If it Quacks like a Strat . . .

[UnklMickey]

Until recently i always wondered why strat's and tele's sounded so different from each other.

I mean sure they sound different from 'pauls -- which i just chalked off to humbuckers vs single coils.


But a strat has a signature "quack" that you just can't get from a tele!

WHY?

I'll leave this out there for a couple of weeks for y'all to ponder and give me your opinions, then i'll offer mine .... which incidentally is just that -- an opinion. I really don't know for sure.

[RandomHero]

I honestly don't know what the term "quack" is in reference to. Strats, to my ears, have always sounded very jangly and glassy... I've always thought they had a very acoustic quality because of the crisp highs and smooth mids and bass. So could someone also explain to me what they mean by "quack" so I can listen for it?

[d34th4uall]

i think he means the sound when you pluck a string, or rather the actual ping made by this action.the tele, with its twangy tendencies, drones out most of that in high frequencies(treble bleed capacitor).the strat by design tends to pronounce the wave spike, making a slapping type of noise at the very start of a note.

[jester700]

Do you mean the position 2 & 4 sounds where the middle pup is combined with one of the others? That pickup position is not available on most teles (though a few have added a middle pup to get this sound. The tele bridge pickup is also a bit beefier, which cuts down on the "glassiness" - similar to, but a little different from, an overwound strat bridge pup.

Or did you mean that this sound is part of all the pickup selections? If that "more subtle" thing is what you mean, it's probably a combination of many things that are particular to strats.

[Trey]

The Tele bridge, and unquie position of the bridge pup, also contributes alot to it's distinctive sound.

[jester700]

trey said:

The Tele bridge, and unquie position of the bridge pup, also contributes alot to it's distinctive sound.

And construction of the bridge pup, too. The back plate changes the sound. You can get "plate loaded" strat pickups now to emulate this in a strat.

[mike]

[glow=red,2,300]It's when you're playing lead and you're digging in. Think Wah, only it's a Qah quality you get in short bursts that is enhanced with the use of a wah pedal, of course. IMHO [/glow]

[UnklMickey]

Well, I guess it's not always a good idea to use a word to describe a sound.

maybe an example might be a better way.

probably the best one i can think of is mark knopfler (dire straits) sultans of swing.

[jester700]

OK; yup, that's the normal "strat quack" I thought you meant. Pretty much everything about the way a strat is made contributes to the sound somewhat, but the biggest factor IMO is the design & placement of the pickups. IMO a neck thru mahogany non-trem guitar with the right pickup arrangement can get closer than a real dual humbucker strat. Not everyone will agree with that, and neither example will nail the sound, but there ya go.

BTW, is bridge + middle position 2 or 4? I keep seeing it both ways. IS there a correct label for that?

[UnklMickey]

jester700 said:

OK; yup, that's the normal "strat quack" I thought you meant. Pretty much everything about the way a strat is made contributes to the sound somewhat, but the biggest factor IMO is the design & placement of the pickups. IMO a neck thru mahogany non-trem guitar with the right pickup arrangement can get closer than a real dual humbucker strat. Not everyone will agree with that, and neither example will nail the sound, but there ya go.

BTW, is bridge + middle position 2 or 4? I keep seeing it both ways. IS there a correct label for that?

Well i for one insist that b+m be referred to as 4, but then i'm the sort of guy who straps up with the headstock higher than the body. i'll bet the guy who labels it as 2 has his headstock low and his body high. you seem less commited one way or the other. from this can we infer that your axe is dead level horizontal?

p.s.
the design and placement of the pickups is definitely one of the important factors, but might possibly not be the most important -- IMHO more on this next week!

[Runewalker]

Hard to know the dominent contributing factor on that 'strat' sound, but I have been struck in the various builds with how little meat is in the pup channel of strats, at least with the dominent trem routs. I calipered the residual wood between the bottom of the pup rout and the spring channel and it is frequently a 1/4" or less. The thing is practically an acoustic box, especially in the universal "swimming pool" routs and even the HSH routs.

This in addition to the single coil strat pup drives the characteristic sound. When I install hums in those routs they still sound different then high meat content units like LesPauls.

[jester700]

Oh, yeah. This is definitely an argument point for many. It's just so hard to do a good a/b comparison to figure out what part of the equation each factor plays.

