Italian Made Gaglio Pickups And The Fantasma System

[spud1950]

I happened upon this site.These pickups do look interesting.Can someone decipher what this Fantasma system is and explain it in layman's terms? I think I understand what he's supposed to have achieved,but I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand how his design supposedly achieves it.

http://www.gagliopickups.com/index.html

[SteikBacon]

Seems like he put on two wires simultaneously when he wind. I remember someone on this forum mentioned this..

Searched and found this:
http://music-electronics-forum.com/s...simultaneously

[Possum]

....

Look up the patent 6,476,309B2 We've discussed this patent before. Its a cool trick, I've not tried it, I guess it produces a hi-fi type of tone, someday I'll probably try it, but hi-fi type pickups aren't good sellers. Pretty much a one trick pony, unfortunately none of his sound samples links work, maybe its a dead site....

[Possum]

...

I think this may be a dead site, the contact link doesn't go anywhere, there's only one dealer in Canada, much of the site is nonfunctional. There was another Italian pickup maker, Red Push that was doing the same idea, he has also disappeared.

[salvarsan]

The english end of the site is
http://www.gagliopickups.com/index_i...tasma_eng.html

My understanding of the US patent 6,476,309B2 is that you can
modify the tone more strongly by attaching a pot to the parallel windings.


It looks like an otherwise ordinary wind, so I imagine it sounds
like yet another flavor of single coil.

-drh

[J S Moore]

Except for not being red, they look exactly like Red Push pickups.

[Dave Kerr]

I found a place that sells bifilar wire (forget where, it was a while ago)
and got a quote - it's by the foot, not the pound. Either wait until you hit the lottery, or figure out how to lay down the wire perfectly side by side.

[Possum]

...

I don't think you have to be perfect in laying down the wire. Just adjust your wire guide so it can handle two wires at once. I think the tones though are something that doesn't sell since both of these companies seem to not exist, but maybe there is something that could be improved on the idea, maybe they would make good bass pickups....try it....

[David King]

Yeah, I was thinking bass pickups too. Bifilar wire sounds like a nightmare to wind with. Couldn't you just wind off of two spools simultaneously? I have red and green spools of 43 single poly spn so I could watch them go down. It might be cool to wind one 42 and a 43 or 44 next to it. Actually I don't know why one would do that since I don't know what we are talking about. What does one do with the two windings? Are they in series or parallel?

Did I mention I'm too lazy to look at the links...

[David King]

SO he's NOT connecting the ends but because the two wires are side by side their whole length they are capacitively coupled. That's interesting. I wonder what the capacitance of a whole coil is? It must be reasonably high or you would filter out all your low frequencies no?
I didn't know enough electronics to understand how the filter part works but I guess that adding a pot to the un-connected far end of the two coils allows you make an LCR bandbass filter with a 6dB slope?

[David King]

A search for "red push pickups" reveals that Gaglio and Red push are one and the same...
http://pickup.altervista.org/index_file/page0004.htm

Here's the link to the 2002 Patent:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=JP8...um=4&ct=result

After looking over the patent, he must be winding more turns of finer wire than a typical pickup.

[SteikBacon]

This is something I actually had planned to try out. IŽve been asked if I couldnŽt make tele pups with icepick and a heavier/bluesier sound. Think I make a good sounding ice tele and then find out how much more wire I need to make the other sound kinda balanced. How this last coil should be wired is where IŽll need to experiment. Anyone tried this??

[David Schwab]

This is something I actually had planned to try out. IŽve been asked if I couldnŽt make tele pups with icepick and a heavier/bluesier sound. Think I make a good sounding ice tele and then find out how much more wire I need to make the other sound kinda balanced. How this last coil should be wired is where IŽll need to experiment. Anyone tried this??

That sounds like you just want to make a tapped coil, like the old Schecter pickups.

These Gaglio pickups have two tandem wound coils that are not connected together... the hot is one end of one coil and the ground is the opposite end of the other coil. One version has a pot connecting the two open ends.

[Mike Sulzer]

David, let's look at some limiting cases. (Connecting as in this link:http://www.gagliopickups.com/index_i...tasma_eng.html). With no pot in the circuit : the capacitance couples each turn to the corresponding turn of the other coil (and to other turns in the normal way, approximately). At very high frequencies, the impedance of a capacitor is zero, and so we can think of the two windings as merging into a single winding that would behave pretty much like a normal single winding. At lower frequencies we have a finite impedance coupling the two windings. This is sort of like putting a capacitor in series with the output lead of a normal pickup. It cuts bass.

Now connect up the pot and set it to zero. At very low frequencies this acts like the two windings are in series, that is, like a single winding of twice as many turns. At higher frequencies the two windings couple and you get some reduction in output. Intermediate settings on the pot are hard to think about.

I do not see the claimed mechanism by which the high frequencies are boosted. This appears to be a way of filtering out lows, with the pot somehow selecting how much are filtered out. (Joe Gwinn, do you see how this might work?)

SO he's NOT connecting the ends but because the two wires are side by side their whole length they are capacitively coupled. That's interesting. I wonder what the capacitance of a whole coil is? It must be reasonably high or you would filter out all your low frequencies no?
I didn't know enough electronics to understand how the filter part works but I guess that adding a pot to the un-connected far end of the two coils allows you make an LCR bandbass filter with a 6dB slope?

[David King]

Mike,
Thanks, that's starting to make some sense. He implies that one could combine the deepest lows and the brightest highs in the same pickup, I don't quite see how that's happening unless the capacitance is over say .1mfd so that the bass would couple above 20 Hz. (not sure about actual Hz here)

I'm just curious what happens to PHASE is this scenario? Would adding the pot allow some phase shifting? That could be useful when combining the output with a piezo saddle.

The twin wire winding could be accomplish with one of those stationary-bobbin winders where the two wires would get one twist around each other with each wrap. That should help keep them side by side through out the process but it might take up more room on the coil.