Paf offsets

[EtLa]

All MWS PE is REA Magnet Wire manufactured. They are the only ones making PE in the US. Here's the Elektrisola enamel wires page, I don't think any of this is what we call plain enamel, maybe Joe knows the technical terms, all the polsysol ones aren't.

MWS doesn't cherry pick spools so you get what they send, so O.D. sizes can and will vary somewhat. If anyone knows another source for PE I'd sure be interested but Greg contacted a wire company for me and they say all they can get is East Coast manufactured and that means REA or Elecktrisola. I don't know the technical name of plain enamel that we use, plain enamel is a guitar pickup maker's term :-)

You are right Possum I have asked elektrisola six months ago about PE here was the answer

Just to confirm with you the enamel used to produce this wire is plain
polyurethane (no nylon overcoat) , just wanted to clarify this point, as we
use the term "enamel" and "insulation" interchangeably. The product quoted
is solderable polyurethane with the addition of a black dye.

[Joe Gwinn]

You are right Possum I have asked elektrisola six months ago about PE here was the answer: "Just to confirm with you the enamel used to produce this wire is plain polyurethane (no nylon overcoat) , just wanted to clarify this point, as we use the term "enamel" and "insulation" interchangeably. The product quoted is solderable polyurethane with the addition of a black dye."

I bet that the "plain enamel" of the 1950s was not polyurethane varnish. Polyurethane resin was invented in 1942 (http://www.invent.org/Hall_Of_Fame/74.html). It will have taken a while before it was made into a suitable varnish, and would have taken some time to displace the then standard linseed-oil (and/or alkyd) based varnish.

Does your contact at Elektrisola know the history? It would be interesting.

[Joe Gwinn]

Joe, I'm going to start calling you the voice of reason! Yes, all these insulator specs are for very fussy high frequency applications... not audio frequency. At 1GHz the layout and thickness of the traces on your PC boards even matter!

Thanks. It's the benefit of an engineering background.

In the microwave region, everything is a transmission line, even if it looks like a wire. The basic distinction between metallic transmission line and wire is that in a wire, the bulk of the energy travels in the wire, while in a metallic transmission line the bulk of the energy travels in the dielectric near the wire. (Yes, there are non-metallic transmission lines. Fiber optics being one example.)

Have you seen these silly claims at Hi-Fi web sites about this $100 per once bottle of lacquer that when brushed on anything, is supposed to make it sound better! Speaker cones, wires, IC's, PC boards... just paint it on (with the provided brush in the cap) and instant better sound! And this is supposed to be the same "lost" lacquer formula that Stradivari used! Only I'm sure he used a spar vanish, and not lacquer.

I had not heard that one.

People have analyzed the finish on Stradivarius violins, with intent to duplicate, and we do know that Stradivari used a varnish, not a lacquer.

Then there's a crazy person who sells this black lacquer that looks like nail polish, that he claims if you paint it on your plastic cased IC's, they will magically sound more analog and warm! I guess the ceramic cased IC's are OK. They claim the sound of the plastic case is bad. These same people peel the plastic wrap off their aluminum can capacitors for the same reason... they sound better with no plastic!

It probably is black nail polish. I always knew plastic was bad...

And don't get me started on those $500 wooden knobs for your hi-fi amplifier (the one that only has a volume knob... and a stepped resistor switch volume knob at that)! These people deserve to spend every cent they have on nonsense!

No one ever does blind controlled tests on these sites either! It's always: "we listened to it, and we think we hear more detail and imaging... "



I have great ears and these people give me a headache! lol

Well, to summarize, people are still able to sell snake oil.

Now, I bought a Monster cable years ago, and I think it sounded good... I could hear the difference from a cheap cable I was using. But when it broke last year (after almost 20 years use) I went and bought a good quality Spectraflex cable, and it sounds just as good.

No, no. no... It's just that your ears are worn out, probably from too much rock music, and can no longer tell why you need $1,000 cables. What you need is some of my Patented Snake Oil. Only $100 per bottle, a bargain.

