frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Oct 29, 2017 19:35:58 GMT -5
The JB bridge / Jazz neck combo has been marketed by Seymour Duncan as a good pairing, ever since they set was introduced in the very early 80's. Seymour made these in the 70s before he even launched the company, and they were among the first two models to exist. They weren't sold together as a set until much later. It appears that the idea was to have a neck pickup that performs like a PAF neck, but shares all the same production components of the JB, either for aesthetic reasons or cost reasons. No. Seymour chooses wire for the sound they produce. By the time these became models, Seymour had already wound pickups for people like Jimmy Page with Plain Enamel, and Jeff Beck with poly. Consolidating wire insulation types was not a consideration.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Oct 29, 2017 18:21:31 GMT -5
Haven't been here in awhile (perhaps some enjoyed my hiatus) and just saw this thread. Without multi-quoting everybody I'll try to put $.02 on different themes that have come up, forgive me if I mischaracterize anyone's point of view.
1. The "beating" neck pickup delta, between the plate and non-plate bridge pickup is at least partially a tuning issue. I have good pitch and I can hear it as such. It's minutely possible that the altered magnetic field of the bridge pickup is influencing the string's harmonic content but unlikely, and is overshadowed by the tuning shift. This is something any of us can recreate at home, just by making an open chord and squeezing harder and softer. I don't say this to suggest there's no other difference between lordquilton's clips.
2. Can changing the magnetic field of pickup A alter the sound from pickup B? Yes it can. It's pretty low on the list of meaningful changes but it's not nothing. I've shared the Angus story before. Those are extremely loud and unique circumstances, but his #1 guitar had a very degaussed neck pickup, and on his #2 guitar, degaussing the neck pickup was part of making the bridge pickup tone a success. I'll agree this was as more mechanical (in changing the ADSR of the string) rather than how it magnetically charged the string itself, along the length of the string. In other words, it didn't change the bridge pickup sound because it was polarizing the string a certain way and therefore affecting the electrical tone of the bridge pickup, like it would if you started waving magnets in and around the bridge pickup area.
3. Leo Fender didn't use the baseplate so it would "sound like a Tele". It's the general consensus between myself and (more importantly) friends of mine who would be in the know, that as a machinist, Leo used the steel baseplate for the following reasons: First, to hold threads. He'd leave the fiber on pickups like the Tele neck pickup that would be direct mounted, in that the screw head hits the flatwork and it's not threaded. By the time the Strat came along everything was redesigned, and cost was also a factor. I believe they just said "we don't need it" on the Strat pickups. Secondly, it grounds the bridge plate and strings. There are dozens of other possible motives we could project onto this but usually with Leo, the manufacturing and durability factors lead to the most logical and likely explanations.
4. The initial review: For someone so interested in science your reviews continue to be saturated with editorialized vernacular. Every descriptor chosen caters to your presupposition that small deltas are not worth the attention they receive from marketing departments, and that it's your job to evangelize those foolish enough to exchange currency for such claims. As someone working with these things, the differences you post for with/without baseplate are "huge" to me. But like all things, it's in the eye of the beholder. To a NASCAR driver, a small delta that would be insignificant to the commuter can become the single most important thing on a given day. So we can agree to disagree as to the magnitude of change, but I'll try to address the baseplate issue below.
5. Baseplate: First on a Tele the plate is larger, so the inductance shift should be larger by a small magnitude. Jerry Donahue worked tirelessly on the "faux tele sound in a strat" and the full sized baseplate is one aspect, as is having a magnetically permeable bridge surrounding the pickup, about half way through the coil. Both things affect the magnetic circuit. Any plate, even the Strat sized rectangle on the Dimarzio will affect the return path. It doesn't matter if you see a gauss delta at the string, the circuit has changed. In Jerry's case, a pickup like the Twang Banger was just a partial approximation. In short, you should be looking for some aperture widening, and some reduction of phase cancellation within the coil from the plate, but without the Tele bridge and larger baseplate you're not all the way there.
In that regard, I can agree that (in my opinion) there are marketing descriptors out there that over-promise greater Tele emulation than is actually delivered.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Aug 24, 2017 13:30:04 GMT -5
It always helps me to magnify the phenomenon in my mind. Lets say we're looking at a solid 6" diameter steel rod. Hit that with a hammer and you'll hear high frequencies. Trade it for a 6" diameter rubber and the pitch will drop. Of course there is an entirely different occurrence in a long, thin string soft enough to vibrate in an ellipse, and being under tension rather than static. But sometimes it helps to overlay the two to see how a stiff string can produce high harmonics at the expense of fundamental.
