Single string pickups - 6 of 'em

[mjmiller]

Has anyone ever tried making a set of pickups, 1 per string, and preamplifying them seperately to eliminate (drastically reduce) intermodulation distortion? You could get the 2 guitar lead sound or strike complex chords with loads of gain without producing mush, it would seem...

I would've done this a long time ago, but I'm way too lazy ;)

And you'd either look like bootsy but with 6 cables instead of 4 , or have to find / make a fancy freakin cable...

Michael Miller

[Steve Conner]

Roland guitar synths use a pickup exactly like what you describe, and I believe some of them have a "Hexa Distortion" patch that does just what you said: 6 high-gain amp models, one per pickup.

[madialex]

I believe it has been done by Jason Lollar as well......

[jason lollar]

I have made many of those and without giving away many hours of R+D on it I can tell you you are up against a few problems if you are trying for a passive system one is having one pole screws the inductance of the coil up and there is a tendancy for bleed through from adjacent strings that you have to work around.

[mjmiller]

Right - I was thinking about using mu-metal to confine the magnetic field and installing the system near-ish to the bridge, where excursion is smallest.

[David Schwab]

Hex fuzz sounds amazing. I remember trying it on an ARP Avatar.

[Sock Puppet]

This is from the void somewhere, don't know where or how it was wired; maybe posted by D.S. - he's got loads of pictures:

422

S.

[mjmiller]

another possible way would be to design it like a dual rail humbucker with a single magnet... a la DiMarzio Fast track 2, rotated 90 degrees and shrunk - the magnetic field on those pickups is focused almost totally inwards and would drastically reduce crosstalk without mag. shielding

[David Schwab]

This is from the void somewhere, don't know where or how it was wired; maybe posted by D.S. - he's got loads of pictures:

That's weird! Wasn't from me though. I am a packrat... I agree!

[Satamax]

There's a french company who has made some pickups like this, i think it was MC-2, and they even done a 12 coil humbucker IIRC! Yes MC2 http://www.mc2musique.com/index.php?op=edito

Pickup was called PLO.

[Zhangliqun]

I remember some guy named Steve Ripley was doing it back in the 80's.

[GlennW]

The neck pickup on Ovation Magnum basses has a separate coil and volume adjustment for each string.

[jason lollar]

there are several historical examples of this- I recall a vega but cant think of anything really old where it was intended to be descreetly hexaphonic.
It can be done but there are a few hoops to jump through- its not something youll just knock off and have it work in every way you imagined if you are just designing blind.
About 5 or 6 years ago there was a place in the US called linear pickups- anyone recall them?
They only hung around for a year or two.

[mjmiller]

The complexities you're talking about are largely the reason I've never even started trying to build a pickup per string system. But I've been thinking about it for years, ever since I heard about the quadra fuzz many years ago.
It would open up so many possibilities... but it would also require a 6 channel preamp to be useful. I think I'm going to attempt this someday... I was hoping I could take the easy route and learn from other people's mistakes, avoiding the price of my own
:)
Laser pickups would be another way to go, eliminating crosstalk... laser rangefinding equipment... how about laser LEDs and phototransistors? Optical isolation would be a cinch to eliminate scatter crosstalk

[Satamax]

MJ, sorry to say but KISS :D

Realy, have you gone through all other possibilities before trying something new. I mean, someone like Pat Metheny has a nice ferrington ha^rp guitar with something like 40 strings, but how many people can handle this :D Just ask yourself, is it worth the effort?

[David Schwab]

I mean, someone like Pat Metheny has a nice ferrington ha^rp guitar with something like 40 strings...

You mean the 42 string Pikasso I, created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer.

I have a photo of her with that guitar that I snapped back in '96... I'll have to scan it one of these days.

[Satamax]

Ok, that's Linda Manzer who did this one, what did Ferrington do for Metheny then????

[mjmiller]

Are the extras sympathetic or intended to be played?

I wrote a reply to Satamax's comment and then accidentally his the back button on the mouse while putting down my coffee. It was like... 45 minutes of thinking and writing... sigh

let me just say this:
I AM trying to keep it simple (I prefer KIS - no need for name calling ;)
This is part of a big ball of wax that I just explained and deleted by accident

There are 4 possiblilties I have come up with to do what I want to do
This is one possibility that I wanted to kick around with experienced folk

And Yes, it's worth the effort to figure out if its worth the effort.

[Satamax]

Are the extras sympathetic or intended to be played?

I wrote a reply to Satamax's comment and then accidentally his the back button on the mouse while putting down my coffee. It was like... 45 minutes of thinking and writing... sigh

let me just say this:
I AM trying to keep it simple (I prefer KIS - no need for name calling ;)
This is part of a big ball of wax that I just explained and deleted by accident

There are 4 possiblilties I have come up with to do what I want to do
This is one possibility that I wanted to kick around with experienced folk

And Yes, it's worth the effort to figure out if its worth the effort.

Hey MJ, don't worry, i was taking the mick! (huh pulling your leg?) I mean, what you tend to head to i've tried to think about a few years back, and gave up :D Good luck on your project.

Bye.

Max.

[mjmiller]

So here's the deal:
I don't like how harmonic distortion and intermodulation come as a package deal. The tone I choose to play with shapes my playing possibilities, and this bothers me.
I use a lot of highly nonstandard tunings, two of which place 2 strings a tone apart, and one of which has 2 strings as a unison. When I use these tunings I am forced to play with an extremely clean tone. I don't have anything against clean, I just want to be able to dial in something grittier when I like. Grit and flat seconds don't go well together - sounds like the 'skronk' that Korn's guitarist is fond of. I'm more of a melodic kind of guy. I've been messing around with lines... like... I can't remember what is called, but where each note rings out through the beginning of the next note. Like legato, but overlapping. Anyway, it's got a sweet sound(kinda haunting), but don't try it with any bite - it becomes unintelligible.
I'd also love to be able to play something other than 5th type power chords with blistering distortion, and the wide major 3rd of even temperment with high gain is the bane of my existence.
Combine these things and it becomes obvious to me that my world would be a better place if I could separate (to as high a degree as possible) harmonic and intermodulation distortions. I've come up with 4 ways to do it.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Didn't Einstein say something like that?
It all started with (Anderton's?) quadrafuzz. Hmm... distort bands separately to reduce intermodulation... but for it to help with my freaky melody lines, I'd need one band for each note, at least in that range. Totally impractical and far from simple. Scratch that idea
12 commuting filters, one for each note in the 12 tone scale could be cool. If you played a note and executed a bend, it'd drift into another band, which could make for some sweet ramifications, plus intermodulation would be smacked down big time. But I don't want to deal with a 12 channel preamp. That's still not simple enough for me.
The third method is being kicked around in my ADC/DAC post, but it'll be years before it's to the point where I can plug in a guitar, start playing, and have it do what I want. Also, I think it's performance could be drastically increased if I feed it one signal per string. Everything could be optimized (and I could distribute the necessary processing between multiple computers) Which brings us to the best solution I have come up with:
One pickup per string.
It requires the fewest preamp channels and gives me the best separation of signals. Its the simplest, most intuitive solution to my problem. The only problem is that I've never built an inductive, capacative, piezoelectric, or optical pickup, and I'm not about to dive headlong into any of those four endeavors without kicking the idea around who knows something about the subject, which is why I started this thread. :) I want to find out if its worth the effort.
It sounds like inductive pickups have resulted in nothing but heartache... but I wonder if all the possibilities have been exhausted. I have a dual rail humbucker where all the lines of magnetic flux curve from the blades inwards, towards each other. Shrink that, rotate it so the blades are parallel to the string (and short for decent HF response - don't want the strings in the field for an inch), and voila.
Piezos are probably the hardest to work with as far as eliminating crosstalk is concerned - way too much vibration is transferred from any part of the guitar to any other.
I don't know if anyone has ever made a capacitive guitar pickup, but my Pops drew out an idea for one that seems like it would work very well. If anyone's interested, I'll try to dig up his sketch and remember how he said the thing would work (he's a pretty brilliant, if rusty, old school electronics engineer by degree, but he hasn't had an engineering job for decades) I remember that it was a bit like an electret microphone
I also don't know if anyone's ever tried building an optical pickup and I don't know what kind of frequency response curves would be generated (different ones based on different types of optical pickups), but it would be freaking easy to build a few simple ones and also very easy to achieve perfect isolation between strings and eliminate optical noise from the environment.
:)

