Single string pickups - 6 of 'em

[Zhangliqun]

You mean the 42 string Pikasso I, created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer.

I have a photo of her with that guitar that I snapped back in '96... I'll have to scan it one of these days.

I saw Pat play that baby at UCLA one night.

[David Schwab]

I saw Pat play that baby at UCLA one night.

Here's a picture I took of Linda Manzer with the Pikasso II, which was commissioned by Scott Chinery.

It's a crazy looking guitar! She said she was sorry she took the commission and would never make another one again! I met Chinery that day too.

The Ferrington guitar sounds familiar, but it's not in the Ferrington Guitars book... but that's not to say he didn't make him one.

[edit] Here's the Chinery harp guitar collection. I don't see any Ferringtons.

I love weird guitars.

[jason lollar]

aphrodities child avatar- thats pretty obscure...

[NightWinder]

You lucky bastard!!! Side Note: I seen John Mclaucghlin (sorry spelling) with the most amazing rythem section in "92. That still was the best inspired performance In my life to date. Anyone know what tour that was.....I truely never wanted to hear it again..... til now. That my friends.....changed my life.

[David Schwab]

You lucky bastard!!! Side Note: I seen John Mclaucghlin (sorry spelling) with the most amazing rythem section in "92. That still was the best inspired performance In my life to date. Anyone know what tour that was.....I truely never wanted to hear it again..... til now. That my friends.....changed my life.

I saw McLaughlin... might have been a few years before that. He had Jonas Hellborg on bass, and an Indian percussionist. McLaughlin was playing a nylon string guitar. There might have been an indian violinist too, but my memory is fuzzy!

One of the best shows I saw was Mahavishnu, on the Birds of Fire tour, with Gentle Giant as the opening act! I hadn't heard of Giant at that time, and they became one of my favorite bands... and still are today (along with King Crimson and XTC).

[Mark Hammer]

I have a rather oddball device at home called the Guild Tri-Oct. It was a short production-run circuit from that period when it was hard to tell the difference between Guild, Electro-Harmonix and Musitronics, and is a completely analog hexaphonic/polyphonic octave divider (yes, they existed before the E-H POG). Sort of the "missing link" between effects pedals and the first guitar synths. It came with a proprietary divided pickup such that each string was sensed individually. Unfortunately, it worked like crap because the pickup footprint was too damn big (about the sixe of a P90). You could not get it anywhere near enough the bridge on a commercial instrument to prevent string-to-string bleedthrough and mistracking. If you have a guitar with no bridge pickup (allowing you to snuggle it up against the bridge), and use heavy gauge strings, and pick very lightly and precisely, it WILL yield octave-divided chords, but it is generally not giggable.

So, the basic challenge of divided pickups is that they need to have a slender profile to work optimally. Because so many of the hex pickups produced for synth purposes are intended to be add-ons attached to an existing instrument, rather than OEM-type designs, they are not only slender, but are also short enough that you can slide them under the strings near the bridge on most commercial guitars and secure them to the body from the top. As you can imagine, this places some rather severe constraints on both the size of the magnets and the size of the coil, which in turn places some equally severe limitations on the signal they can generate. I've looked at schematics for a great many guitar-synth modules adapted to GK-type divided pickups and they all have the same basic design, which is that each coil goes immediately and directly to an op-amp gain stage with a fair amount of gain, adjusted string-wise with an individual trimpot.

Of course, there are different purposes of divided pickups and one needs to consider context. Synth pickups not only have to sense the string pitch but also provide absolutely unambiguous information about when each "note event" starts. Side-to-side leakage works at cross purposes with the goal of synthesis. But guitar synthesis is not the only reason to want to use a divided pickup. Simply allowing different pats of the pickup to "specialize" for the puirposes of creating a more spacious mix, or for EQ-ing wound and unwound strings differently, is an entirely reasonable objective. Because such a purpose does not have the same stringent requirements as a synth pickup, one can tolerate some string bleedthrough and coils/polepieces capable of creating usable tone on their own. This stands in contrast to synth pickups whose own tone is simply moot and whose capacity to clearly identify the pitch and amplitude of the moment is its sole focus.