I built my own hi-fi cabinets once, and originally used the thin wire that came with the cross overs (maybe 22 gauge?). A year later I rewired the speakers with 12 gauge zip wire. I did one first, and compared the two cabinets. The one with the big wire was louder and crisper... it was like night and day.

So for something like speakers, increasing the wire gauge sure helps, but not the rest of the wire's construction.

This makes sense. You want the speakers to look into a low impedance, no more than one tenth the rated impedance of the speaker, to ensure that cone motion is well-damped and thus forced to follow the music signal faithfully.

[EtLa]

Oupss I forgot to mention in the previous post that I was asking Elektrisola about oleoresinous enamel (the real thing). So I think only REA still make PE insulation in America.

Does your contact at Elektrisola know the history? It would be interesting.

Something tell me that he doesn't know anything about the history, the salesman didn't seem to know anything about oleoresinous enamel Class: 105° C

[David Schwab]

In the microwave region, everything is a transmission line, even if it looks like a wire.

I always found wave guides to be quite strange. First time I saw one (when I worked at ITT) I was thinking... "oh, it's a square copper pipe!" A bent square copper pipe. Strange to think of microwaves traveling down a pipe. My brother was a photographer there, and they would have him take photos of a pattern to be reduced down to a size where it now became a circuit. I always wanted to try and etch a coil in copper clad board and try to use it as a pickup. Like those flexible PCB's that WE used in the Trimline phones.

I had not heard that one.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

C37 Sound Sensation

And a review: C 37 lacquer by Ennemoser - 20C version

I love the last paragraph:

The C37 lacquer adds transparency, detail and musical informations to your system.
Considering the strange (yet very interesting) theory behind the C37 idea I would say there should be some truth in it: the C37 lacquer works and gives exactly what promises: more Music for our ears!

Oh wait.. and the $500 wooden knobs! (OK.. $485.. per knob)

Silver Rock Signature Knob

Good vibrations, Bad vibrations it’s all about vibrations!! RAM would like to introduce a new signature level knob developed for the mighty Silver Rock potentiometer. The standard bakelite knob is certainly the best sounding compromise... but now Audio Consulting has taken this aspect of the Silver Rock much further. The new knobs are custom made with beech wood and bronze where the bronze is used as the insert to mount to the stem of the volume pot. The beech wood is coated several times with C37 lacquer for best sound as pointed out by Dieter Ennemoser. How can this make a difference??? Well, hearing is believing as we always say. The sound becomes much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution. Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!

Knobs can easily be installed on all versions of the Silver Rock potentiometer.

People have analyzed the finish on Stradivarius violins, with intent to duplicate, and we do know that Stradivari used a varnish, not a lacquer.

Yes, all French Polished instruments are finished in varnish.

It probably is black nail polish. I always knew plastic was bad...

Black nail polish is good though!

The ALTMANN "TUBE-O-LATOR" LACQUER

The Altmann Tube-o-lator lacquer is an overtone-filter coating-compound for plastic semiconductor packages.

"tubesound coating" filters unwanted (bad sounding) overtones from semiconductors like DA-converters, AD-converters, OP-Amps and Discrete Transistors; improves the sound quality of CD-players, DVD or SACD-players, Preamplifiers, Phono-Stages, Main- or Power-Amplifiers; transforms transistor sound into tube sound...

You will recognize the improvement right from the start. The "Tube-o-lator" lacquer will make your Source sound natural. Voices will integrate and regain their energy. The sound will become more relaxed.

Wait about 20 days while monitoring the sound, until the lacquer is cured. You will then have a complete comprehension about what the "Tube-o-lator" lacquer does to the sound.

Maybe we should coat our pickups with this crap!

Well, to summarize, people are still able to sell snake oil.

Do they make it the way they used to though? You know, from tweed covered snakes.

No, no. no... It's just that your ears are worn out, probably from too much rock music, and can no longer tell why you need $1,000 cables.

What??

What you need is some of my Patented Snake Oil. Only $100 per bottle, a bargain.

Is that the plain enamel snake oil?

This makes sense. You want the speakers to look into a low impedance, no more than one tenth the rated impedance of the speaker, to ensure that cone motion is well-damped and thus forced to follow the music signal faithfully.