I do feel that my guitar out-strats some strats, and it's a basswood Ibanez body with a Floyd, ebony fingerboard, and H-S-H pup layout. But I've played around with pickups a lot with a mind toward that position 4 sound. A real strathead would probably find many subtle hints of non-strattiness, but for me (and I suspect most) it's "plenty o' cluck".

[erikh]

Let's throw this out there....if it quacks does that make it a duck?

How the Tele pickup is mounted (metal plate) makes a difference along with the Tele pickup design as someone mentioned. I've played a James Burton sig Tele before (the one with 3 singles and a Strat fixed bridge). It sounds more like a Strat than a Tele.

[Runewalker]

So in addition to the "where's the Beef" arugument (no substantive wood in the pup channell) contributing to Zen 'stratiness', you have basically loose coupling in the standard trem setup (strings floating in air instead of rooted to the wood), the loosiness inherent in the bolt-on neck coupling, and the charateristics of lower output single coils being combined in parallel (in the pos. 2 and 4, or is it 4 and 2?). Loose coupling means faster string decay, and 'warbleiness" on the initial pluck.

There's your quack, duckies.

[UnklMickey]

Well folks, first I’d like to thank all who responded to this thread. Any time lots of people voice their opinions, the truth is usually in there somewhere. This was no exception. I was also quite impressed by some of the verbage. Some of you have ways of expressing yourselves that are so much more descriptive and elegantly simple and direct than I could ever hope to be.

Here’s my opinion on why a Strat sounds so different from a Tele.
In order of importance:

1. Acoustic factors:
a. “swimming pool”* resonance vs. plank of wood. *(thanks Runewalker)
b. Resonances from tremolo springs - - (play a chord HARD and mute the strings immediately. Listen to that and tell me you don’t think it won’t affect what’s happening on the strings!)
c. Expansive plastic pickguard on which pickups are mounted. (the moderately damped vibrations of the pickguard move the pickups in relation to strings.)

These factors not only give the Strat its “glassy, acoustic quality” (thanks Random Hero) but they cause a definite shaping of the impulse that occurs immediately after a string is plucked.

2. (Virtual tie for 1st.) Relative POSITION of the pickups:
Bridge + middle and neck + middle combinations, because of their intermediate spacing cause phase shift that’s much greater than would be present in a single HB, and much less than bridge + neck.

3. Bridge pickup mounting and orientation:
Tele has bridge pup mounted on a more severe angle. Also, I hadn’t thought about the mount – (metal plate – thanks ErikH). That plate has to transfer relatively undamped vibrations to the pickup.

4. Pickup design:
Covered neck pickup on Tele has different characteristics than exposed slug (with small radius slug height roll-off that accentuates the middle strings) design on Strat.


Ways to max the Quack!

Play hard.

Thumb drag after pick. (more about this in a later thread in Theory & Technique)

Light gauge strings allow for nice nonlinear impulse and “boingish” tone. Heavier gauge strings sound more pianolike, but require a much heavier pluck to get a quack. In any case keep your strings CLEAN. Oxidized, dirty strings sound dull.

Adjust the action. Barely discernable fret slap when played hard will accentuate quack. Too close just sounds like duck droppings.

Adjust the pickup height. Close enough to dirty up just the impulse is good. Too close muddies the tone of the main part of the note. If you aren’t sure, too low is always better than too high. Bridge pickup remains fairly constant distance from strings regardless of what position on the frets you are playing. Strings get much closer to the neck pickup when playing on frets close to it vs. near the nut. Because of this I like to keep my neck pickup quite far from the strings.

Cheat. Judicious amount of carefully adjusted analog or digital delay (short delay time) will provide a similar phase shift as the b+m or n+m pup combination. Work with the delay time to get the sound to “hollow out” then reduce the effect level until it is just noticeable. This can sweeten the quack, or even create a reasonable facsimile of one in a non-strat guitar.

[UnklMickey]

while looking for something else, i found myself at:
www.deaf-eddie.net/


here's deaf eddie's take on quack, FWIW.

What IS Quack, Anyway???

The tone that is generally referred to as "quack" - the classic Strat 5-way throw #2 and #4 spot tones - is created by a pair (or more) of pups, parallel IN PHASE - NOT out of phase. That "out of phase" rap is a bit of bad info that probably has its roots somewhere back in the same swamp that caused the Strat's vibrato bridge to be called a "tremelo." Ouch! But, that's what Leo called it, so it stuck. Actually, if two pups are out of phase, the combined tone is usually thin and nasally - most ears find it downright unpleasant. I THINK some of us call that kind of tone a "honk," but "honk" is not as universally used to identify a specific tone as "quack" is. EVERYBODY uses the term "QUACK!"