[Satamax]

MJ MJ, i get your point! :D

Well, now you're talking. Remember that thoses coils are quite small, so they don't have a lot of output, and you will have to use a lot of gain to generate a decent volume, lots of gain results often to a bad noise to music ratio. Myself, i think i'd go for piezzo, and six guitar synth (if you can manage theses to get old roland to sound like anything good for you, it could be a cheap option) You know, if you go to the mimf, optical and inductive etc pickups have been discussed to some extent, even Hexa coils etc. To have acces to the library, you'll have to register thought. But im my understanding, you'll have at some point to mix the signal even if it's in the air after six amps, and at a certain point, i'd bet intermodulation distorsion will come back in the picture! :D

[mjmiller]

I'm going to have to google mimf... I've seen it referenced a lot on here. Sounds like it could be a good resource. I'm okay with mixing the signal at any point after the distortion is done. If I want that tube power amp distortion tone, I WILL have to send each string out through a separate amp and speaker, but I'm okay with that. I've seen a lot of tube amps with upwards of 6 output tubes. Just look at some of Ampeg's stuff. I think the BAGA has 12 output tubes.... and there's something... natural, I guess, about treating each string separately through the whole process. I can have cute little 1 watt ax84 firefly type amps for the unwound strings, moving up to a 5 watt amp for my low A (I'm strung like a baritone on the bottom end)

The other option is to mix it all before an ultralinear power amp. I'm okay with that, too.

As for coils - my guitar is very well shielded, and if I shield the coils as well and buffer the coils onboard the guitar, don't you think I could get a good signal out to the amp?

Well, I'm going to go see what I can dig up in this mimf... thanks for the reference.
:)

[Satamax]

http://www.mimf.com/cgi-bin/WebX

[mjmiller]

So I just got back from the mimf... thanks for the reference :)
Went through what I could find on opticals there... lots of smackdown posts, but the real gem was the link to the lightwave systems site. Wow! Amazing results, but they achieve them through what I have to avoid - encapsulating part of the string in a dark chamber. Presumably, they shine an IR LED on one side of the string and pick up the vibration of its shadow on the other side. I use the whole darn string, though. Sometimes I play with a retired bow from my cello and I get right down at the bridge to pull out some freaky harmonics, so I can't encapsulate the string :(
My idea was to mount a laser diode and phototransistor under the string and catch the refracted light. Driving the laser with a carrier frequency then passing the output of the phototransistor through a narrow filter would allow removal of any environmental interference and each string could have its own carrier to eliminate any possibility of crosstalk. There might be too many variables, though, such as the reflectiveness of the underside of the string - could change during the course of playing if I sweat on them or get them dirty or something, and this could drastically reduce the signal strength.

Might be worth a trip to the Rad Shack and an afternoon of tinkering to see what I can get out of it..

'nother wacky pickup idea - the capacitive pickup. This one might work better. I couldn't dig up the idea my Pops sketched out, but I was thinking about it and I think I have a pretty good way to do it. More amplitude modulation of carrier signals... Way simpler than an electromagnetic pickup to construct - works like a theremin antenna.

you've got a vibrating metal string connected to ground
take a small metal plate or piece of wire or whatever and pass a carrier signal through it. As the string gets closer to the plate, the capacitance increases, and more of the carrier signal is shunted to ground. Each string has it's own carrier frequency and you pass each through a bandpass filter (again, eliminating crosstalk and environmental noise - just use freq's you're not going to pick up with your little antennae) then a lowpass to get rid of the carrier. Audio signal comes out, clean as a whistle if the circuit is well designed, dead flat frequency response, no magnetic drag or "stratitis" and one signal per string.

Any thoughts? Did I miss something big here? This is all new territory for me.
Lets's see.... say we're talking about a 1mm diameter string and our pickup it 1mm x 5 mm and is 5mm under the string. base capacitance should be... .001 x permittivity of air and I have no idea what that is
Anyway, the distance from the string and placement along its length can be freely messed with. If you think it would be really noisy, or quiet, go play a theremin for a minute :) They are deriving control signals, not audio ones, but they're sensitive over a couple of feet, and have a crappy connector to ground (the player) and noise present in the control signal would modulate the frequency or amplitude of the output signal, and I don't recall hearing anything like that...

Theoretically, this should have all the advantages of the Lightwave system (BTW they're like 5 miles from my old house and I never knew! Same with ... is it Seymour Duncan in Santa Barbara?) but with the high frequency response I'd like (no piezos to mix in to compensate for lack of HF response) and no string encapsulation.

And it seems like it would be way easier to build than an electomagnetic pickup - all that mucking about with magnet wire and bobbins and magnets and polepieces
Granted, there's more electronics involved - you have to make a tuned oscillator / filter pair, but I'm not sure if you'd even need the lowpass to get rid of the carrier, and the oscillator could easily drive a nice long cable

Any thoughts?

[Satamax]

Hey MJ, you're getting way out of my league! :D May be a HB of some king but with only three polepieces on each bobin with a one string gap between each polepiece and alternated from each bobin.