Aside from all that, anecdotally I can say that on Angus' main SG's, there was one with an extremely degaussed neck pickup, and that was part of matching the "magic" sound of the bridge pickup on that particular guitar, which comports with your findings that changing pickup height/pull of one pickup can have an impact on the other(s)
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Aug 21, 2017 15:28:55 GMT -5
He means all three knobs say TONE, none say Volume.
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Post by frankfalbo on Aug 11, 2017 16:33:23 GMT -5
Also, what are the magnetic properties of the string wrapping? I did make a casual check years ago, and found that the wrapper was not significantly magnetic, but I do not remember what kind of string that was. ...You can use bronze-wound acoustic guitar strings on an electric guitar and you won't really notice much difference in the volume balance. I *think* I disagree, unless we are defining "notice much difference". I was just going to chime in and say bronze wound strings teach the details of velocity vs. permeability. The magnetic circuit of an acoustic sound hole pickup is extremely compensated, to the point that some completely omit a magnet under the B string. But the 4 wound bass strings are still more charged (pole height) than the high E string. From there, I could take an electric guitar with common hex core nickel plated wrap string such as D'Addario XL, and if I replace the strings with the same gauge in bronze wrap the output would drop significantly. (again sorry, I realize I'm not quantifying it in dB any more than you are) but the key here would be that, if I went UP several string gauges so the core of the bronze wrapped string was larger, it still would not equal the output level of the XL.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Aug 11, 2017 15:27:46 GMT -5
Since the picking is much closer to the neck pickup in this case than the last one, it takes longer for the reflection from the bridge to reach the neck pickup and cancel the signal that started towards the nut. And this is part and parcel to the "Why can't I just EQ a bridge pickup to sound like a neck pickup" quandary.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 15, 2017 16:27:45 GMT -5
There are several things making the tapping sound audible through the active coil. First, the screwdriver or other item takes the shock and that is within the field of the active coil. So e people make the mistake of tap testing for the active coil with the screwdriver actually going across the active coil toward the shorted one. If, instead, you tap the high/low E poles, with the screwdriver extending out and away from the coil you're testing, you'll notice it's a lot quieter.
In addition, the magnetic circuit is coupled underneath, through the keeper bar, through the magnet, etc. Sticking the screwdriver to the inactive pole shocks the entire circuit. Your result would be different in a Stag Mag type of pickup where the two fields are not mechanically linked.
Next, the pole of the inactive coil is reverse polarity. So insofar as it IS contributing to the audio generated by the active coil, that component is phase inverted. I would look to the elongated aperture and coil saturation for the amplitude change. We've also had discussions about the return path, and how it relates to the magnetism at the string. By widening the field you're also betting more productivity from the outer turns of the coil. (Toward the center of the humbucker)
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 10, 2017 12:01:44 GMT -5
One thing that does change is the output level. When doing amplitude tests I noticed that playing a bar chord at the 7th or 12th fret produced a higher voltage than open chords. Very counter intuitive, but the explanation is that playing higher up the neck causes the pickups to become "centered" on the moving string where greater displacement occurs. Of course you lose sustain in the shorter length of string, so the notes are initially louder, but die off more quickly. The higher the fret the shorter the height of the string from the pup's pole. Might be from this. Yep I suggested that back when he first noticed this phenomenon in this thread: guitarnuts2.proboards.com/post/81021/thread
It'd be pretty easy to test just by lowering the pickup to match the distance when barred vs open chords. But it's got to be pretty minuscule.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 19:48:35 GMT -5
OK so I think I'm the mod on this sub-forum, and this discussion is getting a little sour for GN2. I think we all respect each other. These threads are about trying to apply an analytical method to assessing pickups based on data. Experiences and results which cant be supported by data (could be for valid reasons)may be interesting but they probably cant be used here. Hence the frustrations that are evident, but unnecessary IMO. Bottom line, I can respect that. The fact is, I've been fortunate enough to have done things, and been a part of an impossibly rare mix of R&D projects, seen all of the results first hand, and then when I tell these guys the results they disregard it because I don't give them the keys to someone else's well earned data library. It's weird. You've got a review here of an Duncan Custom SH-5 that basically says it could have also been made with a modified wind of 42AWG or 44AWG and nobody would be able to tell the difference. Yet...none of them have ever made a Duncan Custom type of pickup, made these hypothetical coil equivalents out of other wire gauges, and then listened to the results. But have I done that? Maybe, you'll never know because I'm bound contractually on some of the things I've seen and done. On other subjects, as they relate to things that have already been put into the public domain, and/or are obvious to those skilled in the art, I'm free to repeat myself. If I can't get my point across without being unfair to an entity who has paid for R&D, then I guess I just won't get my point across.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 19:32:07 GMT -5
I don't know if you're understanding me correctly. Do you think I mean changing the overall output level of the pickup signal by .1dB? I'm referring to raising or lowering a frequency center (not necessarily at or even near the peak) by 0.2dB.