The classic Strat quack is, I BELIEVE, caused in equal parts by the fact that (A) the pups are close together and (B) the pups are so similar in frequency response and output (the combo of all three Strat pups on, in parallel, also is a nice quack). If you unmatch yer Strat pups - that is, swap ONE pup out for something dis-similar - it will have a distinct effect on the quack factor. That's why the H-S-S Strats lose some of the sweet quack in throw #4, unless you have a coil-shunt happening (like the AmStd series).

Do other guitars quack? Technically, yes… Three-pup Teles will quack in (2) and (4) like a Strat, but the quack will have a have a different character, as the construction and tone of the TWO pups creating the quack are different. Two-pup Teles have a subtle "quack" when the pups are played together, but as the pups are so different and so far apart, we don't perceive it as a classic quack - so, let's call it a "doink," just because that's what I've been calling it, lo, these many years. With that for a new definition, it could be said that Gretschs doink, too - we've all heard it - I think the doink of a pair of Gretsch single-coils pretty much defines rock-a-billy tone.

Gibsons doink, especially the P90 and P100 axes, but on Les Pauls, SG's and the like, it seems to me that the fatness of humbuckers "warm it up" so much that some of the character is lost. You can get some of that delicate tone back with coil-shunts or coils-parallel custom wiring options…

Now, if this isn't a great argument for owning a bunch of different guitars, I don't know what is!

_

__________________________________________

the blue portion has been directly copied from deaf-eddie.

[wolf]

unklmickey
I'd agree with your Page One description about the "quack" being the "Sultans of Swing" Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits sound.

[Ripper]

When I think of a Stratocaster sound, I think of SRV. But I have found that a Strat sounds most like a Strat being played from the 10th fret to about the 15th fret. Thats when you get that "bell chime" sound that I salivate for! When I think Telecaster I think country music, with that TWANG!...I think it serves a purpose for that kind of music. Then again, Jimmy page as I have stated before used a Tele for the Stairway to Heaven solo.

[Ripper]

One thing about Mark Knopfler, he uses his fingers to pick which gets him alot of his tone along with Texas Special pups.

[ChrisK]

A few observations...

I agree w/ most of what you said unklmickey.

The Tele neck PU has a shorted low resistance turn (the cover) that cuts highs (capacitance) and cuts highs (loaded PU/generator).

The Tele bridge causes a shorted low resistance turn (the plate) that cuts highs (loaded PU/generator). (An interesting "fact" that I've heard is that the initial Tele bridge PU was so bright in order to compensate for the absolutely horrid high frequency response of early guitar amps.) The Tele PU bottom plate increases the inductance of the coil, couples the individual magnets, and created a shorted turn!

I messed around with this by cutting a slot at the thinnest part of the PU cutout in a (cheap brass) plate and soldering a toggle switch w/ wires across the cut gap. It's subtle but discernible to me.

One of the things that one can notice on the Gretsch and TV Jones humbucking PU's is that the cover does not complete a turn around any one coil, but only around both (there's the gap on the top where it has no shorted turn effect, but still has the capacitive effect). I hope that there's an engineering reason afoot here and not just some vintage marketing/perception whiz.


The Tele is a true plank for the Luddite. I prefer tummy, forearm, and heel contours, but it's still plankular' (see my TeleBlender schematic). Body weight is important. I prefer 4# even'ish in swamp ash. Lighter becomes "spongy. Hard ash can reach 6# or even 7#, but then your ears begin to bleed. A thin neck is to be avoided, I prefer 1 3/4" 1" thick fatbacks.The PU's are different from each other, My testing has confirmed that dissimilar PU's are much more effective in true electrical (signal polarity) out of phase combinations.


The Strat is a semi-acoustic turned inside-out. the structure is internal, the cavities external. It has an internal reverb (block the vibrato, use a mix of different strength springs, and "tune the wood screws and hence the reverb).

The out of phase positions are a marketing term for a middle PU being RWRP and thence humbucking in pos 2 & 4. The notch positions are the same, initially realized by needle filing two notches in the detent structure of the three pole lever switch (there was no 5 pole, I know, I filed many a notch in the 60's and 70's).

