Lace Sensor Red Silver Blue Analysis & Opinion

[antigua]

The Red bridge / Silver middle / Blue neck set is a combo that's said to sound good by many people in internet postings, and Billy Corgan has this set in several of his main guitars during the 90's, though in the 00's he had a deal with DiMarzio, and most recently has a sig model with Reverend that uses their own humbuckers.

The Red is meant to mimic a hot humbucker, it has an inductance similar to a JB. It doesn't sound as dark as a JB, to me, but that might have more to do with the bridge pickup placement in a Strat, than the electrical values. With a loaded resonant peak of only 1.8kHz, it discards a lot of high end. It's pretty close to Little '59.

The Silver neck pickup as an inductance of 3.6H, and it's similar to a Tele bridge pickup. Lace claims it's based on a hot 70's single coil, but I'm not sure what that might be in reference to.

The Blue neck pickup is supposed to make you think "P.A.F.", although it has a lower inductance and a higher resonant peak than a Little '59, to which the Red Sensor is closer.

They all sound pretty good to me, but I have to run the treble and presence higher on my rig for the cleans, similar to what I would with humbuckers. I installed these with 500k tone pots, but it's recommended they be used with 250k, just so that when you have the knobs at "10", you get a smooth roll off at the 2 to 3kHz resonant peak, and no +5dB amplitude bump due to the higher Q factor, that make them sound somewhat shrill. I just roll the tone back a bit to get the 250k sound because sometimes is fun to get that high Q factor, even if it sounds kind of nasty in the clean settings. Using them for cleans might even require an EQ pedal, if the amp can't supply enough treble by itself.

I didn't buy these for a long time because I already bought the Gold and Hot Gold in years past and I didn't really care for them, but I like these a lot better already. I played the entirety of Siamese Dream with my jam buddy earlier, just to see how they faired. R/S/B Lace Sensors -> green russian Big Muff -> Marshall half stack, and sure enough, use the same gear, get the same tones. I might have been able to get the same tones by combining caps with the Golds to bridge the resonant peaks down to the 2kHz range, but I think the extra voltage output of the red and blue is helpful.

In the past I've also run SSL-4's and SSL-5's, which are similar electrically, but I feel the Lace Sensors are smoother, maybe due to having much less string pull, and quieter. They also compared electrically to Rails and "Little 59's", but where as those pickup involve a lot of steel, causing eddy currents, the Lace Sensors' rubber ferrite has very little eddy current action, so they result in a higher resonant Q factor than those blade style humbuckers. I'd say the R/S/B Lace set retained a more aggressive sound than what I'm used with rails and Little '59's. All in all, where as the Golds and Hot Golds just seemed like anemic Strat pickups, the R/S/B set really bring something different to the table, although I can't really say "new" since they're around thirty years old now.

The higher capacitance might be partly due to the way the lead wires are twisted together. I should have unwrapped them, but I didn't.


Red Lace Sensor
- DC Resistance: 14.887K ohms
- Measured L: 8.762H
- Q @ 1kHz: 2.75
- Calculated C: 236.5pF
- Gauss: 250G (rubberized ferrite)

Silver Lace Sensor
- DC Resistance: 7.378K ohms
- Measured L: 3.632H
- Q @ 1kHz: 2.53
- Calculated C: 217.5pF
- Gauss: 250G (rubberized ferrite)

Blue Lace Sensor
- DC Resistance: 12.753K ohms
- Measured L: 6.852H
- Q @ 1kHz: 2.63
- Calculated C: 226.7pF
- Gauss: 250G (rubberized ferrite)

Red Silver Blue Lace Sensor
Red unloaded: dV: 11.9dB f: 3.32kHz (black)
Red Loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 3.0dB f: 1.79kHz (blue)
Silver unloaded: dV: 11.1dB f: 5.48kHz (red)
Silver loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 5.0dB f: 3.03kHz (green)
Blue unloaded: dV: 11.7dB f: 3.94kHz (pink)
Blue loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 3.3dB f: 2.03kHz (black)

[magneticair]

Good day to everyone!

share your experience, what is the diameter of the wire wound Red Lace Sensor 21141?
Thanks!

