Every clod has a silver lining

[salvarsan]

Excuse me guys, but hasn't the silver wire pickup thing already been done by Seymour Duncan? Yes indeed, here it is:

Zephyr Humbucker ? neck | Seymour Duncan

$479.00 street for one pickup.

If you look at the date on the original gedanken experiment and follow up with Frank Falbo's announcement of the work-in-progress, you see that the first silver-clod post and SD Zephyr R&D started roughly around the same time. This thread was the first public exploration of the silver magnet wire concept. As you must have realized by now, we discuss a lot of dumb shit around here.

I'm kinda annoyed my price estimates overshoot the PAF price by factor of 2. That, and SD delivered a flagship product.

[Jason Rodgers]

Excuse me guys, but hasn't the silver wire pickup thing already been done by Seymour Duncan? Yes indeed, here it is:

Zephyr Humbucker ? neck | Seymour Duncan

$479.00 street for one pickup.

They should throw in the silver Litz interconnect wire, paper-in-oil tone caps, and custom taper unobtainium pots for that as well .....

Woa, stainless/nickel slugs, glass fiberfill nylon bobbins, AND cryogenic treatment?! They pulled out all the stops!

[charrich56]

After reading Rick Turner's posts (or was it an article? ) from couple years back on his making a Litz wire medium Z pickup, I'm still kind of intrigued and actually have some 8/46 solderable Litz on hand to try to recreate the experiment one of these days. But that's copper Litz. Silver Litz with Teflon insulation ..... oh, hold me back .... the tone angels will come and grant God-like tone to my intermediate-level playing .... but... I need the same amp St. Peter used.... 8-)

[charrich56]

This is not to say, that I am pooh-pooh'ing the idea of the Zephyr pickup. Obviously a lot of R&D, on construction and magnet circuit materials, have gone into those pickups and they may sound very good indeed. However, the elephant in the room that must be dealt with is: confirmation bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

[Richard]

If I paid 6 times the normal price for a pickup it would sound incredible.

[charrich56]

And.... if they didn't ..... then, the awful thought .... "I just wasted my money." So, one way or another, due to confirmation bias, they would sound incredible to you.

[Richard]

But after I tell people how much I paid, they'd think it sounds better, too.

[John Kolbeck]

The current pro-audio culture seems to want to embrace the mojo, and that includes the use of gold and silver for dubious benefits. It's like everyone knows a casino are ripping them off... but the bright, flashing lights and cheap alcohol, people want to indulge in the illusion.

[charrich56]

Especially under heavy distortion. Yeah, distortion is where the esoteric subtleties of high-end pickups are most obvious. 8-) 8-)

[J M Fahey]

But more likely they are iron meteorites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_meteorite). The pole pieces made from this material should be just as good as any others made from a similar iron-nickel alloy. But much more mojo, of course.

Of course, it is an unusual heat treatment. You gotta machine with great care.

Considering outer space temperature is near Absolute Zero (some 270C below freezing) , meteorite iron IS cryogenically treated by definition.

And not for puny minutes or hours, a meteorite may have been drifting in Space for hundreds of millions of years.

That aside, I can hardly imagine Keith Richards even being aware, let alone worrying, about iron composition in his pickups.

[Jason Rodgers]

… I can hardly imagine Keith Richards even being aware, let alone worrying, about iron composition in his pickups.

I don't think so, either, but they did sound pretty good.

[Mike Sulzer]

Considering outer space temperature is near Absolute Zero (some 270C below freezing) , meteorite iron IS cryogenically treated by definition.

And not for puny minutes or hours, a meteorite may have been drifting in Space for hundreds of millions of years.

That aside, I can hardly imagine Keith Richards even being aware, let alone worrying, about iron composition in his pickups.

But the heat treatment comes last.

[J M Fahey]

Thatīs the point
I was making fun at theMojo and implied Technology, which isnīt there once you actually use the tubes.

Whatever you do to metal parts, if they heat up *significantly* afterwards, crystal structure and composition becomes completely different to what was originally achieved with heat treatment ... includig Cryogenics.

And tubes are the absolutely worst parts for Cryogenic treatment, since they are regularly used near (and sometimes beyond ) maximum dissipation, which in practice means "as hot as they can get without actually melting" .

To boot, after heating to near red, they cool slowly (compared to quenching in some liquid or even air quenching) ; and even worse, they are surrounded by vacuum which guarantees, being the perfect insulator, that cooling will be as slow as possible.

Both factors add up to the perfect definition of "revenido" .
Cheesy Google Translate calls it "tempered" which it is not, definitely, I guess in English itīs "normalized" , please check it.

ITīs the process by which you undo some of tempering effects, losing some hardness but making the part less brittle.

Oh well, the power of Mojo and Fake Science

EDIT: when I saw your

But the heat treatment comes last.

answer I though this was the "Telefunken" (by JJ ) thread, about which we were talking yesterday night ... which brag about being "cryogenically treated", nowon saving I see itīs about meteorite iron.

Not a big difference anyway, pickup parts are not used red hot but they are not made by chipping some meteorite to get usable parts either, they must include some process (forging / casting / grinding / etc.) which will significantly heat them up,one way or another.

That if they are *actually* made out of meteorite iron, that is.

Are meteorites available in the open market so thei can be used as raw materials to manufacture stuff out of them?

Not so sure about that ... maybe samples are available as Science Lab exhibits but not much more.

In any case, the claim about "meteorite iron pickups" stinks.

[rjb]

To boot, after heating to near red, they cool slowly (compared to quenching in some liquid or even air quenching) ; and even worse, they are surrounded by vacuum which guarantees, being the perfect insulator, that cooling will be as slow as possible.

Both factors add up to the perfect definition of "revenido" .
Cheesy Google Translate calls it "tempered" which it is not, definitely, I guess in English itīs "normalized" , please check it.

ITīs the process by which you undo some of tempering effects, losing some hardness but making the part less brittle.

Annealing?

[ken]

Normalizing is removing all stresses from a material used at room temperature by repeated heating and cooling cycles.
Annealing is heating a material normally too hard to work so you can machine it.

Don't ask me how I know...

ken