Tele bridge base plates... why?

[Possum]

Thanks for the info Jason. If I remember right the oldest Tele bridge magnets were .630" length. I had my friend's Nocaster pickup here for a year and measured off that.
FWIW, I was on a train that went 35 MPH once and the air got sucked right out of the cabin, they had to slow down or we all woulda died ;-)

[Jim Shine]

By the time Leo go to the Strat he probably realized that the metal shielding on the Tele didn't do that much.

I just remembered that initially Leo wanted to put anodized aluminum pickguards on Strats. He liked the look and the shielding, but everyone that came in tested the guitars had their hands turn black after minutes of play. Only after switching to white and proceeding with the model he figured out you could clear them, so he used them on everything for a while. The revised P-bass, the Musicmaster/Duo-Sonic, the Jazzmaster, and the electric mandolin. People then complained the clear wore off, so they went back to plastic, but with a full aluminum shield plate behind them.

He also figured out hum cancelling in that era and anything new design with more than 1 coil was made reverse wound/reverse polarity.

[Possum]

Hum cancelling was already being used in electronics, its where Seth Lover learned it. I've seen very early Kay guitars that had hum cancelling in the middle position that predate Leo and others, I found patents going back to the 30's that describe hum cancelling of coils. Good thing Leo dumped the aluminum pickguards, aluminum is a poison and does very freaky things to human brains.

[David King]

aluminum is a poison and does very freaky things to human brains.

People have been blaming aluminum kettles and pans for Alzheimer's for generations with absolutely no proof of anything. Perhaps the eddy currents are sapping their critical faculties?

[Possum]

Aluminum poisoning is well known, people who do dialysis are prone to it for some reason, for a time I was using a nutritional supplement I had some weird symptoms from, it made my kidneys hurt every time I tried it so did some research and found out it had very high levels of aluminum in it, (makes your kidneys hurt). Luckily I had only taken it a few days and quit immediately. But during that time I did a lot of reading about aluminum toxicity and poisoning and people who were using that product were showing symptoms like their fingernails turning black, and whats known as "aluminum intoxication," with the symptoms being extreme hypersensitivity to social contacts in a negative way, and delusional thinking. Aluminum is abundant in the earth and is used in water treatment but is removed before the water comes out your tap. It acts to turn contaminants into sediment during water treatment. The FDA view of course is that some aluminum can't hurt you, but there's too much evidence contrary to that. There's a town in the UK if I remember right where high levels of aluminum were mistakenly dumped into the city water supply maybe 15 years ago or so, and everyone was exposed to it. Some people living there are beginning to show signs of dementia who are only in their 30's. Unfortunately the worst effects take years to show up and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it once symptoms show up. Some info here, there's tons of valid arguments for avoiding aluminum as much as you can:
Elevated Serum Aluminum Levels in Hemodialysis Patients Associated with Use of Electric Pumps --- Wyoming, 2007
Aluminum Toxicity: A misdiagnosed epidemic (Part 1) By Ingri Cassel

[David Schwab]

I just remembered that initially Leo wanted to put anodized aluminum pickguards on Strats. He liked the look and the shielding, but everyone that came in tested the guitars had their hands turn black after minutes of play. Only after switching to white and proceeding with the model he figured out you could clear them, so he used them on everything for a while. The revised P-bass, the Musicmaster/Duo-Sonic, the Jazzmaster, and the electric mandolin. People then complained the clear wore off, so they went back to plastic, but with a full aluminum shield plate behind them.

He also figured out hum cancelling in that era and anything new design with more than 1 coil was made reverse wound/reverse polarity.

I have a '59 Jazzmaster with the gold anodized pick guard.

[Jim Shine]

Hum cancelling was already being used in electronics, its where Seth Lover learned it.

That is great and all, but at that time Gibson had an eye on Fender. Seth could have invented many things, but did not have the final say of what went into production. In that era, Gibson was more interested in taking Fenders ideas, and trying to do them better. But that really isn't progressive thinking.

[Mark Hammer]

Feel free to correct me if I'm way off here, but one needs to distinguish between the pickup and what it's directed at "picking up".

Lap steels generally have shorter scales, and heavier-gauge strings tuned to a much higher tension so as to avoid "sag" when applying a slide bar. here is also the manner in which the tone produced by a higher-mass slide bar differs from a finger in a slender fret embedded in a wooden neck. The higher tension, shorter scale, thicker strings, and different "fretting mass" produce a tone that has a much different relationship between fundamental and harmonics than found on a longer scale fretted guitar like a Tele. In a sense, maybe the baseplate is a means to produce what comes naturally to a lap steel on a solid slab-body fretted guitar.

[David Schwab]

That is great and all, but at that time Gibson had an eye on Fender. Seth could have invented many things, but did not have the final say of what went into production. In that era, Gibson was more interested in taking Fenders ideas, and trying to do them better. But that really isn't progressive thinking.

What Gibson wanted to do was have features Fender didn't. So they got humbuckers with adjustable poles because Fender had neither. Seth didn't even want adjustable poles, but because Fender didn't have them, the marketing people insisted on it.

[Possum]

Yeah Seth never had final say, his design was never produced as he conceived it. His design was a double slug coil humbucker and they forced him to add adjustable pole screws. In one interview he seemed rather pissed off about it still. Gretsch had their Filterton humbucker and one thing I read from one of that era sources was that Gibson told Seth they wanted him to make something like Gretsch was using (a humbucker). Its difficult to know the actual truth because of the egos involved, Les Paul always took credit for building the first solid body electric guitar when there is ample proof that wasn't true, even the Les Paul wasn't his actual design, he was just asked to endorse it with his name. The histories of that period are fascinating to read, there were several books written by those at Fender directly involved, but I don't know of any Gibson histories written by participants, probably because Fender was more a family style operation, Gibson was more corporate style.

[Mike Sulzer]

Yeah Seth never had final say, his design was never produced as he conceived it. His design was a double slug coil humbucker and they forced him to add adjustable pole screws...

But that did not stop him from designing a product that came as close to canceling hum as allowed by relatively sloppy winding techniques. Obviously you cannot make the magnetic sensitivities of the cores in the two coils too different, but you are helped by the fact that high permeability in the material means that the cancellation is not affected much by some difference in the material in the two coils. This is an advantage of the magnetic path: short open cores and the high reluctance of the part of the path that is air.

[David Schwab]

...even the Les Paul wasn't his actual design, he was just asked to endorse it with his name.

And the couple of things Les specified, they got wrong! The strings were supposed to go over the trapeze tailpiece so he could palm mute, and they had them going under, and the Les Paul Custom was supposed to have the maple top, while the gold top was supposed to be all mahogany.

Here's Les' design for his recording models. Les did not like the carved top on the LPs.

[big_teee]

And the couple of things Les specified, they got wrong! The strings were supposed to go over the trapeze tailpiece so he could palm mute, and they had them going under, and the Les Paul Custom was supposed to have the maple top, while the gold top was supposed to be all mahogany.

Here's Les' design for his recording models. Les did not like the carved top on the LPs.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]19841[/ATTACH]

I think the Chicken Head Knobs are cool on the Guitars.
T

[copperheadroads]

I think the Chicken Head Knobs are cool on the Guitars.
T

I knew a guy that had the nicname "Chicken Head"......Boy He would get pissed when you would call him that
..Being the agitator I was ,I'm probably on his list ...

[David Schwab]

I think the Chicken Head Knobs are cool on the Guitars.
T

Me too!