[sumitagarwal]

I've never had Lace pickups before and I'm wondering if they could be the solution I'm looking for in a neck humbucker that can split to a low-noise Strat-ish single coil tone.

I'm having trouble understanding how the Dually's relate to the rest of the Sensor lineup. Lace and others suggest that the Dually's are simply two of the regular single coil models mounted adjacent to each other, but is that true and can they be swapped with the regular single-coil models?

antigua are you familiar with the mounting of the coils to the Dually chassis, and are the individual coils really the same geometry and performance?

[antigua]

Feb 19, 2024 19:28:21 GMT -5 sumitagarwal said:

I've never had Lace pickups before and I'm wondering if they could be the solution I'm looking for in a neck humbucker that can split to a low-noise Strat-ish single coil tone.

I'm having trouble understanding how the Dually's relate to the rest of the Sensor lineup. Lace and others suggest that the Dually's are simply two of the regular single coil models mounted adjacent to each other, but is that true and can they be swapped with the regular single-coil models?

antigua are you familiar with the mounting of the coils to the Dually chassis, and are the individual coils really the same geometry and performance?

I've never looked at Duallies. The Lace frame is proprietary, and they use epoxy, so you can't even take them apart. I don't think you could swap one for a vintage style coil. The main reason I don't like the idea of the Duallies is that the only think that sets Lace Sensors apart is their inductance values. You would have two single coils side by side for no other reason than to achieve two different inductances, basically two different EQ profiles. Some people might be happy with that, but I'd rather just have one pickup or another, and get the different EQ profiles with an EQ pedal, or even just adjust the tone knob. It's even possible to just add a capacitor in parallel with a switch to drop the resonant peak by some amount.  

[sumitagarwal]

Feb 20, 2024 1:50:46 GMT -5 antigua said:

Feb 19, 2024 19:28:21 GMT -5 sumitagarwal said:

I've never had Lace pickups before and I'm wondering if they could be the solution I'm looking for in a neck humbucker that can split to a low-noise Strat-ish single coil tone.

I'm having trouble understanding how the Dually's relate to the rest of the Sensor lineup. Lace and others suggest that the Dually's are simply two of the regular single coil models mounted adjacent to each other, but is that true and can they be swapped with the regular single-coil models?

antigua are you familiar with the mounting of the coils to the Dually chassis, and are the individual coils really the same geometry and performance?

I've never looked at Duallies. The Lace frame is proprietary, and they use epoxy, so you can't even take them apart. I don't think you could swap one for a vintage style coil. The main reason I don't like the idea of the Duallies is that the only think that sets Lace Sensors apart is their inductance values. You would have two single coils side by side for no other reason than to achieve two different inductances, basically two different EQ profiles. Some people might be happy with that, but I'd rather just have one pickup or another, and get the different EQ profiles with an EQ pedal, or even just adjust the tone knob. It's even possible to just add a capacitor in parallel with a switch to drop the resonant peak by some amount.  

Thanks antigua

I appreciate the insight and if it were not for noise I don't think I would consider anything other than a traditional humbucker with unbalanced coils. The main appeal for me on the Dually's is the low noise design when split (which I understand to be the case with many other Lace humbuckers as well). The out-of-the-box inductance difference between the coils seems like a small bonus.

Do you have experience with other low-noise humbucker-coil designs? I know Zexcoil is one of the hot new things. And in the past quad-rail designs, like the Dimarzio Multibucker, seemed to be more common although were very hot and dark to suit the tastes of the day.