Also if we consider skin effect, then the larger the surface area of the wire, the better.

Speaking of well damped, Roland has a new line of bass amps out that have computer controlled digital power amps that monitor speaker cone excursion with an infrared beam, and adjust the speaker movement to match the input to the power amp! I can't wait to try one out.

Where are the flying cars we were supposed to have? I saw them in books as a kid.

[Joe Gwinn]

Oupss I forgot to mention in the previous post that I was asking Elektrisola about oleoresinous enamel (the real thing). So I think only REA still make PE insulation in America.

So that's the name!. I almost remembered it.

Something tells me that he doesn't know anything about the history, the salesman didn't seem to know anything about oleoresinous enamel Class: 105° C

I bet if you ask, they still have some old curmudgeon who does know. Ask your contact to ask "the historian". Every company has one. Well, had one.

[Joe Gwinn]

I always found wave guides to be quite strange. First time I saw one (when I worked at ITT) I was thinking... "oh, it's a square copper pipe!" A bent square copper pipe. Strange to think of microwaves traveling down a pipe. My brother was a photographer there, and they would have him take photos of a pattern to be reduced down to a size where it now became a circuit. I always wanted to try and etch a coil in copper clad board and try to use it as a pickup. Like those flexible PCB's that WE used in the Trimline phones.

Waveguides can also be round, or elliptical. But rectangular is traditional. They probably were not actually square. Ther rule is that if a half-wavelength will fit in the hole, you go to town.

A spiral coil in a pcb wouldn't be a very good pickup by itself, but could work with a transformer. The aluminum-loop pickups recently discussed would be the rough model.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

C37 Sound Sensation

And a review: C 37 lacquer by Ennemoser - 20C version

I love the last paragraph: ...

I can believe lacquer on audio-mechanical components, like speaker cones, but on electronics is a bit much. People have been conformal coating PCBs for years, but the intent is not improvement, but the prevention of decline due to accumulating dirt.

Oh wait.. and the $500 wooden knobs! (OK.. $485.. per knob)

Silver Rock Signature Knob

That's pretty rich. You could hire a cabinet maker or even a machinist to make such knobs for far less than $500. Even $100 per knob would command their attention. And, one could coat the knobs with the finest of violin varnish for nothing.

Yes, all French Polished instruments are finished in varnish.

Black nail polish is good though!

The ALTMANN "TUBE-O-LATOR" LACQUER

Maybe we should coat our pickups with this crap!

Don't underestimate the power of the placebo effect. It could work.

Do they make it the way they used to though? You know, from tweed covered snakes.

Well, that's the traditional start, but modern technology has added a few steps. Now, we triple vacuum distill the snake oil, for sonic transparency.

What??

YOU NEED THE NEW $1,000 GOLD PLATED EAR TRUMPET. THIS IS THE ORIGINAL AND STILL THE BEST APPROACH. NO ANNOYING ELECTRONS.

Is that the plain enamel snake oil?

Our triple-distilled snake oil transcends plain enamel.

Also if we consider skin effect, then the larger the surface area of the wire, the better.

Have you consideded massive Litz wire?

Speaking of well damped, Roland has a new line of bass amps out that have computer controlled digital power amps that monitor speaker cone excursion with an infrared beam, and adjust the speaker movement to match the input to the power amp! I can't wait to try one out.

This is the latest in servo-controlled speakers. They do work. But not cheaply.

Where are the flying cars we were supposed to have? I saw them in books as a kid.

Therein lies a tale. My paternal grandfather invented such a car, of course called the Gwinn Aircar, in the 1930s. It looked like a 1938 Ford with wings, and had the shape of a guppy. But it flew very well, and could not be stalled (a leading killer of aviation pioneers). The company and idea died when the first prototype hit some high-tension wires and crashed, destroying the prototype and killing the test pilot, and more importantly, killing the main financial backer. What appears to have happened is that there were a number of engines being tried in the plane, and the test pilot (who was one of the best of his day) didn't realize that he now had the smaller engine, and misjudged a takeoff, being unable to gain altitude fast enough to clear the wires that had not been a problem the day before.

I could have been rich...and properly spoiled. Oh well.