[Mark Hammer]

1) Pole-per-string pickups need to be skinny, so as to situate them close enough to the bridge where the lateral string travel will be minimized, and bleedthrough will be similarly minimized. I have an old Guild Tri-Oct polyphonic octave-down unit from what I believe is the late 60's that came with a proprietary divided hex pickup. Unfortunately the pickup has a footprint about the size of a P90 so tracking is abysmal unless you place it in lieu of a bridge pickup (won't fit between bridge pickup and bridge) and use heavy gauge string. Unfortunately, to achieve the sort of profile that lets you snuggle the pickup next to he bridge, both the magnet and coil need to be pretty small and a preamp is absolutely necessary to bring individual string levels up to anything reasonable. On top of this, the string doesn't move all that much so the signal is tiny to start with. None of this justifies abondoning it, but it does mean that one has to be realistic in expectations.

2) There are several different purposes for divided pickups. One is certainly to provide individual string sensing for synthesis, such that he circuitry can recognize a pluck on string X as distinct from a pluck on string Y and Z. But another purpose is also to provide better stereo spread, and simply make a normal guitar sound bigger. Both are legitimate purposes, but the second can tolerate greater variation in pickup design.

3) Harry Bissell turned me onto the G-Vox pickup (http://home.epix.net/~joelc/cheapgit.html), which can often be found inexpensively on E-bay. I tried his 95% analog guitar synth (based on an Ibanez Strat-type guitar) that uses such a pickup to drive his modules, and I was very impressed with its performance. Although it is pitched as a MIDI-pickup, it is simply a pickup with 6 little humbuckers. Having looked at the schems for the control modules on a number of MIDI guitars using similar pickups, I can assure you that they are easily adapted to purely analog processing.

[Merlin]

Here is a picture of Ovation bass pickup: http://www.merlinpickups.com/Ovation%20009.jpg

[David Schwab]

Here is a picture of Ovation bass pickup: http://www.merlinpickups.com/Ovation%20009.jpg

I used to like those basses.

[Odd I/O]

Has anyone ever tried making a set of pickups, 1 per string, and preamplifying them seperately to eliminate (drastically reduce) intermodulation distortion? You could get the 2 guitar lead sound or strike complex chords with loads of gain without producing mush, it would seem...

I would've done this a long time ago, but I'm way too lazy ;)

And you'd either look like bootsy but with 6 cables instead of 4 , or have to find / make a fancy freakin cable...

Michael Miller
The new digital Gibson Les Paul has a Hex PU at the Bridge, I think. and Yep, per the previous posts, It might be easier in the long run to shell out the bux for something professionally made than DIY...might even be less expensive too in the long run.
----On cables for such a widget: It seems to me that if the PuP's six coils are in parallel, then couldn't they just have a common that also served as a braided shield for the cable? Perhaps beneficial to twist the inner "hot" wires. Hmmm ---a squirming coil of wires strings and coils-----Quite a can of worms.
----"Big Electric Cat, Big Electric Cat, Big Electric Cat..."
---------Adrian Belew

[David Schwab]

It all started with (Anderton's?) quadrafuzz.

I love the Quadrafuzz! I have a plugin version of it as well.

Anderton made some cool shit. Now with all the digital effects and stuff, no one bothers to make funky analog stuff anymore.

Getting back to the pickup... I'd just get a Roland hex pickup, or something similar. The coils are so damn small, you need really thin wire, and then they are still only big enough to wind low impedance coils (which is fine though).

I've been wanting to get one and make a hex fuzz for a while now.

[Zhangliqun]

You mean the 42 string Pikasso I, created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer.

I have a photo of her with that guitar that I snapped back in '96... I'll have to scan it one of these days.

I saw Pat play that baby at UCLA one night.

[David Schwab]

I saw Pat play that baby at UCLA one night.

Here's a picture I took of Linda Manzer with the Pikasso II, which was commissioned by Scott Chinery.

It's a crazy looking guitar! She said she was sorry she took the commission and would never make another one again! I met Chinery that day too.

The Ferrington guitar sounds familiar, but it's not in the Ferrington Guitars book... but that's not to say he didn't make him one.

[edit] Here's the Chinery harp guitar collection (http://www.harpguitars.net/history/chinery.htm). I don't see any Ferringtons.

I love weird guitars. :D

[jason lollar]

aphrodities child avatar- thats pretty obscure...:rolleyes:

[NightWinder]

You lucky bastard!!! Side Note: I seen John Mclaucghlin (sorry spelling) with the most amazing rythem section in "92. That still was the best inspired performance In my life to date. Anyone know what tour that was.....I truely never wanted to hear it again..... til now. That my friends.....changed my life.

[David Schwab]

You lucky bastard!!! Side Note: I seen John Mclaucghlin (sorry spelling) with the most amazing rythem section in "92. That still was the best inspired performance In my life to date. Anyone know what tour that was.....I truely never wanted to hear it again..... til now. That my friends.....changed my life.

I saw McLaughlin... might have been a few years before that. He had Jonas Hellborg on bass, and an Indian percussionist. McLaughlin was playing a nylon string guitar. There might have been an indian violinist too, but my memory is fuzzy!

One of the best shows I saw was Mahavishnu, on the Birds of Fire tour, with Gentle Giant as the opening act! I hadn't heard of Giant at that time, and they became one of my favorite bands... and still are today (along with King Crimson and XTC). :D

[Mark Hammer]

I have a rather oddball device at home called the Guild Tri-Oct. It was a short production-run circuit from that period when it was hard to tell the difference between Guild, Electro-Harmonix and Musitronics, and is a completely analog hexaphonic/polyphonic octave divider (yes, they existed before the E-H POG). Sort of the "missing link" between effects pedals and the first guitar synths. It came with a proprietary divided pickup such that each string was sensed individually. Unfortunately, it worked like crap because the pickup footprint was too damn big (about the sixe of a P90). You could not get it anywhere near enough the bridge on a commercial instrument to prevent string-to-string bleedthrough and mistracking. If you have a guitar with no bridge pickup (allowing you to snuggle it up against the bridge), and use heavy gauge strings, and pick very lightly and precisely, it WILL yield octave-divided chords, but it is generally not giggable.

So, the basic challenge of divided pickups is that they need to have a slender profile to work optimally. Because so many of the hex pickups produced for synth purposes are intended to be add-ons attached to an existing instrument, rather than OEM-type designs, they are not only slender, but are also short enough that you can slide them under the strings near the bridge on most commercial guitars and secure them to the body from the top. As you can imagine, this places some rather severe constraints on both the size of the magnets and the size of the coil, which in turn places some equally severe limitations on the signal they can generate. I've looked at schematics for a great many guitar-synth modules adapted to GK-type divided pickups and they all have the same basic design, which is that each coil goes immediately and directly to an op-amp gain stage with a fair amount of gain, adjusted string-wise with an individual trimpot.

