Lollar book, time to republish!!!!

[Sweetfinger]

A copy of Jason Lollar's pickup winding book just went for over $230 on ebay. Its time to put that thing back out!

[David Schwab]

A note to Jason... if you have the original files, have you thought about putting the book out as a PDF file?

This would eliminate the cost of printing and binding!

(I work in commercial printing)

[Spence]

Jason's book.

Why not write your own book.

[Mystic]

I'll bet the rights to that book could be bought.

[tuberattler]

He might think it's TMI to be put out to the general public..but I'd love to see one..not that I'll ever make a pickup but I'm curious!!

[orrk01]

Yikes!!

I still have my copy of Jason's book and I refer to it from time to time but at these prices, I might have to consider selling it. As an investment, it's done much better than the S&P 500. That's for sure.

[David King]

I loaned mine to a high school kid for his senior science project along with a 2 lb spool of wire 4 years ago and never saw them again. I never got a chance to crack the book open. Maybe that was my copy on ebay?

[DrStrangelove]

I've got a copy of the 1st and 3rd editions.
Does it make any sense to sell them since
I have no need for them?

-drh
--

[Possum]

probably not.....

I wonder how many of you actually did all the work in that book? Well I did and to be honest I never would have made it out of that book alive without Jason's personal help. I owe him big time for all the emails to my frustrations and money thrown down a hole in trying to make it all work. There are alot of mistakes in that book and not enough information on the actual procedures in building the winder, that unless you're a a serious woodworker, you'd never get past. There are some parts in there and tools that I never got to work right. I'm not offering this as criticism, the book is a marvel for it's time, but needs serious updating. Jason a year or so back asked for suggestions etc. for what the new version should have in it and I don't think anyone responded, probably because no one had actually built those winders, spent weeks scouring Goodwill Stores for old sewing machines etc. I sure did and it was one of the most frustrating episodes in my life. At the time I was way too busy with my "day" job to offer my honest thoughts on how it should change and believe me, he spent a couple years getting it to where it is now, updating and making it more user friendly etc. is probably another year or two project; since then his public image has hit the big time, so he has no time for that. Plus there's the downside that there now are way more hobby winders than there ever were who probably have visions of making a business out of it, so a new book would just produce more competition in the field. So the book is now a cult classic. All it really is , is a push to get you started, its not going to tell you a thing about how to make GOOD pickups, its mostly a mechanic's book. The designs in it are good pickups but understanding WHY they are good pickups isn't in there. Probably hanging around the forum you'll learn more, and of course making hundreds of pickups and actually breaking a sweat to figure out WHY things work the way they do will get you further down the road. Just following recipes and cranking out mindless stuff with no understanding goes nowhere. I don't think you're going to see another book about pickup making for a long time to come because the guys who know the real stuff make their livings at it and worked hard for that knowledge and that's only right and just. I had some guy offering me bootleg recordings of some of my favorite guitar players in the jump blues scene in trade for copying Jason's book, I never did........

[DrStrangelove]

It's Magic and cannot be understood.

HI, Dave.

Jason's book certainly requires some interpretation and effort if you aren't
comfortable with basic woodworking and lack a drill press. He can't do the
reader's work for him. As you say, it's a call to action, a book of ideas, and
a blueprint for getting started.

Understanding what makes a good pickup requires more Science than most
of you want to acknowledge, and needs a longer book than Jason wanted
to author. It isn't miserably difficult, does not require genius -- one must
WANT to understand instead of throwing up one's hands and declaring pickup
quality as unquantifiable except solely by human ear. Unfortunately, there are
too many people who want to believe in magic.

(For anyone interested, magnetic permeability and recoil permeability are the
profoundly neglected topics of pickup design.)

Miraculously, some actually do quality control by testing pickups' DC
resistance and inductance. More power to them.

Reading this and the other pickup makers forum, I sadly feel that TESTING
is where pickup makers are, on average, 50 years behind the times. The
pickup is a transducer and not only a passive component. Since, historically,
NOBODY wants to listen about tests using a magnetic field with swept frequency
and pseudo random noise, I won't belabor it.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Jason and folks like him have commercial
automated winding systems and have learned how to simulate their hand winding
technique on them. It's the man, not the machine.