Body weight is important. I prefer 4#+ in alder. Lighter becomes "spongy. A thin neck is OK'er, I prefer 1" thick fatbacks, since much is flexing/bending aboot (Canadian term) anyway, but I also like the Fender "C" neck on Strats (it's what's on both of my Am Dlx's).

My favorite Strat copy is one that I built using the Mike Richardson scheme w/ bridge and neck phase reversal. The PU's are dissimilar (DiMarzio VV Heavy Blues [bridge], VV Blues [neck], and VV401 [middle]). The body is chambered padouk (stiff like maple, but huge warm tone as well.

The neck is padouk w/ an ebony board and SS frets. It's 1 7/8" wide, 1" fatback thick, and a true pike. I originally had a maple/maple 1 7/8" standard thin (0.800") neck on this, but switching to the padouk/ebony pike easily tripled the unplugged tone and sweetness of this effort.


They're just different, thankfully.

[UnklMickey]

chrisk said:

...I agree w/ most of what you said unklmickey.....

i'm not sure if you are agreeing w/ most of what i said on page 1,
or what you might have thought i said, in reply 15.

there are some overlaps between what i posted on page 1 and the quote from deaf eddie.

i've edited my text surrounding the quote to make it more obvious that reply #15 reflects deaf eddie's opinion, which to some degree differs from my own.



unk

[Runewalker]

I forgot about this thread, Unk having started it back in August 05. But with some new replies it rolled back up. Thanks for resurrecting it Unk.

Reading back through it was entertaining. A renown member has asked me what the heck is "quack" and I realized how hard it is to meaningfully describe the duckie call in a way that those that have no sound reference for it can immediately grab --- or shoot. Oh, wait a minute .... Cheny was quail hunting. Nevermind......

I see in my earlier responses I was not focusing on the quack part as much as general Strat tones. The discussion had migrated (more bird metaphors) over to Tele vs Strat sounds.

Deaf Eddie defines it as the 2 & 4 positions on a 5-way strat. That is the tone-set I associate with the term. It also is mostly evident in cleaner settings. It starts to be obscured the higher the amp gain/ overdriven / distorted the amp/boxes/modeler is|are.

I am convinced after a number of builds and experiments, that Quack it is the happy accident of the Strat's geometry. The distance between the Neck and Mid and Mid and Treble, with either of these pups in parallel, IMHO, creates that hollow, thinner, less powerful pickup sound. Why a happy accident? Leo never thought you needed any combos. He built it as neck, mid or treble, take it or leave it.

Measuring an early 80's neck to mid midpoint to midpoint, I get 2 5/16th of an inch.

Evidence I offer:

If it were just the singles in Parallel combos then would not the Neck/Bridge combo also yield quack? I hear very little in that combo.

If you listen carefully you can hear a tiny bit of quack in a neck humbucker in series. The geometry is too proximate in this arrangement of the single coils, in addition to the swirl of magnetic eddy currents of the two adjacent coils in the humbucker.

I have a 24 fret Strat style. Neck to mid distance is 1 17/32nds inches. In that arrangement the Neck and mid are closer together because there is less real estate due to the additional space absorbed by the extra frets. Some but demonstrably diminished quack.

I have a 24 fret HH with cut-coils in both Hs. Spread on the singles combo (outer/outer) = 4" --- Little to no quack.

I have another 24 fret HH to be built and I will do an Inner/inner combo, but the spread is still not at that optimum 2 5/16" --- it will be 2 5/8th" - 5/16ths" larger. May be some quack but it will be under stress, I predict.

Eddie does make the point that 3 strat pups in parallel are also quacky, and if anything, that combo is more quacky. But it is also significantly less in outpup, so it is excruciatingly clean and the quack is subsequently more evident.

Conclusion:

Qk = D+Sc || @mc

Quack is a function of two single coils pickups, wired in parallel, set at optimal distance and at Mr. Clean Settings.

Thus Sprach Zarathustra

[eljib]

RW: Regarding your -optimal- spacing calculation for quack, I just finished rewiring an old 70's hondo strat copy that, for reasons I don't have time to explain, has it's pup's spaced closer much closer than a standard strat, and that thing has got gobs of quack. It almost sounds like its being run through an effect.

And for Deepblue (and others concerned with Knopfler): Every time I hear the question about parallel sounds, or quack, or whatever you want to call it, Mark Knopfler's name is the first to be mentioned when trying to give a description of those sounds. I appreciate your comment that he gets much of his sound from his technique and pups, but I must add that you cannot duplicate his sound without compression. I just finished a Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer compressor project (Knopfler used the OS) and my tone is pretty close to his now, if I pluck.