Of course, there are different purposes of divided pickups and one needs to consider context. Synth pickups not only have to sense the string pitch but also provide absolutely unambiguous information about when each "note event" starts. Side-to-side leakage works at cross purposes with the goal of synthesis. But guitar synthesis is not the only reason to want to use a divided pickup. Simply allowing different pats of the pickup to "specialize" for the puirposes of creating a more spacious mix, or for EQ-ing wound and unwound strings differently, is an entirely reasonable objective. Because such a purpose does not have the same stringent requirements as a synth pickup, one can tolerate some string bleedthrough and coils/polepieces capable of creating usable tone on their own. This stands in contrast to synth pickups whose own tone is simply moot and whose capacity to clearly identify the pitch and amplitude of the moment is its sole focus.

If one's only purpose is to reduce intermodulation and allow for some spaciousness, I would imagine that a pair of standard Strat-sized single-coils with alternate polepieces pulled or replaced with plastic slugs (Coil A = E, D, B; Coil B = A G, E) could deliver up some very nice spacious tones. That actually might make for an interesting HB pickup. With both coils combined you'd get hum-cancelling and all 6 strings in mono, but you could also combine individual coils à la PRS for some interesting tones, or simply feed those individual coils out in stereo. One of the nice things about such an approach is that string-to-string bleedthrough, while not perfect, would be reduced by having alternate strings sitting above the pole-less part of the coil.

[David Schwab]

I have a rather oddball device at home called the Guild Tri-Oct.

I remember those...

It was a short production-run circuit from that period when it was hard to tell the difference between Guild, Electro-Harmonix and Musitronics...

I had a Guild Foxy Lady, which was identical to an EH Big Muff Pi... when I opened it and looked on the circuit board, it was marked "EH"!

So we know who was making some of Guild's effects...

[Earl Norton]

I saw that tour as well. In Little Rock at a local club. Truly amazing group.

[Mark Hammer]

If you remember them, what can you tell me about them? I found this in a pawn shop (it has since been promised to Ron Neely, the E-H Man, though I have to get my ass in gear and send it to him), and have been asking anyone and everyone for whatever they might know about it, from Art Thompson to Mike Beigel. So far nobody has answered my requests. It is an absolutely fascinating piece because it really IS the missing link between guitar synths and fuzz-boxes. Half the trannies in it are germanium. That's how much of a dinosaur it is. The other half are 2N5133, which was essentially E-H's default transistor in 1969. That's why I'm thinking it may have had some E-H link, as well as being from that time period.

[erikbojerik]

Here's a picture I took of Linda Manzer with the Pikasso II...I love weird guitars. :D

Well, at least in that picture she has it tuned up properly. Its a pet peeve of mine, but I hate it when photographers insist on rotating all the tuning pegs so the buttons are all facing the camera. Talk about unorthodox tunings... :rolleyes:

[David Schwab]

If you remember them, what can you tell me about them?

Oh I just remember reading about it in Guitar Player or something. I always read all the gadget reviews and new product announcements.

I bet it was probably made by EH. Guild didn't make any of their own effects.

Is there anything written on the circuit board? As I said my Foxy Lady clearly had a Big Muff PCB with "EH" written on it... but that could have been because it was a standard EH part.

You could try writing EH. If they made it, I bet Mike Matthews would be interested in it.

[Mark Hammer]

I did write them. They had nothing of use to offer.

I even managed to exchange notes with Mr. "Reeling in the Years" Elliot Randall, who suggested writing Mike Beigel again and dropping his name, but to no avail. Honestly, you'd think I need to take out a full-page colour glossy ad in Vintage Guitar and ask "Do you have ANY idea what the hell this is?".

[Mark Hammer]

I completely forgot to mention that there was a company called G-Vox that was making these units for teaching guitar, using a hex-divided pickup to retrofit on existing guitars and feed to a computer. Harry Bissell adapted one of these pickups for his own guitar synth, and it is every bit as decent as a GK type pickup. For a while you could pick them up cheap on e-bay, though I suspect they may be rarer now than they were 4 years ago.

[David Schwab]

Bartolini make polyphonic pickups. This was part of their original design and patent way back when. You can get a hex pickup in a strat housing from them.

[radii]

Hi

First post on this forum :)

In case this guy has not been mentioned, http://www.atlansia.jp/ uses and sells single string pickups. If you don't speak japanese, the site is a little hard to navigate but fun nontheless.
Try finding his custom machine shop section. The guy seems very ingenious...

[black_labb]

if you wanted you culd use a few stereo outputs. i am helping a friend out who is looking to connect the low E string and the A string to a bass amp and have the rest (with the other 2 possibly) connected to a guitar amp. he plays in a band with 2 guitars and no bass and wants a rythem sound thats a bit closer to a bass sound. i guess mine is a similar concept, just not nearly as hard.

[RufusTF]

On the subject of hex pickups, I created a little frankenstein with one of these, and am ISO another.
I took a cheap tele & routed a hole for a middle p.u. (ala strat).
In went the hex with ONLY the 5 & 6 string coils connected.
In the guitar, an octaver was installed, and wired to the "two-string" hex. Thus was born the "Octo-Blaster".
So I walk bass lines w/ my thumb while comping chords w/r.h. fingers. Or at least I did until it stopped working. I'd like to start from scratch to correct my design errors on the first but I need another hex to do it.
I went to the afore-mentioned french site. no luck.
Also bartolini. couldn't find one.
Even though I once had a handle on conversational japanese, I won't even try that. The one I do have was made by Red Rhodes and given to me by a student that once worked for him.
Are there ANY other possibilities other than having it custom made? Any help is appriciated. I'm not trying to hijack this thread but it was the only one I found on several forums that touched upon the subject. Oh, and this is my first post here, thanks ya'll!
JM

[Possum]

yes but then you would have a hi-fi pickup, hi-fi pickups don't sell, they are just too clean and perfect sounding, kind of like a CBS era amp, perfection in pickups is not always good...

[David Schwab]

yes but then you would have a hi-fi pickup, hi-fi pickups don't sell, they are just too clean and perfect sounding, kind of like a CBS era amp, perfection in pickups is not always good...

Unless they are bass pickups... :)

[David Schwab]

In went the hex with ONLY the 5 & 6 string coils connected....Are there ANY other possibilities other than having it custom made?

If you don't need the two strings separate, try half of a P Bass pickup, like Charlie Hunter does.

There used to be a web site showing how to make a single string pickup from a Radio Shack solenoid coil.. you pull the actuator out and replace it with a brad.

I couldn't find that page, but here's another one with similar ideas.

instructables : cheap and easy guitar pickups (http://www.instructables.com/id/EYK700A0WGEP286VAF/?ALLSTEPS)

It looks like Bart doesn't make hex pickups anymore.

[Odd I/O]

If you don't need the two strings separate, try half of a P Bass pickup, like Charlie Hunter does.

There used to be a web site showing how to make a single string pickup from a Radio Shack solenoid coil.. you pull the actuator out and replace it with a brad.

