Any valuable info on Lane Poor MM pups?

[ModulusMK]

Hello there, this is my first post on this forum and interested in Lane Poor pups.
Anyone knows something about this pickups especially the MM version, wire used, number of turns.. resistance of coils separately, type of coil (air or not, or other) magnet sizes and grade etc...
I know it is similar to Bartolini's MMX just more open and more transparent... too bad it is out of production and very hard to find almost impossible so would like to make for myself something as close as I can.
Any info will be welcome and appreciated!

Thanks

[belwar]

Wow, I'm in the same boat as you right now. I'm looking to build a MM4SC clone for a bass Im working on. I have a PJ set coming to me right now which Im going to have X-rayed to see inside, then im going to try to disolve the epoxy with a chemical I found.. There are all finds of rumors out there about these pickups and no one seems to know what the truth is, or doesnt want to part with the info (Which is fair). I havent even been able to find an ohm reading yet for the MM series. David Scwabb was saying that the wire might be twisted stand magnet wire (i.e. two conductor), and David King had some interesting ideas about a possible capacitor inside the pickup. Eitherway, I *think* i might have a lead on an MM5, but I wont know for a few days. I plan on posting the x-ray scans when I get them in a week or so.. unless there is something very top secret :>

If you want, send me a PM with your contact if and I'll share what I find, if you do the same.

bel.

[David Schwab]

David Scwabb was saying that the wire might be twisted stand magnet wire (i.e. two conductor)...

That was told to me by a bass builder who is using my pickups, and used to use LP pickups, and he says it was told to him by Lane.

I have some general ideas about how they were made... but you don't have to follow that exactly. I've also heard some of them were side winders... I've never seen one in person so I can't comment. I've been told by several people that my pickups sound a lot like LPs, and I'm not doing anything remotely similar construction wise.

But here's some info given to me by someone with several LP pickups:

The first one up is 4 x 1-7/16 x 3/4 inches. It has "MW4.0" etched in the back with "G.C 1692" on a small sticker. It reads 7.7K ohms.

The second one up is 4.5 x 1.5 x 13/16 inches. It has "M4.5W" etched in the back with "4334 G.C 8.99" on a small sticker. It reads 8.49K ohms.

The third one up is 4.5 x 1.5 x 7/8 inches. It has "M4.5W" etched in the back with "4143 G.C 5.99" on a small sticker. It reads 8.32K ohms.

The last one up is 4 x 1.5 x 7/8 inches. It has "M4.0W" etched in the back with "4313 G.C 8.99" on a small sticker. It has the Modulus Graphite logo on it so it was probably made as a special order for Modulus. It reads 7.34K ohms.

And

Lane Poor M3.5W (6.33K)

Adam Charette is the guy who was working for Lane making the pickups, and he's now making his own versions of them. Not sure if he would share any info though. I've never talked to him myself.

[ModulusMK]

That might be useful info, I don't see an MM version details but probably are not much different in construction.
What is the difference if you use twisted stand wire instead of regular one cunductor wire?
Acording you David, what type of construction/wire, magnet shape/size etc.. is going to deliver the closest tone of MM LP's?
The wire type and gauge are the problem, and of course the number of turns (but it may be calculated acording to resistance). What do the first numbers and the letters mean? Is it possible to be the number of turns? :/ The last three I guess are the date of manufacture M/YY.
I know about Adam, he is making a little muddier versions as I heard, but more fucused and detailed pups as he stated than the LP's. When I listen both on recording, LP is sounding more open and transparent, small diff but noticeable. I do not have any of them in person. And of course he doesn't share the 'secret' about the pups, I talked with him over email and he was nice.
Hardly to find out something for sure unles someone tears apart one and see clearly what and how is inside.

[David King]

The G. C. stands for George Costa*(i think) who was Lane's production manager. The number is presumably the serial number of each pickup.

Lane always referred to the pickups as "Bilateral twin coils" by which I always assumed he meant that they were like the old Gibson sidewinder pickups with the coils turned on their sides facing each other rather than pointing at the strings.

Adam came later to the company and caused Lane a lot of grief near the end. The story I heard is that Adam shipped out a bunch of pickups that were either incorrectly shielded or noisy for other reasons and that had cost Lane a bundle of aggravation which seemed to be a part of his quitting the business.

Bassics magazine from Canada at that time c.1999 had a nice factory tour with descriptions and photos of many step in the process. The epoxy was cast under a vacuum and baked for a few hours. I might still have that issue somewhere.