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 18:34:29 GMT -5
You proved it there, but you didn't prove it here. Data or it didn't happen. How's that different from calling me a liar? -Better yet, how does your ignorance affect my data? If I told you the mosquitoes in Seattle were carrying malaria but gave you no data, your ignorance would get you...malaria.
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 18:29:36 GMT -5
Yeah sorry Stratotarts you're just wrong. That's not what's happening at all. Sorry you can't be in the room with us while we're working. These are professionals. It's in our best interest NOT to have small things make a difference because it makes producing the pickup that much more difficult. We're not comparing "all the pickups". I'm referring to one pickup, the Fluence core(s) with whatever magnetic circuit is being used, and the changes are being made to the voicing in real time. There's no "59 vs Burstbucker". We do use shuttle guitars for calibration, and with an artist we will use their favorite guitars and/or pickups as calibration but that's not the part of a voicing session I'm referring to.
Also its not true that compression and distortion mask changes in response curves at the pickup level. Sure it masks full frequency dB changes, but it also magnifies dynamic changes and shifts within the response curve at the pickup level because altering the relationships between frequency bands to one another affects the response of the compression, the harmonic multiples under distortion, etc. It's a chain reaction. Surely you're not suggesting that distortion doesn't add any harmonics to the original signal.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 17:16:47 GMT -5
I can see that from many of your previous posts, even after having it pointed out to you repeatedly, you don't understand the difference between a casual A/B trial and a proper experiment with safeguards against bias. Because of this, and because you don't present details of the trials, I dismiss them. I don't think that the results of any well controlled guitar listening test is going to sit well with you. Not only is it likely that you are wrong, but from your discourse, I think that you will have trouble grasping the full import. I realize that my prediction is just a bet, as I also await results. But I'm putting my money on what I believe is a safe bet. What exactly do you believe I'm likely wrong about? I'll try to make this as simple as possible. One luxury I have when voicing pickups with artists is that everything we do occurs in real time. Like an optometrist I start with broad movements, and eventually hone in on "Which is better, A or B?" The artist is usually settled into riffs and songs they've played hundreds or thousands of times, using their own rig(s) in which they are intimately familiar with. So there is absolutely zero recall time. They are able to play through the changes I'm making. What I am telling you is that by the end, I am making 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve, and that these are noticeable to everyone in the room coming out of the distorted amplifier, and even more noticeable to the artist playing the instrument. If I took the guitar from the artist, and began playing cowboy chords at medium picking velocity through the clean Fender amp, volume on 2, bright switch off, those same A/B changes are not as noticeable, and could perhaps even go ignored. If the clean Fender on 2 was considered the "reference" amplifier it would be easy to reach conclusions such as yours. "Nobody can hear the difference" just like changes made to a car's suspension may be utterly meaningless...until you attempt to take corners at high speeds. This is why you see me take positions such that testing pickups outside of their intended use/environment is sub optimal science. So yes, I'm proving out in real time that 0.1 - 0.2dB movements within the response curve are detectable, on more than one occasion, across many different artists, engineers, and sets of ears, golden and non-golden.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 15:16:16 GMT -5
Let me pose the question this way: Are you two suggesting that, you could wind two otherwise identical humbuckers, one with 42 single build poly and the other with 43 single build poly, and by targeting the same resonant peak frequency you could make the two pickups sound indistinguishable to one another? Myself, yes. I can't speak for Antigua. But it would have to have the same resonant peak amplitude as well because that influences the tone. I think that by "targeting" you probably mean tweaking the turns count until the two are very close. That should be possible. As was pointed out, and a link to experiments with Strat pickups was provided, the inductance difference with the same number of turns would already be negligible. From other results, there is a strong expectation that with an identical geometry, and very close inductance, the difference in measured characteristics would also be negligible. It follows that the human ear wouldn't have much of a chance of differentiating it, as it can only detect differences of more than about 0.5 dB under the best of circumstances.I've said this to Andrew before consistently and forgive me if you've already heard me say it as well. We don't play the guitar through linear HiFi amplification. We use copious amounts of gain to compress and/or distort, we push speaker cones (and the air in front of them, and mic diaphragms) into breakup. Our