I couldn't find that page, but here's another one with similar ideas.

instructables : cheap and easy guitar pickups (http://www.instructables.com/id/EYK700A0WGEP286VAF/?ALLSTEPS)

It looks like Bart doesn't make hex pickups anymore.

You just planted an interesting seed of an idea in my head: Get three P Bass pups and split them; mount them on the guitar 90 degrees off-axis (or linear with each string, to say it another way) ... one half pup for each string; each string gets two poles Voila!!!
I don't know how it would sound, but might be worth experimenting with for a home-brew hex pup array.

[David Schwab]

You just planted an interesting seed of an idea in my head: Get three P Bass pups and split them; mount them on the guitar 90 degrees off-axis (or linear with each string, to say it another way) ... one half pup for each string; each string gets two poles Voila!!!
I don't know how it would sound, but might be worth experimenting with for a home-brew hex pup array.

I had a Vox guitar like this... it had three split pickups, each pickup covered three strings, and it was stereo, so the three bottom strings would be in the left and the three top strings in the right. (actually it was a 12 string).

You could reverse each pickup's stereo output. An interesting sound was one pickup "normal" and the other reversed, so the treble pickup placed the three low strings on the left, while the bass pickup placed them on the right.

Some people use half a P bass unit for mandolin pickups.

[Aka Nameless]

I didn't read all of the replys, but couldn't you do this type of thing with a normal style single coil bobbin, but wrapping a seperate coil around each magnet, then adding 2 brass eyelets for each of the coils/leads? Would be a pain in the ass to accomplish the winding task, and may get a little confusing with 12 different leads coming from 1 pickup, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Would just be a near impossible task to wind a coil around each magnet unless you do it by hand.

I guess you could put a tiny cap on each end of the magnet pole, that covers 1/16" of the end, then wrap the magnet with wire, then remove the caps and install it in the bobbin, then solder to the eyelets.

[David Schwab]

I didn't read all of the replys, but couldn't you do this type of thing with a normal style single coil bobbin, but wrapping a seperate coil around each magnet...

You couldn't wind it easily.. how to get between the magnets?

You could just take a single coil pickup, make sure the magnets are securely glued in, or use one of those plastic bobbins, and cut it into six units. Wind each one, and then assemble it in a cover.

[Corvus]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I'm extremely interested in getting a bunch of single-string magnetic pickups made for me.

If anyone has any further info or knows anyone making these I'd really appreciate it. :)

[Possum]

Velvet Hammer , Red Rhoades also made a six coil pickup, but not active preamps, just passive back in the late 70's early 80's, I believe Brosnac's book has a photo of it. I've never seen one and never seen one on Ebay either, pretty rare.

[David Schwab]

Clint Searcy makes single string bass pickups.

http://www.searcystringworks.com/

[Corvus]

Thanks for that David. I've actually got an order in with Clint already, but I'm also looking for much smaller ones that could accommodate guitar string spacings as small as 9mm.

If anyone hears of, or makes, such a thing please let me know.

[David Schwab]

Thanks for that David. I've actually got an order in with Clint already, but I'm also looking for much smaller ones that could accommodate guitar string spacings as small as 9mm.

If anyone hears of, or makes, such a thing please let me know.

I can do these... I have access to a 3D printer, so can make any bobbins I need, and my partner has been wanting me to make some hex pickups for him, so we decided it would be a cool pickup to offer.

He has six ProCo Rats that he wants to run the pickups into... :D

Send me a PM

[Corvus]

I've sent you a PM :)


Six Rats would be really something!!!

I'm looking for single string pickups for my 7-string prototype. I want to have multi-channel outputs going into a laptop digital audio interface so I can run amp simulation, effects, panning, etc. on each string.

[David King]

I read somewhere, (perhaps earlier in this thread?) that some singer bobbins have a 3/16" id and are very cheap in largish packs at walmart. It might be worth a trip just to see what's out there in the sewing dept.

[David Schwab]

Six Rats would be really something!!!

I had an ARP Avatar (guitar synth) once, and it had a hex fuzz. It's very cool because you don't get the intermodulation when you play two notes at once. And even though it was a very fizzy fuzz, it got a nice clean type of tone because of that.

It would sound really good with a better sounding distortion circuit, like a Rat.

[Corvus]

Yeah the increased clarity of chords and the ability to get spacial/panning effects are big reasons I'm after multi-channel output. And just being able to tweak the tone of each string is a great feature.

[gabgar]

Corvus check this out.

http://www.graphtech.com/products.html?ProductID=41&CurrencyID=2

I have an email to GraphTech about how to get output from each single pickup.
They have 2 types of preamps, but not for what I'm looking for.

Does anyone on this forum do custom preamps for pickups?
Excuse the wrong wording, I'm not an electronic engineer.

[David Schwab]

Does anyone on this forum do custom preamps for pickups?

(sticking my hand up) :D

[gabgar]

Hey, David
I sent you an email as well as a PM.

I also read your response on my first PM.

[Corvus]

Have you seen these gabgar?

http://www.emginc.com/displayproducts.asp?section=OEM&categoryid=5&catalogid=26

they have multi-channel outs

[gabgar]

Corvus,

I just read this on there page
>EMG's OEM products are not available for retail customers.

So I can't get that.

But that's exactly what I need.

[dpm]

The problem with piezos in my view is they just don't have the same characteristics as magnetic pickups. The Line 6 Variax is a good example, no matter what degree of filtering is applied it still has that piezo sound, and palm mutes just don't work. I feel that particular instrument would work better with magnetic pickups.

[gabgar]

dpm

From what I've seen, that's pretty much custom work to do that.
I have no issue with that, it's just that I'd like to have something now for what I'm trying to use it for.

btw - check out the intro video for GraphTechs piezo saddle pickups
http://www.graphtech.bc.ca/ghost_downloads.php
That sounded really good for the little he played.

Corvus, it appears that you can order that EMG - 6CH mixer, thru an Authorized Dealer.

I'm going to a dealer in Sherman Oaks after work to order it, along with the GraphTech piezo saddle pickups

[Corvus]

The problem with piezos in my view is they just don't have the same characteristics as magnetic pickups. The Line 6 Variax is a good example, no matter what degree of filtering is applied it still has that piezo sound, and palm mutes just don't work. I feel that particular instrument would work better with magnetic pickups.

That's what I've suspected about the Variax though I haven't had a chance to try one yet. I like to have piezo sounds as an option but magnetics are more important to me.

How's the new 8-string pickup design coming along Dan?

[dpm]

Just put the PCB order in this afternoon so the parts should be ready a week from now. I'm actually a bit nervous about it because I've never done PCB design before.

Was about to say that I'd hit a wall with the single string assembly, but I might have just had a brilliant idea. Or a crap idea. Not sure yet, I'll look into it.

[Corvus]

Heehee I'll bet it's brilliant, or you'll find a way to make it brilliant.