Anyway, it was a cheap project and it really improves the quality of your quack, if you're after that sort of thing.

[UnklMickey]

runewalker said:

...Conclusion:

Qk = D+Sc || @mc

...

NO, dammit, you dropped the exponent!

Qk = D+Sc || @mc²

we had the same problem with Einstein and he almost blew us all up on the manhattan project.

[Runewalker]

Posted by eljib on Today at 2:41am

"...pup's spaced closer much closer than a standard strat, and that thing has got gobs of quack..."

"Optimal geometry" is most probably a range and not a precise point, as "lots of" and "gobs" are not precise measures. In discussing Quack there is a major subjective element in identifying it, as evidenced by this discussion --- one man's quack is another man's honk, one man's goose is another man's gander, one man's mountain is another man's broke-back ....

So of course other dimensions and geometries are going to yield "quack". I have heard less "quack" in the same guitar outfitted with ceramic magnet pups vs alnico magnet pups, less with higher output pups, than less output pups, etc. So a number of factors are at play.

The critical question is more at the extremes. Members what are your responses to the following questions:

• Have you ever built an adjacent coil humbucker from Strat pups that you know yielded quack, and obtained quack from this new frankenhumbucker when wired in parallel?
  
  
• Do you hear quack in neck or bridge humbucker when the humbucker is wired in local parallel?
  
  
• Do you hear quack on your strat that combines the bridge and neck in parallel? If so is it more or less pronounced than the N/M or B/M in parallel?
  

I think the latter is the best test, especially in older uncalibrated strat chassis, since the pups are clones of each other and the only independent variable changed is the spacing geometry.

You will hear quack in all of these, probably, but in varying degrees on the duckie continuum. I played an early 90's LesPaul Deluxe the other day, the one with the lower output, higher voiced mini humbuckers. You could distinguish slight quack even it these.

I was being silly with the algebra but I hypothesize that the factors that produce quack are:

• vintage voiced or nearly vintage voiced single coils;
  
• optimal geometry
  
• parallel wiring
  
• clean
  

amplification.

And I concur on the Knopfler Sultan's sound being highly dependent on compression, which colors the pure quack component and muddies the reference tones. However, I don't really have another recorded music reference, and it is awkward to keep saying, "if you want to hear definitive highly-compressed strat quack then put on your turban and listen to Sultan's."

[Runewalker]

Posted by unklmickey on Today at 12:16pm

Qk = D+Sc || @mc2

we had the same problem with Einstein and he almost blew us all up on the manhattan project.

See Broke-back above.

Let's see... playing in Mr. Clean settings squared would be ... playing an acoustic....

Common Unk, say it ain't so!

RW

[UnklMickey]

runewalker said:

...Common Unk, say it ain't so!...

it ain't so.


mr. clean settings? yup!

squared? maybe.

acoustic? sometimes. (i know you think acoustics are for "percents". -- get over it.)

broke-back? - - homey don't play that.

[ChrisK]

Actually, it wasn't Einstein (?One Mug?).

Storing radioactive waste almost caused a criticality.

Richard Fineman was touring the Oak Ridge facility and asked to see a blueprint of the separator building (the largest in the world, it was demolished a few years ago). He pointed to the drawing and asked "What's that?" The Oak Ridge staff realized the near (two to three week) impending waste criticality and rushed to fix things.

They thanked Fineman for his great (and reputable) foresight in avoiding a Manhatten project-ending event.

He replied "I just wanted to know what a particular symbol stood for."

[eljib]

chrisk said:

Actually, it wasn't Einstein (?One Mug?).

One STONE, i believe, but we'll have to ask Dunkelfalke to be certain.

As for the rest of your story, where can I read more about that?

[ChrisK]

Read about Richard Feynman.

www.feynmanonline.com/

"The web site is dedicated to Richard P. Feynman, scientist, teacher, raconteur, and musician. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, expanded the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, translated Mayan hieroglyphics, and cut to the heart of the Challenger disaster. But beyond all of that, Richard Feynman was a unique and multi-faceted individual. Feel free to explore this site to find out about Feynman, what he was and why he remains one of the most celebrated and revered scientists of modern times."

A Nobel laureate, a hobbyist safe-cracker, and a daydreamer extraordinair!