More seriously, the fact that one of the best test pilots around managed to kill himself makes one think that aircars would not really work with most of the population. Flying is just far trickier than driving.

[Possum]

devil's advocate :-)

Actually lacquer potting a pickup does give a different tonal effect than wax potting, so jokes aside, regular lacquer can change how your pickups sound. Unfortunately depending on what kind of insulation you are using it can degrade the insulation, and may be real slow to dry and doesn't penetrate very far. You see this alot on the old fender lacquer potted stuff, they don't seem to have used it for very long and I remember reading they had problems with it and subsequently quit using potting altogether awhile after that.

On Stradavarius I watched a very in depth PBS documentary once and they discovered he had used crushed quartz crystal powder in the varnish. This makes total sense acoustically as it would tend to stiffen the acoustical responses of whatever he coated it with. Think of a quartz singing bowl or rubbing your finger around a lead crystal wine glass.

The wooden knob thing is a bit toooo far out there though :-)

[Spence]

Fender had a lot of lacquer kicking about when they switched to poly finishes. They had to use it some how.

[Steve Conner]

There is a difference between dielectric constant and dissipation factor. I agree that dissipation factor isn't an issue at audio frequencies. However, dielectric constant is an issue IMO, because it's what determines the self-capacitance of the cable or pickup, and hence the frequency of the resonant peak.

For example, PVC can have a dielectric constant anywhere between 3 and 6, depending on how it's made, and the temperature. Polythene has a dielectric constant of 2.2. So a PVC screened cable could have anywhere between 1.4 and 2.7 times the capacitance per foot of a PE one. That would probably make an audible difference in the mid and high end response when used as a guitar cord. Better quality guitar cords do seem to have PE dielectrics.

Some pickup makers specify the resonant frequencies of their PUs. Is that with cable capacitance or without? If without, that implies the self-capacitance is significant. I personally believe that it is significant and not swamped by the cable. That also leads me to believe that magnet wire can only have a "sound" in so far as its diameter and enamel build influence the self-capacitance and self-inductance of the coil.

If you discount self-capacitance, the only mechanism left for magnet wire to influence the sound is, like another poster said, how many turns you can get on there and how tightly it packs.

[David Schwab]

A spiral coil in a pcb wouldn't be a very good pickup by itself, but could work with a transformer. The aluminum-loop pickups recently discussed would be the rough model.

Yeah, I figured it would need to be stepped up or amplified. I'll add it to my list of things to try...

Have you consideded massive Litz wire?

That would work! That's another thing I've been wanting to try for pickups.

I've mentioned this story at the old forum, but I had a Hayman 10/10 with two really odd "Re-An" humbuckers (Re-An now appears to be part of Werfo/Neutrik). They had double rows of screw poles, and after I replaced the 100K pots for 500K, were very bright, like single coils. Naturally I took them apart, and was shocked to see each bobbin was a black ceramic torus, like the stuff they made AM radio antennas from. The coil wire was the same stuff on the antennas... that cloth covered wire. I assumed it was Litz wire, but I'm not sure. It was wrapped around the torus the same was as an antenna. The pole pieces came up through the torus, and at the bottom were threaded into a keeper attached to the magnet.

I've never been able to find any information on these pickups. Wish I still had that guitar.

Therein lies a tale. My paternal grandfather invented such a car, of course called the Gwinn Aircar, in the 1930s. It looked like a 1938 Ford with wings, and had the shape of a guppy.

Fascinating story! You know I had to look this up!



The best I can do is... My great grandfather threw Thomas Edison's cat in a furnace because it ate his lunch! Needless to say he lost his job...

[David Schwab]

Some pickup makers specify the resonant frequencies of their PUs. Is that with cable capacitance or without? If without, that implies the self-capacitance is significant. I personally believe that it is significant and not swamped by the cable. That also leads me to believe that magnet wire can only have a "sound" in so far as its diameter and enamel build influence the self-capacitance and self-inductance of the coil.