If you haven't already done this, you should post pics here of your pickups with the gorgeous wood & carbon fibre work like you did on ss.org. Best looking pickups I've ever seen!

[Mark Hammer]

I have this unit made by Guild in what I believe is the late 1960's called a "Tri-Oct". It is the missing link between early stompboxes and guitar synths. It is essentially a hexaphonic octave divider and fuzz that came with its own proprietary divided pickup, encased in epoxy. I'll have to post pictures of it some day. The pickup is butt-ugly and looks basically like a homebrew piece of cast epoxy about the footprint of a P-90. It was intended to be retrofit on the top of the instrument. Unfortunately, as Jason has pointed out, effective use of a hex pickup requires that the pickup be situated at the point of least lateral string travel - near the bridge - in order to prevent bleedthrough from adjacent strings. In the case of simply feeding strings to a separate channel for greater spaciousness, this is less of a problem. In the case of octave dividers, this is the kiss of death. Probably one of the reasons why very few were made or sold.

A wise person pointed out to me that at the time of its production, probably a lot more players were disposed to using heavier gauge flat-wound strings, which probably would have posed less challenge to the octave-detection circuitry within an environment where the divided pickup may have been sitting squarely between a neck and bridge pickup, taped to the surface of the body.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the requirements for simple spacial distribution are considerably less stringent than if one's intent is to impose differential or unique processing to each string. That latter context absolutely demands either something like a Roland GK pickup, or alternatively the piezo Strat saddles you can get from Stew-Mac and similar places.

[David Schwab]

Hey Mark, I remember that thing! Does your still work?

I bet that's worth something now... I'm shocked at how much some old effects go for. I just saw a 1972 Maestro Bass Brassmaster on eBay that ended up selling for $885! I used to have one of those too. I'd still have it if my bone head keyboard player at the time didn't break it on me... on purpose. He didn't admit to it, but I know it was him. He hated the thing.

I used to have a Guild Foxy Lady too... a rebranded EH Big Muff.

[Mark Hammer]

Mine works fine, to the extent that these things ever "worked". It has been promised at a set price to "The EH Man" to add to his collection. I like to honour my promises. I'm just waiting for the Canadian dollar to drop again so I can make a couple of bucks in the transaction. While I'm waiting for that blessed day, I should probably cobble together a guitar without a bridge pickup so I can ram that little sucker snugly up against the bridge and hear it under optimal conditions.

Just glad I didn't leave it out where our rabbit could get at it. We have a pet rabbit who has the free run of the house. Normally he is extremely well-behaved, but a month ago I left my GK-to-MIDI-brain cable hanging off the side of my gear and he chewed the thing beyond repair. Happily, I have the schematic, but finding a comparable hunk of multi-conductor cable is gonna be as much of a bear as resoldering all those pins.:(

[David Schwab]

I used to have a rabbit, so I know what you mean....

[jrfrond]

Having worked extensively on all forms of digital modeling ad nauseum here in the shop, just take this as food for thought:

Much of the issue with distortion patches on modeling amps and effects (no names please!) is that polyphonic information is fed to a single processor, which then converts it to serial information, does it's processing thing, and reassembles it, all with improper harmonic phasing. This is why modeled distortion sounds like ass, even on perfect 4ths and 5ths.

If you could rig a hexaphonic pickup to feed six SEPARATE, identical modeling boxes, with all of the processors driven off the same clock in sync, modeling would probably sound pretty good, since you would have cleaner time arrival of harmonics. In theory anyway.

This is one practical use of a hex guitar pickup that I could think of.

Didn't Bartolini do a quad-out bass pickup a long time ago?

Call me an old warhorse, but I like my passive pickups with either single or double coils AND all of their inherent faults. Then again, I don't dig all of the Phtoshop work in Playboy either! :D :rolleyes:

[David Schwab]

This is why modeled distortion sounds like ass, even on perfect 4ths and 5ths.

Some of it sounds very good. Like this: Digital amp model (http://www.sgd-lutherie.com/media/nunkachukahumbucker.mp3)

The parts that don't work well is the slightly distorted crunch tones. Digital does good clean and very distorted, but in between is a problem.

The problem with amp modeling is with the modeling. It's getting better al the time tough. They just need to tweak it more.

Also all the presets that come with Pods and such suck, just as the factory sounds on synths also suck. You have to go in and teak them.

I will say though that my clip is not a Pod... I really don't care for them.

If you could rig a hexaphonic pickup to feed six SEPARATE, identical modeling boxes, with all of the processors driven off the same clock in sync, modeling would probably sound pretty good, since you would have cleaner time arrival of harmonics. In theory anyway.

I talked abut hexaphonic fuzz earlier in the thread. It wont sound like an amp, because you don't use an amp for each string. It has a very clean tone lacking intermodulation distortions, which are quite prevalent in real amps.

It's a cool sound though, and even very fuzzy/fizzy distortions sound good.

Didn't Bartolini do a quad-out bass pickup a long time ago?

All his original designs had one coil per string. This was for tonal reasons, but also allowed multiple outputs. I don't think he's made any hex or quad pickups in a long time.

Then again, I don't dig all of the Phtoshop work in Playboy either! :D :rolleyes:

You have No idea! It's not just Playboy.. it's EVERY photo of a person you see in print. I did some freelance photo retouching work for Bloomindale's last holiday season. We aren't talking about removing blemishes and things, we are talking about making fingers longer, ears smaller, noses straighter, moving eyes, and general thinning of legs and arms, and removing every wrinkle in clothing.

I have some examples on my personal website (http://www.david-schwab.com/pages/art.html).

[jrfrond]

Nice website Dave.

My wife is a professional photographer, and I use Photoshop a lot as well, so I am painfully aware of it's overuse. You can't believe anything you see in a pic anymore! Still and all, one of the coolest programs ever.

Like I said (I think): digital modeling is like Photoshop to me. More like a good lithograph, actually. It all looks good until you get up close, and then you can see all of the pixels. The same analogy applies to modeling.

My "theory" posted above is not too far from the mark. Several years ago, when Tech 21 was still in NYC, I went to go visit my friend Andrew Barta, the company CEO and engineer. We sat in his lab with a Pod and a SansAmp, armed with test equipment (scope, distortion analyzer, FFT) and figured out why the analog SansAmp sounds pretty good, and the Pod did not. We were able to see the out-of-phase harmonic arrival. Harmonics need to have a phase relationship with the original signal, in addition to their mathematical relationship. Screw up the phase, add some distortion, and you've got some ratty sh*t on your hands!

[David Schwab]

Thanks. I need to update the site, but I never get around to it. I've been in graphics and lithography since 1980, but I'm ready to move on.

The Sansamp is just some overdriven op amps and a simple filter for speaker emulation. Sounds fine, but it doesn't sound like an amp. A Rat sounds good too, but also doesn't sound like an amp. I like the Rat better. The Sansamp was always too mushy sounding for my tastes. I agree about phase angles and such though. Cheap A/D converters can make a mess of things.