All the frequency response scans of Lane Poor pickups I've seen have a big bump up above 8K. I'll try to post a scan if i can find one.

My favorite MM pickups were the dual voice or "dv" pickups that had a W (wide) and an N (narrow) or HB (humbucker) in the same shell. These cost twice the price but were really fantastic when wired in series. -never a dull moment. I built a bunch of basses with two dvs each.

[belwar]

David,

Thanks a million for that info - I'd love to see the scans if you ever find them.. I'm trying to find the difference between the HB, and DV.. I guess in the HB it was WW or NN, and the DV it was WN..

I see there is someone on E-bay regularly selling LP's. He's in the same city as the Legacy pickups (Who is making the repro's). I thought about buying from him, but im wondering if what is being sold as authentic is actually a repro, or the bad batch you speak of.

bel

[David Schwab]

Adam came later to the company and caused Lane a lot of grief near the end. The story I heard is that Adam shipped out a bunch of pickups that were either incorrectly shielded or noisy for other reasons and that had cost Lane a bundle of aggravation which seemed to be a part of his quitting the business.

That's the same story I heard.

[ModulusMK]

Hmm, here something might be useful to try. Bilateral twin coils, faced to eachother like the Q-Tuners?
I'm trying to find out the construction of the MM Flea pup... DV or WN.. or..?
Adam was saying something like 'low number of turns and a special design'. Nothing more.
David King, those scans will be nice to see if you find them.
Anyone with info on this pup?

[David Schwab]

Hmm, here something might be useful to try. Bilateral twin coils, faced to eachother like the Q-Tuners?

If you have some magnetic viewing paper, you can see if they are side winders.

But that doesn't make sense from a wide or narrow aperture perspective. Side winders always sense a narrow portion of the string (except for Q-Tuners which have three poles).

[David King]

Lane Poor JB 4500 Soapbar, 6 string, 0085(@1000K), 0086(@100K) 8.17K (dcr), 344.00 Gauss, Segmented Magnet -9 pieces

Lane Poor M4.0HB Soapbar 5 string, Top Coil: 0088(@1000K),0089(@100K) , 7.18K (dcr), Top: -552.00 Gauss, 2 bars minimal spacing,
Bottom Coil: 0091(@1000K), 0092(@100K), Top: 552.00 Gauss, Bottom: 564.00 Gauss

Lane Poor M3.5HB Soapbar 4 string, Top Coil: 0095(@1000K), 0096(@100K), 5.91K (dcr), Top: 400.00 Gauss, 2 bars minimal spacing
Bottom Coil: 0098(@1000K), 0099(@100K), Top 552.00 Gauss, Bottom -360.00 Gauss

This is from a excel spread sheet hence the mess, Sorry

[belwar]

I found one the two bassics articles on Lane Poor, and it has some useful info..

----

Lane Poor is an interesting character - he has been involved in the manufacture of musical products for a quite a long time. Not as old as Methuselah, Lane has wound pickups and helped build F2Bs with Ron Wickersham at Alembic, designed the Lane Poor Minima Bass which was nominated for "Most Innovative Bass of the Year" by M.S.R. in 1991, was the first production manager for Monster Cable, consulted at the Wally Heider and Automat Recording Studios, and and helped start Stars Guitars. Walking through his enormous loft in Fall River, Massachusetts, I was given (shown?) the step by step process of assembling a pickup.

About twelve years ago, Lane started work on a moving coil acoustic guitar pickup. He feels the most important aspect of a moving coil pickup is that it offers musicians an extremely clear signal, to which they can add volume, tones, and effects as they see fit, instead of trying to remove unwanted sounds and color, already built into the pickup. Lane says, "When you listen to any instrument acoustically, you hear a sound in your head Then, when you plug it in and after it all goes round and round you expect that sound to come out over there. Our pickups capture this sound, no peaks, just plain flat and clean."

Lane classifies electromagnetic pickups into two groups, moving coil and moving magnet. Within the moving magnet variety there are four classes, single coil, humbuckers, stacked coil, and the bilateral twin coil. The bilateral has the advantage of hum cancelling, and still sounds like a single coil, the cleanest you can get.

The first step in assembling a pickup begins with plain copper clad printed ciruit board material. It is sheared to size, resulting in tiles. Magnets are then glued to the tiles. For Jazz Pickups, they glue a series of pole pieces inbetween the magnets. For the wider apperture Soap Bar pickups, they use a precast assembly. For the Jazz Pickups, the pole pieces are taped off, and any bare metal is painted with an insulating varnish. The result is a bobbin, ready to wind.

