"Namin' the baby"...

[ken]

Hello...

I designed a new pickup, but I'm at a loss for what to call it.

Actually, I'm sorta envious of those of you who seem to just snap cool names out of thin air for your new products. What do you do when you're trying to come up with something new?

Just wonderin',
Ken

[Joe Gwinn]

DemonChild, daughter of AngelTone?

[David King]

Men are always attracted to names featuring a long series of digits with letters Z and X at the beginnings and ends.

Women tend to prefer names that they can associate with something else and remember later.

Good names tend to disarm criticism by stating the opposite. If your product is too heavy and too loud, be sure to call it a "whisperlite" and no one will notice.

The true artists of nomenclature are the pharmaceuticals. It takes them as long to market test a name as it does to develop a new drug. The undoubtedly have a stock of ready names that passed the trademark test and can be assigned at a moment's notice.

[David Schwab]

Names are a real pain. I wanted to avoid confusing model numbers like Bartolini has, but also some of the more cliché stuff you hear with pickups.

Have you ever noticed that reading a guitar catalog sounds more like a warfare catalog? People have "arsenals" and "weapons" and want to cause tonal devastation and kill the audience! That's all very adolescent male, isn't it?

I always thought it would be funny to have loud humbuckers named "clobbertone".

[ken]

I was just saying that for me coming up with names for my products are the most unfun part of creating.

David is right, sometimes guitar catalogs can read more like an arms dealer's wish book than anything else. I guess we're lucky that way, makers don't name their products after the other thing occuping adolescent male's minds - SEX.

Can you just imagine what the pickup names would be like then?

Ken

[David Schwab]

But they do cater to sex in ads. Not as much as in the 70's, but you still see a lot of chics with long nails holding guitars.

Remember the old BC Rich ad with the Bich between a standing model's legs? Someone complained so Bernie Rico posed with the guitar upside down between his legs!

And then of course there were the Dean ads...

[Sweetfinger]

tell us more about the pickup, then we can try naming it. off the cuff- the "Squirmin' German"

[SteikBacon]

Since my name is steikbacon I started playing with names like hambucker, baconbuckers, steikbuckers... (Is steik a english word??? Means steak... roasted meat.)

But then people might assume I´m a fat bastard, just thinking about food.

[ken]

Well, basically it's a singlecoil for a strat with no polepieces showing on the cover, like an EMG. I had some shredder types ask for a hot singlecoil for their Strats, since the lead humbuckers they were using were much louder than their rhythm pickups. It grinds much like a hot humbucker does, but isn't too oversensitive to hum.
Wish I could put a mpeg or photos here, but I don't think I can.

Hey David, remember the Dean Markley ads in the day with the 20 year old green eyed strawberry blonde? How come they NEVER looked like that round here? The Dean ad didn't do too much for me, the lady in the ad looked, well, sorta used.

Ken

[David King]

She sure doesn't look like the typical guitar maker from my neck of the woods. I don't think I'd buy a guitar from her under any circumstance.