Challenging and exciting new design needs a guru !

[sashua]

Hi everyone, Newbie here to this forum and I am glad to find you.

I am afraid that I need to be purposefully vague here to a certain extent as my company is still not patent protected.

To give you the basic story, I am the CEO of a guitar and bass company that has been defunct for a number of years but is now reborn and ready to make a very big splash into the marketplace. I personally believe that our designs will set standards and trends in the world of stringed instruments for many years to come.

We are 3/4 of the way to the finish line now and ready to address the re-design of our pickups. They are a very unorthodox design, bearing resemblence to nothing but owing debts to a select few We are looking for someone to help us along the way that is capable of applying the principles of pickup design to a project that lies completely outside of the typically accepted design parameters in our industry.

I have approached both Lindy Fralin and Jason Lollar and both gentlemen, although they are both of the highest caliber as design engineers, were reticent about tackling something so untraditional and so far out of their ballywick.

So, to the point....I am looking for a bold and creative designer that would like to be associated with a radical design with the potential to shake up everything we know as guitarists. We would want the candidate to sign an NDA and review our prints to make suggestions on how we might perfect our design. The initial consultation would be unpaid (so we can see who we are dealing with) but the follow up consultation work (and even the possible manufacturing rights) could be negotiated thereafter.

Please contact me with your suggestions and offers during the afternoons at 631-252-0217 or rrubman@alloysinternational.com

Thanks for reading,
Russ

[Chuck H]

We would want the candidate to sign an NDA and review our prints to make suggestions on how we might perfect our design. The initial consultation would be unpaid (so we can see who we are dealing with) but the follow up consultation work (and even the possible manufacturing rights) could be negotiated thereafter.

Fralin and Lollar won't work with you (perhaps for the reasons you present, perhaps not). The above stipulations are certainly presumptive to say the least. You may get a few bites but what I wonder is:

How many of these free consultations do you figure it will take to aquire the technology you desire?

Better idea, how about you interview individuals about the concept and choose someone you would be willing to pay an appropriate fee for consultation. You should include a non disclosure agreement as well as a contract allowing that your company has exclusive rights to this technology. Thats as much as your entitled to and I hope no one here is foolish enough to agree to your terms in the OP.

Chuck

[David Schwab]

Hi Russ,

I pretty sure I know what guitar you are referring too. I sure hope you are making them like the original New York made version, and not like the later ones. I always wanted one of those (the original version).

I'm vaguely familiar with the original pickup system, though I have never seen one in person. Certainly the original way of connecting the pickup system to the amp needed some rethinking. I don't know how the later ones were set up.

Does the consultant get one of these guitars?

[salvarsan]

I'm always interested when a novel guitar or pickup design appears if only because the common designs are, by now, technically boring and allow only minute elaborations in design execution.

Novel designs have a limited market. They often end up selling a mixture of cachet and exclusivity at a price well out of reach of most guitarists. Klein Electric, Auerswald, and Teuffel come to mind easily.

For pickups, one need only look at the limited market penetration by AGI-Lace irrespective of their merits.

Why is that? Most guitar players are at once very conservative and superstitious in their tastes. Seldom are they the sharpest tool in the shed. C'mon, you know it's true: too many guitarists actually believe in magic, AKA "mojo". They bow to the unknown and assume it is unknowable.

Mr. Rubman is asking for help with a novel guitar+pickup implementation that, by its self-evident novelty, excludes interest from at least 90% of existing guitarists.

I am so-o-o-o there.

[RedHouse]

....We would want the candidate to sign an NDA....The initial consultation would be unpaid ...

Well there's an old addage that fits this situation: "You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get"

Your criteria seems a bit steep asking for an NDA _and_ a free consultation, does your NDA stipulate it's only takes effect after payment is made? or are you just trying to get free advise and want to keep the consultants from discussing your venture with others?

Alloys International eh?, hey maybe Possum's your man, you guys could swap expertise as he's heavy into alloys and you need pickup help, just a thought.

[salvarsan]

Well there's an old addage that fits this situation: "You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get"

Your criteria seems a bit steep asking for an NDA _and_ a free consultation, does your NDA stipulate it's only takes effect after payment is made?

The NDA's purpose is obvious, but its rationale is less so. The guitar+pickup patent expired a little over 10 years ago and does not seem to have been renewed or reassigned. Issued in the 70's, the patent describes a novel design with a superior aesthetic.

We collective geniuses in the forum have amassed a great deal of pickup wisdom; anyone so informed here builds pickups from an understanding much greater than when Seymour Duncan started out in the 70's. To us, now, the novel pickup design is highly obvious.... but no one is building it.

If it goes back into production, absent a patent or NDA, it has no protection.
How fast do you think the Chinese can clone something once they know about it? Fast enough to beat the originator to market, I think.

Therefore, any professionally involved practitioner should be reasonably expected to shut his fucking piehole in the interests of achieving market share and getting paid. This is an unsubtle chain of inference when reflecting upon the dismal economy.

Free consultation?

He didn't say how much of a consultation. A small free sample proves you have the goods.

Accordingly, I did some rough magnetic modeling with my magnetic modeler, cooked some coil winding estimates with my coil estimator, and emailed out some conjectures and pretty pictures, y'know: stuff I can do without breaking a sweat.

Last edited by RedHouse; Today at 11:11 AM. Reason: made post more PC.