If one's only purpose is to reduce intermodulation and allow for some spaciousness, I would imagine that a pair of standard Strat-sized single-coils with alternate polepieces pulled or replaced with plastic slugs (Coil A = E, D, B; Coil B = A G, E) could deliver up some very nice spacious tones. That actually might make for an interesting HB pickup. With both coils combined you'd get hum-cancelling and all 6 strings in mono, but you could also combine individual coils à la PRS for some interesting tones, or simply feed those individual coils out in stereo. One of the nice things about such an approach is that string-to-string bleedthrough, while not perfect, would be reduced by having alternate strings sitting above the pole-less part of the coil.

[David Schwab]

I have a rather oddball device at home called the Guild Tri-Oct.

I remember those...

It was a short production-run circuit from that period when it was hard to tell the difference between Guild, Electro-Harmonix and Musitronics...

I had a Guild Foxy Lady, which was identical to an EH Big Muff Pi... when I opened it and looked on the circuit board, it was marked "EH"!

So we know who was making some of Guild's effects...

[Earl Norton]

I saw that tour as well. In Little Rock at a local club. Truly amazing group.

[Mark Hammer]

If you remember them, what can you tell me about them? I found this in a pawn shop (it has since been promised to Ron Neely, the E-H Man, though I have to get my ass in gear and send it to him), and have been asking anyone and everyone for whatever they might know about it, from Art Thompson to Mike Beigel. So far nobody has answered my requests. It is an absolutely fascinating piece because it really IS the missing link between guitar synths and fuzz-boxes. Half the trannies in it are germanium. That's how much of a dinosaur it is. The other half are 2N5133, which was essentially E-H's default transistor in 1969. That's why I'm thinking it may have had some E-H link, as well as being from that time period.

[erikbojerik]

Here's a picture I took of Linda Manzer with the Pikasso II...I love weird guitars.

Well, at least in that picture she has it tuned up properly. Its a pet peeve of mine, but I hate it when photographers insist on rotating all the tuning pegs so the buttons are all facing the camera. Talk about unorthodox tunings...

[David Schwab]

If you remember them, what can you tell me about them?

Oh I just remember reading about it in Guitar Player or something. I always read all the gadget reviews and new product announcements.

I bet it was probably made by EH. Guild didn't make any of their own effects.

Is there anything written on the circuit board? As I said my Foxy Lady clearly had a Big Muff PCB with "EH" written on it... but that could have been because it was a standard EH part.

You could try writing EH. If they made it, I bet Mike Matthews would be interested in it.

[Mark Hammer]

I did write them. They had nothing of use to offer.

I even managed to exchange notes with Mr. "Reeling in the Years" Elliot Randall, who suggested writing Mike Beigel again and dropping his name, but to no avail. Honestly, you'd think I need to take out a full-page colour glossy ad in Vintage Guitar and ask "Do you have ANY idea what the hell this is?".

[Mark Hammer]

I completely forgot to mention that there was a company called G-Vox that was making these units for teaching guitar, using a hex-divided pickup to retrofit on existing guitars and feed to a computer. Harry Bissell adapted one of these pickups for his own guitar synth, and it is every bit as decent as a GK type pickup. For a while you could pick them up cheap on e-bay, though I suspect they may be rarer now than they were 4 years ago.

[David Schwab]

Bartolini make polyphonic pickups. This was part of their original design and patent way back when. You can get a hex pickup in a strat housing from them.

[radii]

Hi

First post on this forum

In case this guy has not been mentioned, http://www.atlansia.jp/ uses and sells single string pickups. If you don't speak japanese, the site is a little hard to navigate but fun nontheless.
Try finding his custom machine shop section. The guy seems very ingenious...