-drh
PS, Dave can you bust your longer posts into paragraphs? Paras are easier to read.

[Spence]

Excuse me but....

Calm down gentlemen.

Jason's book is still highly regarded. Most people reading it will actually use the plans to make their own design of machine. I had a journalist call me once asking for help in building Jason's design for a magazine article. In the end the journo decided it was too much for him.

So I'm suggesting that anyone who is making pickups could write their own book with their own design of machine and give Jason a break.

And Dr. Strangelove said...

Reading this and the other pickup makers forum, I sadly feel that TESTING
is where pickup makers are, on average, 50 years behind the times. The
pickup is a transducer and not only a passive component. Since, historically,
NOBODY wants to listen about tests using a magnetic field with swept frequency
and pseudo random noise, I won't belabor it.

Did Leo or Seth test using magnetic fields with a swept frequency? No he didn't so what's the big deal. Some of us have excellent testing methods using guitars. It works so I for one will not be requiring a Tricorder for christmas.

[Possum]

paragraph breaks....

I had to laugh my ass off on that paragraph break thing. My wife who is an ad agency pro like me (barf, barf, puke, puke....on both of us) is always telling me to quit writing in looooong thoughts with no breaks. Uh oh...paragraph break....

Dude, I HAVE messed with frequency response charts and all that, those things lead nowhere. Guitar pickups by their very nature all fall into a pretty narrow range of what can be charted on a graph. The problem is you can can graph a wide range of pickups and on a frequency response chart they are all so close, it doesn't tell you crap about what the character of the pickup really is. the pursuit of nailing down a pickup's character in meter readings has always been a fanatic pursuit of mine, stymied by my lack of funding for expensive gear. But, really you cannot nail a pickup's true character in any kind of plotted, or measured numbers. OK, paragraph break.....

As an example, I am working on some blade pickups, thin blade versus thick blade, two different gauges of wire. Using the Extech LCR meter to guide me and of course my EARS. I posted on the Ampage forum to Joe that now I got a 4 henry coil versus a 6 henry coil, both with different gauges of wire, and they sound the same, the AC resistance is very close so now I'm thinking the AC resistance is really a more true indicator of what we hear instead of matching inductance readings. So, my ideas about what works and doesn't is always changing. Now I'm t hinking inductance is a rough guide, AC resistance readings are the fine tuning that are more close to what our ears are hearing. So, anyway, pickup knowledge is always in flux, no one can say for sure one thing is true and as soon as you do that, you find out it isn't. Bottom line is ears.........

[Possum]

magnetic blah blah

"(For anyone interested, magnetic permeability and recoil permeability are the
profoundly neglected topics of pickup design.)"

Well no they are not, we've been over that one alot and Joe Gwinn helped us understand it. My take on all that went on is that what was discussed boiled down to pretty much what we get from inductance readings. Meaning that like A5 gives really bright readings in henrys and AC resistance, but is also a quick responding magnetic field. So yeah premeability and recoil permeability are good things to look at but to me they are pretty much the same as AC resistance and henry readings. The alnicos like A5 react quick, the A3's and A2's dont reacti quick and you can use the henry and AC resistance readings to infer that information rather than have exact numbers to refer to, its a matter of ears and experience. Anyway just wanted to address that...

[DrStrangelove]

Did Leo or Seth test using magnetic fields with a swept frequency? No he didn't so what's the big deal. Some of us have excellent testing methods using guitars. It works so I for one will not be requiring a Tricorder for christmas.

No, they didn't.

It's 50 years later, Leo and Seth are dead, and we are not them.

More acute tools for pickup measurement have become available
to the hobbyist in the last half a century, but if all you want to do
is make replicas of 50 year old designs...

-drh
--

[DrStrangelove]

"(For anyone interested, magnetic permeability and recoil permeability are the
profoundly neglected topics of pickup design.)"

Well no they are not,

Are too, are too.

If you had a handle on those properties, you wouldn't ask if inductance was all there is to it.

Here it is one more time:

A pickup is a transducer and not merely a passive inductor.
It is a distinction with a difference.

By analogy, a loudspeaker has a coil of wire in it, but manufacturors
spec them with a frequency response curve and a pulse response.

In fact, everyone BUT pickup makers spec transducers with an
input-output response.

"It's magic, I tellya."

-drh