amps are heavily voiced, before, in between, and after all the multiple gain stages. If you make a .1dB shift somewhere at the pickup stage, it is entirely possible that this changes the balance of tones into the gain chain, and the ability for the human ear to hear the change in isolation (whether clean HiFi or clean Fender for example) is not the only measure. It's whether or not the guitar behaves a certain way along the entire ADSR envelope. To me, analyzing pickups with clean sound clips is like analyzing paint brushes without ever dipping them into paint. Or analyzing an automobile without ever taking it on the road. So when a skilled guitar player can consistently tell you "A is different from B" then as far as I'm concerned, its not good science to create a test that doesn't go deep enough to expose what it is that they found. To create a test that shows A and B sound the same, simply means the test wasn't effective.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 8, 2017 0:38:33 GMT -5
Actually it's nothing like any of those things. It's limited to two things, having nothing to do with comb filtering or group delay.
1. Whether or not making clean sound clips of two different pickups is representative of their differences
2. Whether or not you could wind two pickups with different wire gauges in such a way as to fool the player into perceiving them as the same exact pickup. (i.e. wire gauge doesn't matter)
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 19:26:53 GMT -5
I guess what's depressing about what I see here is that when one is enthusiastic about the science of something, generally speaking the inquisitive mind is focused on digging deeper and deeper to find out what makes things unique and different. Instead, it seems the focus (for some of you) is to figure out why an expensive pickup is not materially different from a cheap Asian made high volume factory pickup. Or why silver wire can't possibly make a difference, rather than why it did. Discovery seems traded for cynicism. When I read comments like "wire gauge doesn't matter", I internalize that as confirmation bias, while ironically that is one of the most common accusations here. #allwiresmatter
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 19:05:07 GMT -5
I guess its the first time I read this by someone : it is listening + playing, AT THE SAME TIME! When I flipped 81/85 the other way around, I could very much hear the difference. Tell me to blind test this by giving my guitar to another person and I might fail all of the tests. The end result may be the same or similar. But the player (driver) gains confidence by knowing that he/she has the right tools which can boost his/her performance. When you change pickups, or guitars, you are consciously aware that your "inputs", the way you pluck the strings, no longer results in the same audible output. You might realize that you have to put more "pick" into it to get the same amount of harmonic high end back out. The audience might not realize anything has changed, while you realize you've having to now pick more aggressively to get the same result, but it's quite possibly because you're consciously attempting to achieve the same result that the audience doesn't perceive a difference. Regardless of the tools you're presented with, your inclination is going to be to make it sound the way you would like it to sound. Yes. Exactly to both. That's what I'm saying about the confidence factor even when playing a live outdoor gig where things hardly matter as much. Also when I said "your blind sound clips" I only meant the concept you were suggesting, that by listening to blind audio of two similar pickups that it wouldn't prove out just how different they are. Same thing with the graphs. I did a Sweetwater training where I showed a resonance plot of a 59 overlaid against the same 59 with a ceramic magnet. Those were "nearly identical" looking of course. But as far as how different those two pickups sound, a 59 with ceramic magnet would be considered "very different" by most guitarist than the Alnico one, even double blind, with homogenized strumming. But across 10 different amps, different musical styles, the differences could be magnified even further. The way I've said it in the past is, give Picasso one paint brush and he'll paint a Picasso. Give him 10 paint brushes and he might use them all before the painting is finished. The painting might not have looked any different, but his user experience is radically different.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 18:08:16 GMT -5
But if your Swedish virtuoso cannot hear the difference when he does not know whether it is A or B, then it is not a difference that matters. If he can hear it without knowing if A or B, then it does not matter whether you can measure with test equipment or not, because it is none the less real. I can't tell if I agree with your first part, so I'll drill down. Some people (especially the ones who make a living at this) are very passionate about these things to the point that they may, in a critical listening environment choose A over B. Then, in 90% of their daily tasks, the difference between A & B are totally masked. It seems like in your world, it would be okay to swap A for B, even covertly, because it wouldn't matter. Whereas from my perspective, the artist looks down, and seeing that A is in place, plays the gig or session with a peace of mind that they're using their "favorite" choice of something. Whatever frees the artist from