I believe that the resonant frequency would have to be with the controls/cable in place as a load. The larger the load, the lower the resonant peak. An example of this is running a high impedance pickup into a buffer amp. The high input impedance of the buffer doesn't load the pickup, and you get a very different tone... the resonant peak is shifted higher, and you also get more top end (the resonant peak occurs right before the upper frequency limit of the pickup starts to drop off). Another example is changing the value of your potentiometers.

If they took a reading of the resonant frequency without the typical load, it really wouldn't mean much in real world conditions.

If you discount self-capacitance, the only mechanism left for magnet wire to influence the sound is, like another poster said, how many turns you can get on there and how tightly it packs.

There's a lot of stuff going on in pickups that I think is poorly understood that contributes to the tone. While all these things are understood from a technical point of view, I think the interactions are hard to pin down. You have self-capacitance, self-inductance (both from a neighboring coil, and itself), eddy currents, core permeability... and probably things we aren't aware of... you can't measure something you aren't looking for!

So different insulations might affect both how many turns and how tight the coils is, and also the self-capacitance of the coil.

I was playing my friend's '61 Strat the other night. Why do the pickups sound warmer than on a new Strat? Some people say the magnets age... but magnet makers say they don't. Now if we say the wire and magnets are different than they are today, that would mean these pickups sounded this way when they were new, and we know they probably didn't. I'm sure they were much brighter, as the new guitars are. So if we make new pickups that sound like old pickups, what will the new pickups sound like in 40 years?

It's all voodoo I tell ya!

[Joe Gwinn]

Fascinating story! You know I had to look this up!

That's it. Note the discussion about the two engines, at 95 and 120 HP. The problem was not that the pilot didn't notice those wires, despite the article.

The best I can do is... My great grandfather threw Thomas Edison's cat in a furnace because it ate his lunch! Needless to say he lost his job...

Well, my grandfather also lost his job, but there was no cat sacrifice involved. I bet that cat had eaten more than one lunch before executive action was taken. But, why not get a steel lunchpail, as was the custom of the day?

[Joe Gwinn]

've mentioned this story at the old forum, but I had a Hayman 10/10 with two really odd "Re-An" humbuckers (Re-An now appears to be part of Werfo/Neutrik). They had double rows of screw poles, and after I replaced the 100K pots for 500K, were very bright, like single coils. Naturally I took them apart, and was shocked to see each bobbin was a black ceramic torus, like the stuff they made AM radio antennas from. The coil wire was the same stuff on the antennas... that cloth covered wire. I assumed it was Litz wire, but I'm not sure. It was wrapped around the torus the same was as an antenna. The pole pieces came up through the torus, and at the bottom were threaded into a keeper attached to the magnet.

Torus? Do you mean rod? Antennas are rods. Or do you mean a thick-walled ferrite bobbin? Can you draw a picture from memory and post it?

[Possum]

antennas....and aging....

I think he means a flat coil one wind per turn, hard to imagine it having enough turns to do anything unless it was litz wire, yeah I'd like to see a picture of this too.

The "aging" magnets thing is bullshit, Duncan exploits this heavily in his propaganda. His dunager I am told is simply a small AC motor that he passes over a magnet to degauss it to where it would be after 30 years of bar fights. Magnets don't age. Simply degaussing magnets accomplishes this and all you need is a charger to charge them full, then a jeweler's degaussing table hooked to a variac to knock it down to where you want, and of course you need a good gaussmeter. I kind of don't buy the aging coil thing either, most of fender's pickups were potted solid as a rock and the wire looks like it did when it was first made if you dig into that gook.

I have a strat set called my 59 set thats typical pre-CBS fare. One night I was letting a pro player use the guitar so I could get some sound samples for my website. Coincidentally a guy had a '64 strat there with basically the same kind of pickups in it that I copied. Both guitars sounded pretty much identical except my guitar has a maple neck, newer wood of course, his was rosewood, both were nitro finishes. Listening to the recording later it was scary how close they sounded to eachother. Spence noted once that in a shoot out of old strats he did, one of the test guitar was a 59 or thereabouts that had been in the closet since it was made so the magnets were full strength. All the reviewer guys disliked that guitar alot because it sounded shrill and new. Degauss, my brothers, degauss.......well except for high ohmage flesh shredding machete buckers.....