Along those same lines, the Lace Dually's also appear to be hot and dark which is unsurprising since they put standalone designs in series. I found myself wondering if they might not be better suited to parallel wiring, especially the red/red model which  based on your readings would end up something like 19.H! In parallel it would be something like 5H, which seems more reasonable.

I have a rough understanding of how to estimate inductance for different wiring schemes, but I don't know how to estimate the resonant peak. Based on the data you have here are we able to estimate parallel and series Dually's of the same coils?

I tried using Guitarfreaks but on Excel on my Mac it renders weirdly and the lists are very hard/impossible to use. Here I overlaid two charts for a Pearly Gates in series versus parallel to eyeball the kind of difference in resonance.

[antigua]

The Lace Sensors are not humbuckers, they're single coils that presumably have a better signal to noise ratio than Fender type single coils. I say presumably because it's apparently true but I never did a test that would prove it, as that would be a bit complex. The design places more of the coil closer to the guitar strings, and for that reason alone, it should have a better S/N ratio than a traditional Fender single coil pickup that places more of the coil away from the guitar strings. 

Zexcoil is marketted heavily by Zexcoil, but I personally don't have reason to believe they're superior to a rail style single coil sized humbucker. I don't see any particular problem with rails that Zexcoils will solve. They look more expensive to produce, and cost more money. 

The Dually in parallel sounds like a good idea. I think in series it would sound muffled. 

To get the resonant peak, you can use online calculators, to avoid doing the math work. First, you would add in the inductances in series with an online calculator, easy to Google. Then find another calculator to calculate a peak frequency from a given L and C, and set C value to about 500 picofarads. The peak frequency in series will be really low, probably approaching 1kHz. 

[sumitagarwal]

Thanks antigua !

The variety of Lace combinations has inspired me a bit to try to make a tool useful for idiots like me. Guitarfreaks is more sophisticated than my goals and anyway seems to have trouble in a modern high DPI Mac environment.

I tried putting some of my limited knowledge so far into this spreadsheet that tries to calculate and contextualize different wiring schemas for humbuckers and for combining neck and bridge pickups:


docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P0kPHbA5j2WJ6-OvAQIeMNOKNjBb1iAXUL1IlmYgTTw/edit?usp=sharing

I'd be very curious for your thoughts and corrections. I believe this sheet is set to be publicly available with only the coil induction values in the top row editable

[antigua]

That spreadsheet with the built in calculations is cool. What are the types of Lace Sensors in the Dually?

I thought all the Duallies were two different pickups, like the Blue-Gold lacemusic.com/products/lace-sensor-dually-blue-gold-humbucker , which would be like humbucker or single coil, nice choices. But I see "Red Red" and "Gold Gold", is that really just the same single coils two times lacemusic.com/products/lace-sensor-dually-red-red-humbucker ? Two Red Lace Sensors by themselves would have a combined inductance of 18 henries in series, which seems totally insane. I can't imagine that's what you really end up with. I wonder if they're called Red coils but are given special specs for the Red-Red Dually. Lace doesn't even offer the DC resistance values for these pickups, so they're trying to keep us in the dark about their true nature to the best of their ability. 

[sumitagarwal]

Feb 20, 2024 20:42:51 GMT -5 antigua said:

That spreadsheet with the built in calculations is cool. What are the types of Lace Sensors in the Dually?

I thought all the Duallies were two different pickups, like the Blue-Gold lacemusic.com/products/lace-sensor-dually-blue-gold-humbucker , which would be like humbucker or single coil, nice choices. But I see "Red Red" and "Gold Gold", is that really just the same single coils two times lacemusic.com/products/lace-sensor-dually-red-red-humbucker ? Two Red Lace Sensors by themselves would have a combined inductance of 18 henries in series, which seems totally insane. I can't imagine that's what you really end up with. I wonder if they're called Red coils but are given special specs for the Red-Red Dually.