inhibitions. As for the second part of the quote, you do what you describe there, you are fooling yourself and anyone else you can convince. It is like that silver wire. A six percent increase in conductivity in a pickup where the resistance of the coil is of secondary importance and not only can you hear the difference (a possibility, but unproven), but it is an improvement, something worth spending quite a bit of money to obtain. I do not think so, not without significant double blind tests. Respectfully that's just nonsense. I don't have a history of fooling myself. You're suggesting that by knowing which pickup was which, and therefore consciously focusing on certain things, such as harmonics under gain, or Marshall instead of Mesa, germanium fuzzes, etc. and therefore fleshing out certain differences between two similar sounding pickups, that I'm fooling everyone? I would suggest the exact opposite. By recording one player, or worse a mechanical picker, into one type of rig, regardless of how full frequency it is, would be fooling everyone that the two pickups aren't as different as they really are. I could line up the last 5 prototype revisions of that Swede's pickups, and I'm pretty sure YOU wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But HE could, and he could tell me exactly what was different about each one, because each one went to the plus or minus side of what eventually became the favorite. And by the way, we DID do blind tests with the silver wire pickups, and everyone picked out the differences. Have you ever played them, or conducted your own A/B tests with silver wire? No one from that era tried to convince anyone they were worth the additional cost. But we weren't pretending something was there that wasn't there either.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 14:06:00 GMT -5
The premise behind "but don't you hear a difference?" relies not on the idea that one's hearing is as infallible as an electronic measuring device, but more reliable than an electronic measuring device. I have a test I'm planning to conduct, ASAP, that involves listening to sound clips side by side, without knowing which sound clip is which, but with these warm summer months, I have to get outside a little. Ok so 2 things. First, if the subject(s) DO hear (or repeatably sense) a difference between A and B while test equipment shows sameness, then in my experience the test methods just haven't brought out the deltas and need to be reconsidered. (Sorry in advance for storytime, but it's required) I was just talking to someone today about my experience with a Swedish virtuoso who, repeatedly told some engineers that A and B were not the same, while the engineers (to this day) could never produce a test that bore that out. However, the artist "drives" these items like a race car driver, faster and louder than any of us will. So I flew to his house, and observed his situation. Guitar>dimed pedal>dimed Marshall>screaming 4x12's>mics>compressor/mic pre>console>studio monitors...listening at very reasonable volume levels. The result was, that now, I too, could hear and sense what he was talking about when he switched from product A to product B. Whether he was playing or I was playing. He was not wrong. I came back to headquarters and loosely duplicated the setup. 50 watt Marshall mic'd up in the sound room with extension cables upstairs to listen in headphones while the amp was raging away. Under that situation, I was able to show others what he was talking about. It never mattered because we didn't make the product. But it's a teaching moment. What's the difference between 100 and 104mph? Nothing if you're obeying the speed limit. But if you're racing it could be the difference between whether there's a shimmy around the turns. All this to say, your blind sound tests are simply not effective. They risk proving nothing, or a falsehoods. The trouble is that if I have 2 pickups that are close to one another, I might be able to play a certain way to show you that when you do ABC, they don't sound that different. But when you do XYZ, you can see one performs better at X, the other performs better at Y, and so on. The controlled strum test, or one player playing their style of play on two different pickups, is ineffective if that style of play, on that particular rig, doesn't magnify the deltas. Beyond that, the sensation and response of the gain chain to the dynamics are often difficult to hear in a recorded track, but very easy to feel when you're behind the guitar, much like the race car driver can feel the shimmy but the viewer sees nothing while watching the race. A blind listener test is much like testing different vehicles by riding blindfolded passenger, while someone else drives. You will only sense a limited number of differences, while the driver will sense more because they're behind the wheel. I'm not here to pee in anyone's cornflakes, I'm telling you that you could make a 42/43/44 pickup set that sounds similar on a recording, but in my hands I could play in such a way to demonstrate why the differences are more meaningful than just what a recorded sound clip can convey.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 7, 2017 3:05:36 GMT -5
Let me pose the question this way: Are you two suggesting that, you could wind two otherwise identical humbuckers, one with 42 single build poly and the other with 43 single build poly, and by targeting the same resonant peak frequency you could make the two pickups sound indistinguishable to one another?
