. All I say for sure is that these hot stock pickups, the Fender Mexico and and Epiphone, have had a bad reputation in the community, while the Probucker's on Gibson's side, and the Tonerider AlNiCo OEMs in the Fender Vintage Vibe have received praise. Certainly there is an increased reverence for the past, but then you have to get rid of the high frequencies in order to get the sound you need. There is a reason why the boutique winders introduced the hot pickups way back when when Fender and Gibson still thought that people wanted good high frequencies for playing clean. (Look at some of those old Fender ads with short haired clean cut guys in tuxes smiling happily as they play their strats.) I still sometimes read of how that guy on the Eastern shore of Maryland who makes those really good expensive guitars cannot make a decent pickup. No, he just knows what his clientele needs. For versatility in a single instrument, you really want "all of the above." Both ways of looking at hot pickups are valid depending on which musical style you're going after. I've always thought and heard from others, that there are three fuzzy classes that you can roughly put guitar tones - clean, crunch (light to moderate distortion) , and heavy distortion. You can even see this kind of partitioning on amp channels, stompboxes, etc. The highs you need and the EQ you need in the electric signal chain are different for each class of sounds to get the best range of tonality within a class. So you guys (ms and Antigua) are talking about two different classes of guitar sounds. You're both right. Any given passive pickup instrument without "help" (onboard or offboard) in general, is going to be compromised for the best tones in at least one of the three tone classes. One prime motivation for doing what I'm doing now is to see if it's possible to have a single instrument that is capable of versatile enough tonality to not only be OK, but really good at all three classes. I'm pursuing the "clean" alternative even to the degree that I'm testing my buffered instruments with a "flat" acoustic amp, and making sure that the highs at 6-8Khz sound good, even though I know that lots of those highs will be "wasted" on a typical guitar amp which starts rolling off at 5 KHz. For crunch to heavy distortion, you need the resonant peak lower in frequency and roll off high harmonics sooner. But I have to get the clean sound right first.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Feb 4, 2017 22:19:30 GMT -5
I'll bet they will, too. There's always been attempts to lower the resonant peaks of Fender type single coils, to make the distortion sound "better" or less "weedy." Bill Lawrence stated some years back that his first hand knowledge was that the "secret" to the "pickup" part of Jimi Hendrix's unique Strat tone (e.g. "Purple Haze") was an extra long, extra crappy (high capacitance) cable which would shift the pickup resonant peaks down closer to 2K or so. Jimi would also reportedly switch to a shorter, "better" cable for cleaner sounds in the studio. That's amazing though, that Fender would put a 4 Henry single coil pickup in a Strat. That's in the territory where you could put in a parallel inductance a la Lawrence Q-Filter, and still have enough output in "clean sound" mode. But why you wouldn't use a humbucking pickup when you are in that inductance range, for noise reasons, is beyond me. All true. The Mexican Fender singles achieve 4H in part due to their steel cores, but the DC resistance of 7k shows that they deliberately applied a lot of wire. Another example of forcing hot pickups on consumers are Epiphone versus Gibson Les Pauls. In the low cost Epiphone Les Paul they used to install "AlNiCo Classics" where you have a hot bridge measuring, it's is said, up to 13k, and 8.5k for the neck, while on an actual Gibson Les Paul they install "57 Classics" which come in around 8k for the neck and bridge alike. Apparently they got the clue that people did not want hot pickups installed stock, and more recent Epiphones comes with "Probuckers", which are lower wound than the "AlNiCo Classics". I'm totally dialed in on lower wind or "vintage" sound pickups for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that a 4-wire humbucker of about 8K to 8.5K DCR and 4 to 5 Henry in series coil mode, can be put into parallel coil mode and with either my variable cap/buffer approach, or just modeling and picking the right passive components, mainly capacitance, can be capable of Fendery sounds with a resonant peak around 3.8 to 4.2 KHz. What I'm seeing is sort of a consensus with a "vintage PAF" neck coming in at about 7.5 K DCR, and a bridge in the set coming in at 8.2K to 8.5K or so. The Seymour Duncan set that most fits that description is the Pearly Gates set, which is supposedly meant to sound like Billy Gibbons' '59 Les Paul. Epiphone has really stepped up their game with the ProBuckers, and rumor has it that the new lower cost Gibson guitars have Gibson label pickups built in the same China factory, probably with darn near or identical construction to the Epis.
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Post by antigua on Feb 5, 2017 12:55:02 GMT -5
I'd like to see some of those low cost Gibson humbuckers. I noticed a common theme with import PAF clones is that they don't put the hole where the lead wire passes through the base plate on the same side of the baseplate. With authentic US type clones, the lead wire enters opposite of where the connections are made, so the wire is channeled along the bottom of the base plate, beside the six screws, but in all the imports I've seen, the lead wire enters where the connections are made, necessitating two wood or plastic spacers, since there is a gap in that "channel" where the wire would have been. You can see in this pic below, US made 57 Classic at left, the wider enters at left, the connections are at right. The Epi Probucker at right, the hookup wire and the connections are all on the right, and you can see that the Probucker has two wood spacers to fill both empy channels where as the 57 Classic only requires the one. I'm curious to see if the imported low end Gibson pickups continue this trend. Here's another picture showing this trend, they are DiMarzio, Duncan, both domestic, and Donlis and "other", both from China. Notice the first two have the hookup enter at the far end, the second two enter close to the connection points. I realize this is pretty trivial, but some people make it there business to note these sorts of differences.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Mar 7, 2017 22:17:14 GMT -5
Antigua,
Some of the low end Gibson guitars (2017 Les Paul Custom Special, Firebird Zero, M2, SG Fusion) are coming with Gibson "double slug" DS-whatever pickups and from the specs on Gibson's site, they are in the vintage range. I'd be willing to bet they are Asian manufacture.
I don't see being able to come up with any short of buying them, but I'm going to keep my eyes open on Ebay since changing the PU's would be probably in the sights for some of the buyers of these guitars. I think from a Youtube video of the M2 control cavity that the PU's have the Gibson single Molex connector.
If any come my way I'll be sure to PM you.
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