The combos I see on their site are:

Hot Gold/Hot Gold (same as Gold I think you found)
Gold/Gold
Blue/Red
Gold/Blue
Emerald/Purple
Silver/Red
Red/Red

Glad you think the spreadsheet is interesting. There's a possibility I'll build it out to something a little more substantial, with a coil selection drop-down and resonant frequency calculator if I can get the math right.

I'm monkeying around with it now to see which Dually combos yield the most usable classic tones.

EDIT: Of course I assume there's no meaningful downsides to flipping any of the above combos around, other than inverted logos (which I might paint over anyway). It would affect which split combinations are hum-cancelling and which are hum-summing. I think the most common useful/unique split combination between neck and bridge pickups would likely be the inner coils for a notch tone, which would benefit from keeping standard orientation for hum-cancelling

[sumitagarwal]

Ok, now assuming the spreadsheet is a remotely sensible approach, and assuming Lace Sensors fundamentally sound "good", here are the combos I'm seeing:

Emerald/Purple
Blue/Red

Strat neck: neck outer (Emerald) 2.84H
Strat middle: neck parallel (Emerald<P>Purple) 2.19H
P-90 neck: neck inner (Purple) 6.11H

P-90 middle: neck inner + bridge outer (Purple<P>Red) 3.60H

P-90 bridge: bridge inner (Blue) 6.85H
PAF bridge: bridge parallel (Blue<P>Red) 4.34H

Emerald/Purple
Red/Red

Strat neck: neck outer (Emerald) 2.84H
Strat middle: neck parallel (Emerald<P>Purple) 2.19H
P-90 neck: neck inner (Purple) 6.11H

P-90 middle: neck inner + bridge outer (Purple<P>Red) 3.60H

P-90 bridge: bridge inner (Red) 8.76H
PAF bridge: bridge parallel (Red<P>Red) 4.95H

Emerald/Purple
Silver/Red

Strat neck: neck outer (Emerald) 2.84H
Strat middle: neck parallel (Emerald<P>Purple) 2.19H
P-90 neck: neck inner (Purple) 6.11H

P-90 middle: neck inner + bridge outer (Purple<P>Red) 3.60H

Tele bridge: bridge inner (Silver) 3.63H
Strat bridge: bridge parallel (Silver<P>Red) 2.90H

Emerald/Purple
Gold/Blue

Strat neck: neck outer (Emerald) 2.84H
Strat middle: neck parallel (Emerald<P>Purple) 2.19H
P-90 neck: neck inner (Purple) 6.11H

Tele middle: neck outer + bridge outer (Emerald<P>Blue) 2.01H
P-90 middle: neck inner + bridge outer (Purple<P>Blue) 3.23H
Strat notch: neck parallel + bridge inner (Emerald<P>Purple<P>Gold) 1.13H

Strat bridge: bridge inner (Gold) 2.32H

Gold/Gold
Gold/Blue

Strat neck: neck outer (Gold) 2.32H
Strat middle: neck inner (Gold) 2.32H
PAF neck: neck series (Gold<S>Gold) 5.15H

Strat notch: neck inner + bridge inner (Gold<P>Gold) 1.16H
Tele middle: neck outer + bridge outer (Gold<P>Blue) 1.73H
P-90 middle: neck series + bridge series (Gold<S>Gold<P>Gold<S>Blue) 3.42H

Strat bridge: bridge inner (Gold) 2.32H
Hot humbucker bridge: bridge series (Gold<S>Blue) 10.18H

*phew*
If there is any merit to this, this gives me a lot to chew on...

EDIT: antigua to your question about whether they really are two Reds together, here Lace lists the inductance at 14.8H with a peak frequency of 1450: lacemusic.com/products/lace-dually-t-plus-humbucker

[antigua]

I get kind of blurry eyed by all the combinations. I have a Tele and a Strat with super switches that offer series combos of the stock pickups; personally I have a hard time using a bridge+neck sound that is hotter than the neck or bridge by itself. The bridge+neck has a nice bell-like tone to is that gets a bit lost in series. High inductance works good with distortion, but I dont think the bridge+neck is the best distorted tone, so for me, having several pickups in series is effectively unusable. I would opt for parallel combos. 