I'm not crazy about the Pod. It sounds plastic. I have heard some real nice amp sims though.. especially in software. Digidesign has a new one called Eleven. They say they spent a few years looking at why amp and speakers sound like they do, and pointed out how the other amp sims just imitate a generic tube preamp stage. They went though every stage and modeled it. The speakers too. The clips I've heard sound really really good.

I just think they haven't figured out all the little details yet.

The clip I played was of a very overdriven Fender Twin sim that's in my Roland VM-3100Pro digital mixer. You can really tweak the various attributes of the amps they have in there. They don't tell you a lot of what the various amp types are for a given patch, but there's a lot of cool tones in there. You can even change the mic type and angle.

When used in a recording, I sure can't hear the difference between that and a real amp mic'd up.

Here's a clip I just recorded testing out a prototype of new neck pickup design I made today. Sounds like a single coil, huh? But where's that awful hum... ;) Also a Twin patch.

single coil neck test (http://www.sgd-lutherie.com/media/new_neck_SC_pickup.mp3)

[Corvus]

Gibson has a hexaphonic design: http://www.gibson.com/DigitalGuitarNew/gibsonDigital.html

And Dave Bunker has a brilliant design for his touch-style guitar/bass instruments: http://www.gibson.com/DigitalGuitarNew/gibsonDigital.html

[Joe Gwinn]

Much of the issue with distortion patches on modeling amps and effects (no names please!) is that polyphonic information is fed to a single processor, which then converts it to serial information, does it's processing thing, and reassembles it, all with improper harmonic phasing. This is why modeled distortion sounds like ass, even on perfect 4ths and 5ths.

If you could rig a hexaphonic pickup to feed six SEPARATE, identical modeling boxes, with all of the processors driven off the same clock in sync, modeling would probably sound pretty good, since you would have cleaner time arrival of harmonics. In theory anyway.Interesting. This would work only if the delay through the six channels was the same, at all frequencies of interest.

More generally, if a single channel system exhibits "linear phase" behavior, then the harmonics will all stay in sync.

Linear phase? What this means is that the phase (in degrees or radians) varies linearly with frequency, which means that the end-to-end delay in seconds is the same at all frequencies of interest. This is easily arranged, but linear-phase filters do not have sharp cutoff frequencies.

[jrfrond]

I know that the digital modeling topic is a tad OT here, but I that one of the problems with digital modeling has nothing to do with the sound or design at all. It's the nomenclature applied to the patches. You call up the ubiquitous Blackface, Plexi and British patches (Fender, Marshall and AC-30 respectively), and if you know these amps at all, you find that they just bear a vague sonic resemblance to them. I say let the consumer name their own patches, because most of them don't sound like what they are supposed to be. In most cases, they are overexaggerated.

[David Schwab]

I know that the digital modeling topic is a tad OT here, but I that one of the problems with digital modeling has nothing to do with the sound or design at all. It's the nomenclature applied to the patches. You call up the ubiquitous Blackface, Plexi and British patches (Fender, Marshall and AC-30 respectively), and if you know these amps at all, you find that they just bear a vague sonic resemblance to them. I say let the consumer name their own patches, because most of them don't sound like what they are supposed to be. In most cases, they are overexaggerated.

Yeah, that's what I was saying about the modeling used... the concept is good, but often the models aren't. It's quite possible that units like the Pod just don't have the resolution and/or necessary models to accurately pull off these patches.

Another thing to consider is do you really need an exact copy of an amp? Same is true of pickups. I think as long as you can wrangle quality usable tones out of a rig, that's what counts. Maybe you can't cop the tone of your favorite artist's recordings, but you shouldn't really do that anyway. Just find unique tones that work for you. What's making a lot of music so damn boring is the same handful of guitar sounds are being used ad nasium.

That said, check out the Digidesign Eleven. They have a video on the creating of the plugin, and in the background they have a sound track of various "sound-alike" songs featuring various famous tones... they are pretty damn exact. I guess the more resources at your disposal, the better the models that can be done.

They talked about how they got a collection of real vintage amps and studied the speakers and output transformers (down to the model numbers) to get everything right. They also claim to have the best speaker cabinet emulator.

After I get a new Mac I plan on getting this plugin for my ProTool setup. :D

That brings up another point... with the digital modelers, you have a small amount of latency. The faster the CPU and I/O, the lower the latency, but this latency would certainly translate into some kind of time domain/phase shifts I'm sure.

[David King]

That brings up another point... with the digital modelers, you have a small amount of latency. The faster the CPU and I/O, the lower the latency, but this latency would certainly translate into some kind of time domain/phase shifts I'm sure.

I thought latency was a matter of needing to wait for 1/2 wavelength to determine frequency. I guess it depends on what you want the dsp to do next.

[jrfrond]

Half of the digital modeling thing is marketing. "Use this and you'll sound like _________". It's all such a load of crap! Even if you possessed there actual Tele and Supro amp that Page used on the first two Zep albums, you wouldn't sound like him. Different fingers, different brain, etc. However, year after year at NAMM, this is the crux of marketing, making players (and non-players) believe this will make them sound like that.

A couple of years ago, my brother was given a Digitech Jimi Hendrix pedal at NAMM. Having both worked in Electric Lady Studios here in NYC in the 70's, we are well-versed on the Hendrix sound. When we got back to his place that night, we plugged it in, using a Strat and 4 x 10 Bassman RI. We ran through all of the patches. Needless to say, it sounded nothing like REAL Hendrix tone. More like a caricature thereof. I can get a more realistic Hendrix sound using my Boss pedals! Yet, the "sound like Hendrix" vibe was all over the packaging and promo material. THIS is how "stuff" is sold year after year, ad nauseum, in the music business. The whole "Signature" and quasi-signature form of promotion (and patch programming) really makes me want to vomit! :mad:

[Mark Hammer]

I think the problem with many models of amps, cabs, pickups, guitars, etc., is that the target of the model is not the component over the entire range of its use but rather how it sounds when it distorts.

Maybe I'm making too much of it, but I have one of these Zoom Amp Modellers ( http://www.amptone.com/zoomgm200.htm). The amps are largely indistinguishable from each other until you crank the gain, at which point they distort in qualitatively different ways. Of course, that's only one aspect of the limitations. The other is akin to advertising one colour TV on a different one: How would you know what the advertised one looks like if you're seeing it through the picture tube of the watched one? I play my GM-200 (on those few occasions when I do) through my little tweed Princeton. No matter how good the model is, do I have any right to expect it to sound like a Vox or Marshall through that amp and 8" speaker? In a sense you want any amp and speaker used for such a purpose to be ruler flat and clean so that you ONLY hear the model. But what self-respecting guitar player owns one?

[David Schwab]

I thought latency was a matter of needing to wait for 1/2 wavelength to determine frequency. I guess it depends on what you want the dsp to do next.

