Steel guitar pickup rewind....

[David King]

The Q-Tuners seem to be cast in several stages, not all at once. The holes for the pole pieces are drilled and tapped after the coil and magnet have become a solid armature me thinks.
The guy who has the casting process down is Kent Armstrong. No bubbles in his resin and the threads for the pole pieces are perfectly formed.

[Possum]

...

yeah Animal Magnetism is a must for any pickup designer. I wonder why all these genius designers always make hi-fi bright pickups? Lace, Lawrence. I've read that Armstrong is really good with casting etc. have never seen any of his stuff...

[David Schwab]

The Q-Tuners seem to be cast in several stages, not all at once. The holes for the pole pieces are drilled and tapped after the coil and magnet have become a solid armature me thinks.

That's a possibility. I assumed he did similar things as in the book, where he casts the pickups with the poles in place. He waxes them so they don't stick.

It's a tricky looking pickup. You have the two self standing coils, and in the bottom of those coils are the magnets. The magnets don't touch anything though, not even the pole pieces! There is a slight gap, and that's in the patent too.

So I'm curious how he keeps everything alined and not crashing together while he cast the thing! Like how does he support the magnets?

Casting in stages might be the answer.

The guy who has the casting process down is Kent Armstrong. No bubbles in his resin and the threads for the pole pieces are perfectly formed.

Yeah he does a real nice job. Probably uses a vacuum. I had a Smith bass and was checking out the pickups (made by Armstrong). I quite sure the pole screws are cast with the rest of the pickup. You can see where the epoxy's surface tension went up around the screws.

[jonson]

I spent some time with Kent back in the eighties and got the whole process noted down and produced a lot of pickups the same way. Guy was simplicity in itself from his winders to his casting process and was quite happy to show you round and run through everything in detail. Apart from them being cast pickups his methods and winders were as archaic if not even more so than the early Fender ones and I still have some 80s buckers in their origional wrappers here. Got some time to spare, so, will write out the process (Kent won't mind) and take some pics and do some sketches. I'll be back.

ps Spence will call this week sorry mate.

[David Schwab]

Jonson, that would be really cool.

Kent must have some interesting stories to tell!

[Possum]

....

WHAT???? The Q-tuner is a copy of an Armstrong pickup? Ouch.
Kent is interview in the Pickup Handbook thats out, interesting interviews in there, Jason is interviewed as well, Kent's is one of the most intersting interviews, the most boring is DiMarzio, Lollar's is good too...

[David Schwab]

WHAT???? The Q-tuner is a copy of an Armstrong pickup? Ouch.

Not at all... Armstrong was brought up because of the epoxy casting.

The Smith pickup I showed is made by Armstrong.

The Q-Tuner patent is 5354949 in case you want to check it out.

[David King]

That air gap in the Q-tuner between the neo mags and the poles is part of what keeps them listenable. They would be deafeningly bright otherwise.

Actually the Q-tuners have more in common with what Lane Poor was doing. "Bi-lateral twin coils" as Lane referred to them. Lane's an interesting guy too. That kid Adam who supposedly put Lane out of business (by putting out a noisy batch) is also starting to make "those" pickups again. Haven't hear any more about it but it was on Talkbass a while back.

[David Schwab]

That air gap in the Q-tuner between the neo mags and the poles is part of what keeps them listenable. They would be deafeningly bright otherwise.

Yeah, they sure are bright though.. even with the gap. Not much inductance going on there.

Actually the Q-tuners have more in common with what Lane Poor was doing. "Bi-lateral twin coils" as Lane referred to them.

Were Lane's pickups sidewinders too? I get people asking me about Lane's pickups more than any others. I've never even seen one in person. They sure have a mystique about them.

Lane's an interesting guy too. That kid Adam who supposedly put Lane out of business (by putting out a noisy batch) is also starting to make "those" pickups again. Haven't hear any more about it but it was on Talkbass a while back.

Is that what happened? He just disappeared. He had some odd looking basses!

Yeah that Adam guy is making them now, but the people that heard them on TalkBass said they don't sound quite the same, but at least they are quiet now.

[David King]

If you look at the frequency plots you'll see the the Lane Poors have quite a bump up at the top around 2-10K I think. The suspicion is that there are some passive components packed away under that epoxy. The response is anything but flat in other words but it ends up sounding "hifi". I've still got a stash of them and i suppose i could chop one apart for science but chances of that are slim at this point. I like them a lot but they are much more of a "bedroom pickup" than a live venue pickup.
Lane went through a dark time there but I hear he's doing much better now. He still lives on the cape with his family and apparently the whole production facility is still intact in a warehouse in Rhode Island. He locked the door and never went near it again.

[Achiles]

I have 2 LP(1 jb and 1 MM)opaned "for science ".
I dont know how much could i get if i put it on E-bay.
Next week i´l try to put picturs here.

[David Schwab]

If you look at the frequency plots you'll see the the Lane Poors have quite a bump up at the top around 2-10K I think. The suspicion is that there are some passive components packed away under that epoxy. The response is anything but flat in other words but it ends up sounding "hifi". I've still got a stash of them and i suppose i could chop one apart for science but chances of that are slim at this point. I like them a lot but they are much more of a "bedroom pickup" than a live venue pickup.

All pickups have a resonant peak right before the high frequencies start to drop off. If you underwind a pickup the peak is up pretty high.

When I was making the low Z pickups, you couldn't hear the peak because it was so high. That gave the pickups a smoother tone than you would expect, so they didn't seem overly bright.

When I started doing the high Z pickups, my first few were wound a lot lower than I do now, and they also had a smooth kind of tone, and didn't seem all that bright. So I wound them more, which brought the peak down, and now they sound brighter. Seems counterintuitive, but makes sense when you consider that bright pickups actually have an upper mid peak, and punchy pickups have a hump around 100 Hz, and don't go down all that far past 80 Hz. Limiting the band width for instruments seems more musical to our ears, probably because that's what we are used to hearing.

I've thought of chopping up my '77 Hi-A pickup for science, but that wound be like killing a pet I've had so long and having it for dinner. But his patents look so cool, that I want to see those planar tipped poles with my own eyes. I probably wont do it though.

Lane went through a dark time there but I hear he's doing much better now. He still lives on the cape with his family and apparently the whole production facility is still intact in a warehouse in Rhode Island. He locked the door and never went near it again.

Well that's good that he's doing well. He should think about having his pickups made by someone else he can trust. I'm sure they would sell like hotcakes, and he could take it easy!

I'm sure like you, I've always keep an eye on unusual bass makers like Lane. Hey, do you like Harry Fleishman's work? I've always thought those Scroll basses were some of the coolest looking basses.



When I get rich I'm going to buy one of those. And a Kingbass too! Then an old Steinberger, a Kubicki, ACG, Zeta Prism Bass, Les Paul Triumph... a few others.

[David Schwab]

I have 2 LP(1 jb and 1 MM)opaned "for science ".
I dont know how much could i get if i put it on E-bay.
Next week i´l try to put picturs here.

Please do! Enquiring minds want to know!

[David King]

Hey Achiles, the LP post operative photos could attract a lot of outside attention. We might want to rename them or post them on the pickupedia.info site to keep the riffraff coming in off of google to a minimum. That said I'm not sure how much we could learn from them without knowing where his magnets came from.

David S.
I've always been a big fan of Harry's. He's been at it for so long and I'm always amazed at how fresh his ideas are and how far ahead of his time he is. He's also a really fun guy to hang out with.