The Red-Red shows a DC resistance of 30k, while the Red by itself is just under 15k, which suggests it really is two reds side by side. The inductance of 14.8H is less than I expected but still off the charts. It might have the highest inductance of any pickup made by a long standing pickup maker. The resonant peak of 1,450Hz is presumably without a guitar cable load, so the actual resonant peak must be even lower. This is a pickup I'd have no interest in placing in a guitar. I'd do it for a laugh if not for the time and cost involved. 

[sumitagarwal]

Feb 21, 2024 1:32:56 GMT -5 antigua said:

I get kind of blurry eyed by all the combinations. I have a Tele and a Strat with super switches that offer series combos of the stock pickups; personally I have a hard time using a bridge+neck sound that is hotter than the neck or bridge by itself. The bridge+neck has a nice bell-like tone to is that gets a bit lost in series. High inductance works good with distortion, but I dont think the bridge+neck is the best distorted tone, so for me, having several pickups in series is effectively unusable. I would opt for parallel combos. 

The Red-Red shows a DC resistance of 30k, while the Red by itself is just under 15k, which suggests it really is two reds side by side. The inductance of 14.8H is less than I expected but still off the charts. It might have the highest inductance of any pickup made by a long standing pickup maker. The resonant peak of 1,450Hz is presumably without a guitar cable load, so the actual resonant peak must be even lower. This is a pickup I'd have no interest in placing in a guitar. I'd do it for a laugh if not for the time and cost involved. 

Yup, I have a Heritage 535 that I got set up with "Jimmy Page wiring" over 20 years ago and always found the neck+bridge series switch completely useless. The only scenario in which I think it *might* be useful is when using pickups with heavily mismatched coils (DiMarzio Bluesbucker, PRS TCI "S", Fralin Unbucker) and you've oriented both weak coils on the inside. Then you could put the inner coils in series for a Strat notch tone, which on the TCI I estimate at 1.76H. There are many Tele players who like putting the underwound neck pickup in series with the bridge.

The Red/Red does seem absurd, but FWIW Johnny Greenwood relied on one for decades. I could potentially see running one primarily parallel (4.4H), then going to series as a pedal-free solo boost.

Tangential: have you ever looked at the Joe Barden / JBE Two-Tone? It's a tapped design that minimizes metal to reduce inductance

[antigua]

I looked at the Barden jbepickups.com/products/two-tone-humbuckers/ , it's too bad he doesn't say what method it uses for getting the clearer sound, or offer any other specs. It mentions that it comes with "high-quality 6 conductor shielded cable and are supplied with treble bleed and tone capacitors" so many the trickery is outboard. I'm not sure that a low ratio of metal to plastic plays into the dual sound modes in any particular way. It's a shame that pickup makers aren't more forthcoming with technical details. 

[sumitagarwal]

Feb 21, 2024 16:33:25 GMT -5 antigua said:

I looked at the Barden jbepickups.com/products/two-tone-humbuckers/ , it's too bad he doesn't say what method it uses for getting the clearer sound, or offer any other specs. It mentions that it comes with "high-quality 6 conductor shielded cable and are supplied with treble bleed and tone capacitors" so many the trickery is outboard. I'm not sure that a low ratio of metal to plastic plays into the dual sound modes in any particular way. It's a shame that pickup makers aren't more forthcoming with technical details. 

I actually managed to source a considerable amount of insight directly from Guitar Nuts 2, mostly this thread: guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/4085/barden-twotone-on-lonestar-bridge

My takeaway is that it's essentially just two coils that each have a substantial tap in them, slightly "underwound" in tapped mode which may help with the larger sensing window, and possibly less overall metal does help reduce inductance but that's beyond my understanding.