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 5, 2017 23:12:49 GMT -5
While I'd still be very curious if frankfalbo knows something more about the X2N blades... Not much more can be said. You can get one used and peel the tape off, but I imagine you're all smart enough to think logically about it, and realize that if the blades are about the same thickness as the diameter of their slugs, or a 10-32 set screw, then...Wouldn't it make sense that they go all the way down and make contact with the magnet? They wouldn't add a machining process just to use a keeper bar or something, and it was long before their Airbucker designs.... I don't have a JB on hand, but everything I've seen, including the origination story of the JB, says that it's merely a wildly overwound PAF, with prototypes having been made from the stock pickups of a Gibson Flying V...having seen similar pickups plenty of times, I'm not inclined to spend money on such a thing, even for the sake of testing. It would feel to me like spending $50 for a resistor of a particular value. As far as 43 vs 44 AWG, all the evidence suggests it makes no difference. That seemed to be the subjective consensus on MEF, and my own test suggested this as well guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/7928/electrical-differences-wire-gauge-practicalYou honestly believe that wire gauge "makes no difference"? Makes no difference to what exactly? I mean, I'm honestly curious as to what pickups you'd play and say that they sound "the same" or that the difference "doesn't matter". Like, is the Alnico II Pro and the Pearly Gates the "same pickup" to you? Or the 59 and the Custom 5 is maybe a better example. Do you think they sound the same?
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Post by frankfalbo on Jul 3, 2017 16:06:26 GMT -5
It appears that the X2N's blades are ceramic magnets, so they would have rather eddy current losses... The blades aren't ceramic. It's a ceramic base magnet with blades.
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 27, 2017 13:31:05 GMT -5
The Dimarzio HS-3 and YJM models were/are both wound with 45AWG wire. That's all I can tell you.
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 20, 2017 12:58:17 GMT -5
I don't know, wind a bunch of 5TPL microcoils? Conduct a test where you record transient signal independently from each one? Analyze them separately, as well as summed in and out of phase?
If disclosure is one of your rules, then just say you'd rather I deactivate my account. I can try to lead you places, point out wrong conclusions...but I work for people who provide for my family, that rightfully own their IP.
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 20, 2017 8:33:15 GMT -5
You were neither wrong nor right. I already said you can divorce this discussion from time and still have a net combing effect from phase inversion and the frequency content of summed coils, whether in line to the side, or bottom coils of a stack.
I know what I know; what I've seen. I don't really care to argue anything about the time constant with you or anyone. Bottom line, you can't make a 6-banger, even for the bridge position, that will sound and feel like a vintage single. If you think you can, send it to me and I'll give it a play test.
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 19, 2017 22:47:48 GMT -5
I'm from Chicago, sarcasm is my jam.
I know I come back to this often, but when you have the ability to "look at" every single layer of 1-100+ vertically stacked coils, whether a pole penetrates the entire core or just the ones you'd like to generate audio....what it looks like to invert coils at the bottom....they do not simply result in amplitude drop. Even a wire wound stack...even a wire wound stack that's actively buffered/blended so loading isn't a variable...even if they are wound dead equal...they do not sound the same, nor do they live in the same timespace.
Now, even if we divorce ourselves from timespace, any places where the frequency content of a top coil, or a neighboring coil, is not a 100% match with the other coil, whether by off axis flux disturbance (I know you love that word) results in what I can safely refer to a combing when the signal is phase inverted. Technically there are pluses and minuses, but since the overall volume drops when adding a bottom coil (even actively) they're all net losses.
You seem to believe a wire wound coil contains no smearing; no group delay, that everything down to the electron level occupies one space in time and is all immediate. That there is no rise time, for example. That's fine. Carry on.