How disappointing.

Here in the PMF, you should be able to sling shit when you feel like it.

[RedHouse]

How disappointing.

Here in the PMF, you should be able to sling shit when you feel like it.

Due'ly noted Capt'n.

[big_teee]

Sounds like you guys got it covered!
When Can I expect to see one of these at GC?
Good Luck!
Terry

[salvarsan]

Due'ly noted Capt'n.

So?

Where's the shit?
C'mon, dish it, d0oD.

[sashua]

Well Well Well,
Quite the shitstorm of criticism.

An NDA is smart for any new company trying to protect it's intellectual property. Anyone that doubts this is either uninformed or just plain ignorant.

As far as my expectation of a "Free Consultation" - since none of you know what this request actually entails I think the word "presumptive" should apply to the critic in this case...and not the criticized. None of you know me but I can assure you that amassing dozens of free consultations was not my angle...the "consultation" was only meant to be a brief talk to assess the ability of the designer to accomplish the goal. How many self respecting engineers would actually do design work and hand it over without a fair contract in hand? Only the stupid ones...is that really the average self worth factor here :-)

As far as the critics who believe that guitarists are ALL creatures of habit that bow down before the Gods of mystical Mojo, aged wood, 40 year old magnets and the like - I BELIEVE YOU ARE WRONG and since we still live in a country where discourse is encouraged, I think my posting was justified. For the critics that believe a typical high end guitar buyer wants a Chinese knockoff for a third the price, I have a Gucci handbag for your wife. I got it on a streetcorner in New York City and I am quite sure she will love it. You get what you pay for.

Russ

[sashua]

"Where's the shit?"
"Dish it d0od?"

I think maybe the internet might be the wrong place to attract forward-thinking design engineers to a legitimate, paying business proposal.

My apologies to all.

[big_teee]

"Where's the shit?"
"Dish it d0od?"

I think maybe the internet might be the wrong place to attract forward-thinking design engineers to a legitimate, paying business proposal.

My apologies to all.

sashua:
Don't be so Sensitive!
I really thought the guys were being pretty gentle with you.
This is a discussion forum. We discuss things, some good some bad.
The dish it dood, was between fellow forum members.
Just relax and let things take its course.
Getting worked up and excited won't help.
Like I said we discuss things here.
Peace,
Rock On!
Terry

[jason lollar]

Some of you guys are so funny!
That was a legitimate design job being offerred. I dont usually charge a fee to look at a set of drawings- I could but I usually dont if its presented the right way. Takes 10 minutes to look at the drawings- usually. If its a whole packet of technical notes and its going to take an hour to read it then you say something before you do and you negotiate a fee for it. The last job I turned down before this had patent notes and probably 50 pages of technicalese.
Read your non disclosure agreements carefully but they are very common to use.
Once you look at the drawings if you feel you can do something with it, give them a little clue and thats your initial consultation. if its a quicky like that I usually dont charge or if its something I dont want to do or dont have anything additional to offer to forwarding the project- I dont charge for it.
In this case I said if you are willing to make a little change here at XYZ I can help them as I have a similar design I have already developed over the years. I also pointed out a couple possible problems with what they had proposed and let them know there were some aspects I was not familiar with how it would work. So I went a little farther than the minimum but I always do that. They want to explore a different avenue before they make a change like that.
My idea is if I can help someone in the most efficient way where I dont have to do alot of R+D work i would do that before I made anyone commit to alot of tooling up and testing. I dont have much time in my schedule to sell to other people for tooling and testing- I have my own ongoing R+D so I am really selective and cautious about what I commit to.
The last job I just finished up did involve alot of tooling and testing and it was really time consuming and expensive. It took several prototypes before we got a satifactory working model that did everything it was hoped to do. the prototypes required lathe, mill and sheetmetal work. I bet i made 50 complete pieces- I cant tell you what it was though but a large sample was needed to test them correctly. They got a whole set of working prototypes, all the drawings for every part, names of places to have the parts made and sources for all the materials, metalurgical analysis and autocad files ready for programming into CNC machines.
Simple.

[Mark Hammer]

While I would not describe the guitar market as "conservative" or unadventurous, let's just say it is VERY benchmark-driven, with the majority of buyers attracted by the highly familiar, and the milestones of the idiom. I've followed the area for 35 years now, and have seen a great many innovations come and go. In some cases, these innovations have commanded respectable prices in aftermarket sales, but unless the originator bought them all up cheap for e-bay resale, they tend not to see a dime of that. And of course we would all be fools to ignore the reality that in spite of all the changes we've collectively seen, 100's of thousands of guitars that are essentially miniscule variations on largely unchanged mid-1950's designs, are sold every year to people who are very satisfied and unlikely to be pining away for something "different". There is a difference between respect from peers...and sales figures.

That's not any sort of recommendation to give up. Rather, it is simply encouragement to be prudent about the potential market and its lifespan, and what represents a wise investment of time, energy, and money, versus a waste. I fully understand that in some instances, and for some people, the personal attachment to seeing the product innovation through to the end is a very powerful magnet; it just shouldn't bankrupt or depress one when the outcome is modest or only quietly received.

But then, Russ' original post was meant to appeal to, and attract, potential consultants, and should not be interpreted as any sort of delusion about market potential.

[David Schwab]

I didn't think there was anything wrong with his proposition. Seemed reasonable to me.