I think you need one whole cycle, then you have to wait for the whole process to finish, and then wait for the signal to go to the D/A converter. The software is modifying the signal in real time, it's not like playing though analog filters and stuff.

When I'm recording in something like Cubase or ProTools, I get at the minimum about 12 ms latency, and sometimes as much as 24 ms if I'm monitoring though software plugins (12 in and 12 out). Since my Mac is about 7 years old, I sometimes have to increase the latency in order for things to play back smoothly, but by that point I'm not dealing with live signals mixed with the digital playback. A faster system could get maybe 8 ms minimum. But there's always a delay.

I was playing in a band with a guy that ran his guitar to a PowerBook running GuitarRig software. You could feel the delay when you played, but it was hard to hear it.

[jrfrond]

It seems like any standalone, processor power-hungry, affordable musical device has latency issues. When Muse Research came out with the Receptor, an application-specific computer to play synth plug-ins, I tested one out to see if it would work as the core of a super electronic drum rig (I am a pro drummer by trade). The latency issues were just too bad to deal with. I could easily feel the delay between the pad hit and note trigger. Very disconcerting. From a player's standpoint, latency is a huge issue.

[David Schwab]

I think the problem with many models of amps, cabs, pickups, guitars, etc., is that the target of the model is not the component over the entire range of its use but rather how it sounds when it distorts.

That's true for the most part.

No matter how good the model is, do I have any right to expect it to sound like a Vox or Marshall through that amp and 8" speaker? In a sense you want any amp and speaker used for such a purpose to be ruler flat and clean so that you ONLY hear the model. But what self-respecting guitar player owns one?

Well you'd have a Vox or Marshall though an 8" speaker as it sounds mic'ed and recorded. Not as it sounds in the room with you.

On my Roland mixer, for any given amp model (there's JC-120, ClnTwin, MatchLd, JMP-Stk, and 5150Ld) there's 12 amp types (clean, dirty, bright, dark, variations of those), usually three gain settings, you usual bass/mid/treble control as well as a bright switch and presence, 12 cabinet types, and often controls for the mic. What these various settings are, they don't say (and the manual is awful and confusing), but you can really get a good vibe of various speaker types and whatnot based on tones you have heard before. Some of the cabs are thin and nasal, some have a big 4X12 thump, some are clean and wide range, etc.

I had no idea this mixer had amp sims when I bought it, but I knew is had effects. It also models microphone types (SM-57, etc.) and even studio monitors, as long as you are using particular Roland mics and monitors. I've never used those.

I have a couple of amp sim plugins. One is the Ampeg SVX plugin, that can model various Ampeg bass amps. I've stated before how much I don't like Ampeg amps, but the B-15 models are OK for getting an amped tone in a mix. It really sounds like Ampeg amps. I have another plug that does a bunch of guitar amp models. In both of these you can mix cabs with heads and so on.

Digidesign talked a lot about how they specifically studied various speakers and cabs, like Vox, Marshall, etc, and even simulate the speaker breakup when you push them hard. They showed a room full of heads and cabs all wired up and stuff. Avid is a big company, so I guess they could afford to get all the amps they wanted to model.

I doubt if you A/B'd a sim to a real amp that they'd sound exactly the same, but Dave Navarro did a live demo and was saying he couldn't tell on playback when he recorded with the plugin and a real amp. The demo did sound really good. So it's getting there...

I've played a Line-6 Variaxe a few times, and the electric guitar models never convinced me, but the acoustic guitars are pretty damn good, as far as sounding like an undersaddle transducer anyway, or maybe mic'ed. It's quite odd playing a solid body and hearing a sitar or acoustic 12-string.

[jrfrond]

Dave, I work on a lot of Variax', and the acoustic versions are really just effects processing of the mono transducer signal. There's Reverb, Compression, and Mic/Body balance, plus an on-board tuner.

The electric versions use individual piezo saddles and each string is separately modeled, but no matter how hard you try not to listen, it ALWAYS sounds like a piezo, but with characteristics from the various guitars applied to it. I've play modeled guitars through modeling amps and just wanted to throw up!

Personally, I don't get what players are hearing, really. It's almost as if mediocrity and "good enough" have set the bar for an entire new generation of musicians. I for one am proud to be old-school. Working in the technical end of this business, I would be the FIRST one to trumpet the benefits of a new product, IF it did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do, but when it comes to the modeling thing, I'm still waiting.

I should hang so long! :eek: :rolleyes:

[David Schwab]

Dave, I work on a lot of Variax', and the acoustic versions are really just effects processing of the mono transducer signal. There's Reverb, Compression, and Mic/Body balance, plus an on-board tuner.

No, they are using a convolution processor, and the models are based on impulse response samples.

You can't get a 12-string guitar, sitar, or dobro using effects.

This is the same modeling technology used on all the amp, instrument, and even reverb plugins.

All those DigiTech signature effects pedals work this way. They took samples of the guitar tones from recordings, stored them in a DSP system, and are convolved with the incoming audio signal to be processed.

There's a few products out for acoustic guitars that use this technology, such as the D-Tar Mama Bear, and the Fishman Aura Acoustic Imaging Technology.

They recorded different guitars with different mics, did impulse response samples, and then convolve the live guitar's tone to match the recordings.

The problem with these systems is that they need to neutralize the tone of the original piezo signal. Usually a series of filters are used to do this.

It's all about taking one signal and making it look like another.

[ubertar]

Hi, I just made some of these kind of pickups-- one output per string, and was searching around the net to see what else has been done with these, and found this thread.

I just made a few of these recently, and I'm offering them for sale. Here's a couple pics of two of them, a black one and a white one:
http://www.ubertar.com/creot/pickups.jpg
http://www.ubertar.com/creot/pickups2.jpg

And here's a demo clip with every other string panned opposite:
http://www.ubertar.com/creot/stereo.MP3
One side was recorded direct, and the other through an amp and miked. There are no effects, compression, eq, etc. whatsoever.
The output on these is on the low side, but not unacceptably so... the signal to noise is very good, which makes up for that.

These are electromagnetic, not piezo-electric, so there's no bleed between strings. Each coil is height-adjustable.

They're $110 each. If you want more than one, I'll cut you a break. I also have an auction on ebay (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=300241279668&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=020), starting for less.

I don't know if I'll be back here to check this thread, so if you want to contact me, please email. My email is listed on my website, www.ubertar.com.

Thanks.

[Corvus]

I'm impressed with the separation of the strings. Any chance of getting the individual pickup modules without the single-coil style housing? I need 7 of them for a 7-string guitar design.

[ubertar]

I'm impressed with the separation of the strings. Any chance of getting the individual pickup modules without the single-coil style housing? I need 7 of them for a 7-string guitar design.


Sure, no problem. Same price, too. Email me at paul... at... ubertar... dot... com