I also found this video review here in which they're less impressive than I'd hoped: 

Lace still seems pretty interesting, and looking through their catalog I think they "reuse" the Sensor coils through a lot of their line-up including more recent ones. For example the now-discontinued Dissonant Aggressor (Mastodon guitarist sig) seems identical to the Blue/Gold:

Dissonant Aggressor bridge:
Resistance:17.8k,
Inductance:8.4 henries
1955 Hz peak frequency

Blue/Gold:
Resistance: 18.9k
Peak frequency: 1900
Inductance: 8.3 henries

I'm also looking at the DiMarzio Bluesbucker which is a kind of interesting design even though it looks traditional on the outside. People describe it as a sensing coil and a dummy coil placed side-by-side, but there's a big resistance difference between the coils and I'm trying to find out if it is really a full hum-cancelling model or partial.

[sumitagarwal]

Sharing a tidbit here I stumbled across that I think is relevant to the discussion:

In this thread Gclef posted seeming confirmation from Lace that all of their newer humbucker models are simply different (now vintage) Sensor designs under the covers. This would, in effect, make their humbucker model line-up essentially a bunch of different Dually's.


The Hemi is made with 2 standard Sensor single coils. All of our humbuckers are made that way. We do not make anything with a P90 and a single coil next to it.

This is from an email from Jared at lace.

Just about everything they make is based on the lace sensor except for the alumitones and the holy grails.

[antigua]

Mar 1, 2024 9:41:54 GMT -5 sumitagarwal said:

Sharing a tidbit here I stumbled across that I think is relevant to the discussion:

In this thread Gclef posted seeming confirmation from Lace that all of their newer humbucker models are simply different (now vintage) Sensor designs under the covers. This would, in effect, make their humbucker model line-up essentially a bunch of different Dually's.

The magnetic fields would have to be reversed to get humbucking, so I guess they have to be difference in that respect. that's would be more complicated since they don't use the bar magnet design, which makes it very easy to end up with opposite polarities through the coils. 

I'm grateful to Lace for making the Alumitone. It's not very popular, but it's probably the most interesting passive pickup design since the Filter'tron / PAF, if not more interesting than those. Especially in how it involved low impedance and high impedance in one pickup that, humbucks, weights almost nothing, and is mostly air where you would expect a big coil to exist. It's a futuristic design. 

[sumitagarwal]

Mar 1, 2024 11:08:40 GMT -5 antigua said:

Mar 1, 2024 9:41:54 GMT -5 sumitagarwal said:

Sharing a tidbit here I stumbled across that I think is relevant to the discussion:

In this thread Gclef posted seeming confirmation from Lace that all of their newer humbucker models are simply different (now vintage) Sensor designs under the covers. This would, in effect, make their humbucker model line-up essentially a bunch of different Dually's.

The magnetic fields would have to be reversed to get humbucking, so I guess they have to be difference in that respect. that's would be more complicated since they don't use the bar magnet design, which makes it very easy to end up with opposite polarities through the coils. 

I'm grateful to Lace for making the Alumitone. It's not very popular, but it's probably the most interesting passive pickup design since the Filter'tron / PAF, if not more interesting than those. Especially in how it involved low impedance and high impedance in one pickup that, humbucks, weights almost nothing, and is mostly air where you would expect a big coil to exist. It's a futuristic design. 

Interesting, so you're saying it can't just be one coil rotated compared to normal?

On their site they offer RWRP options for their singles: lacemusic.com/products/lace-sensor-silver-single-coil-pickup

[antigua]

Mar 1, 2024 11:38:56 GMT -5 sumitagarwal said:

Interesting, so you're saying it can't just be one coil rotated compared to normal?

On their site they offer RWRP options for their singles: lacemusic.com/products/lace-sensor-silver-single-coil-pickup

Oh, RW/RP will do it, that must be how they make their HBs. Rotating a coil wouldnt change the north south orientation of the magnet.