Lane, and his right hand man, George use an Adams - Maxwell Model 1201-1 Precision Winder with a Model 1250 Traverse that insures winding pitch accuracy to 0.0001". Typical winding time is 35 minutes.

After winding, the resulting armature is insulated with tape, the output cable is soldered into place with a brass sleeved strain relief, and the armature is entirely shielded with lapped seam 0.001" brass foil. This assembly is kept in the oven at 110, this in order to encourage rubberized epoxy to completely surround the windings. The armatures are placed in a bath of the rubberized epoxy, and evacuated to 29.33" in a Bell Jar. They cycle it 5 times to insure no bubbles remain between the wires, insuring ultra-low microphonics.

The rubberized armatures are then compressed from the sides and top, placed in the oven again, and allowed to cure overnight. These rubberized armatures are then prepared for the dedicated molding process. With less that the thickness of a guitar pick from the side of the armaure to the mold, precision is an absolute must! They attach precision cast spacers that hold the armature away from the tops and sides of the molds. They evacuate the proper amount of mixed epoxy, pour it into the molds, and then evacuate the molds for three complete cycles, at five minutes each. Then, it's back into the oven again for overnight curing.

Next, the molds are broken down and the pickups are pressed out with a Custom Made 2 ton maple press. All the pickups are then hand flat sanded on the top and sides, fully radiused on two router tables, sand blasted, drilled for logos and mounting holes, and final checked for cosmetic flaws. Touchups are done, and the Holographic based logos are inserted, covered with a clear epoxy resin, evacuated as above, and then it's back into the oven for another night of curing.

After a final top sanding, they paint the finished product with Armor-All, (guitar polish works well too), wipe off the excess, do the final electronic and noise test, register and apply a serial number, and there you have it! Remember folks, it's a minimum of 78 discrete production steps with 37 parts requiring a minimum of four days. Their pickups are guarantied for life, regardless of owner or instrument, magnetic field strength (and the resulting electrical output) are all included.

I had the wider apperture Soap Bars put in both my Fodera Fretted and Fretless Imperial Basses and the sound is crsip, clean, and even, all the way down to my low A, (thanks to the Hipshot Detuner) and up to my high E 28 frets above. I have just shot an instructional video for Homespun Tapes and the bass was so quiet, the recording engineer asked me if the bass was on! I think that's the best testament.

I want to thank Lane and George for their time and hope this article has helped all of us learn about pickups. Any comments or questions can be forwarded to the Lane Poor Music Company, 347 Pleasant St., Fall River, MA, 02721. Fax 508 - 679 - 1904.

[David King]

I used to bug Lane about doing a radiused top pickup or about the overall length of his pickups which was often out of specification and wouldn't fit in my routs. He would tell be that the pickup casting had very little epoxy in it-that it was almost entirely filled with copper and magnets and that there was nothing we could do about the weight of them for that reason either (they were a lot heavier than Bartolinis). I deduce from that info they they were wound with heavier gauge wire, probably 42awg.

Looking at the gauss levels above I also think it's likely that Lane used ceramic bar magnets but the only way I can think to test that would be to try to demagnetize a pickup and see what happens. Alnico will demagnetize easily, Ceramic won't. It's possible he was using rare earth magnets but that would have been very expensive in 1996 when he started.

I'm pretty sure that the HB pickups were split coils not dual coils. All the other pickups were dual coils...
Actually looking at the Audere data above I'm wondering if the HBs were actually stacked coils but I don't know how Audere would have known that... I guess I could ask him.

[belwar]

Thats very interesting.. I was guessing 40-42 if the output levels are as low as mentioned.. 7-8 K is not that quiet, and I'm *guessing* that the reason this pickups are so quiet is that the magnet or pole is not close to the top of the pickup .. i.e. coil is mounted side ways.

I cant wait to get the xrays

[David Schwab]

Within the moving magnet variety there are four classes, single coil, humbuckers, stacked coil, and the bilateral twin coil. The bilateral has the advantage of hum cancelling, and still sounds like a single coil, the cleanest you can get.

OK, so a "bilateral twin coil" is a sidewinder.

Man, that's a lot of hand work done on the epoxy case!

[belwar]

OK, so a "bilateral twin coil" is a sidewinder.

Man, that's a lot of hand work done on the epoxy case!

Where do you read that?