I say none of these things with pride, I stand on the shoulders of giants. And I always believe there is something more to learn and understand about these matters.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 19, 2017 21:26:35 GMT -5
The current crop of top-shelf stack designs starting with Kinman about 15 years ago, is very good as you say, but if you are talking about dynamics, attack, and some subjective "response" qualities that the "die hard" Strat single coil player is looking for, all stacks AFAIK are just a little bit sonically different in small but noticeable ways to a certain percentage of players. Exactly. I'm not saying they're nailing it either. Just that in criteria most important to the mainstream market, they are better than a linear design, whether we're talking about straight pole alignment, or angled, or blades. There is no comb response. Okay there, champ. These designs all interact with the guitar string at a single location along the length of the string. What is happening is purely signal cancellation, with no respect top frequency, hence no comb filtering. You sure about that? How far away from a given pole did the string have to get before it stopped producing any audio? You're contradicting your own published results. Not to mention,you're telling me that on the Super55, as you bend the G string into the void between the coils, that the tone doesn't change AT ALL? You're telling me that the only thing that happens is a straight volume reduction? If you can't hear it, get your ebow out and record a note, then bend it into the void while drop tuning so it's the same pitch. Then look at the frequency content.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 19, 2017 18:01:06 GMT -5
You can believe what you want, but it is the facts that matter. (For me, the six cols is also a way to make it convenient to get a high Q pickup.) Sure, and the facts are that even antigua posted an experiment on off-axis crosstalk that he conceded produced more amplitude than he anticipated. That dB delta, between the under string pole and the neighboring pole, simply has no option but to manifest itself as combing in some way. You can say its not enough to hear, it doesn't matter, I don't care because I want a target Q or noise cancelling, or even that the anomalies it imparts are beneficial and you prefer them. And that's totally fine. Agree to disagree, hold hands, kumbaya, whatever. What you can't say is that it's an exact match to the vintage strat pickup's magnetic engagement. That would be silly. Something different is occurring in the signal of an inverted/summed individual string pickup vs one master coil. We're not arguing whether its marketable, affordable to produce, or has some other desirable net gain, just that it's not the same, which brings me to the following: So you do not "believe" that the Zexcoil "original" with six slanted blade coils avoids the "DG" problem to a useful extent? I figured this might come up. I'll try to unpack it best I can. Everything I'm about to say about Zexcoil should be interpreted positively. This is not a dis thread. The Zexcoil pickups succeed at what they attempted, which is a new and different pickup that has some salient features and benefits unavailable elsewhere. Your distilled question is whether it avoids the D/G problem to a useful extent. They DO in fact avoid the crossover issue, to whatever degree he found acceptable. And for the sake of the discussion lets say he 100% solved the D/G crossover issue within the context of his design. It's not relevant. I need you to park that to the side a moment. As a player, I've always been able to tell the difference between the feel of different pole piece types and materials. It's not about the resonant peak. It's about how the pickup communicates transients and polyphony. I think Scott would even agree, even though he might consider his magnetic circuit an improvement over a Vintage Strat. Let's for a second say that you might think that's nonsense, antigua might think blades vs poles are insignificant because the dB drop isn't that much...again, agree to disagree if that's the case. In fact, let's say people are hearing with their eyeballs! What Salo and Zexcoil fail to do is put the same magnetic interaction beneath the strings that the die hard Strat fan wants, or thinks they want, or simply demands cosmetically. In that way, and only in that way, I am saying neither are "useful" to someone in the engineering department at Fender, who is calling out for a traditional looking Strat pickup. The stack designs (although I'm not a fan of the sound of Fender's offerings) succeed in this regard, and their market acceptance validates Fender's design requirement. In the same way, stacks from Dimarzio, Kinman, Duncan, et al succeed at this as well.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 19, 2017 16:15:59 GMT -5
I'm curious to know how much drop off there is in the center. As I alluded, in a design like Salo's it's optimized but not totally eliminated. Fralin's, also very good, still exhibits anomaly across the center.
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frankfalbo
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Post by frankfalbo on Jun 19, 2017 15:51:47 GMT -5
That is why you use six... That's why who does what? I don't make or advocate for any linear humbucker designs for any position, nor do I believe something is to be gained from individual string coils aside from polyphonic output. The crosstalk alone, as evidenced by one of the "one pole in a coil" experiments on this very board illustrate that there is more lost (altered from the user expectation) than gained.
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