Seymour's new cryo-silver pickup

[frankfalbo]

You can't compare a zephyr with a run out of the mill SD pickup...Take two IDENTICAL pickups and freeze ONE , leaving the other alone.

We did. And we did it with both silver wire and copper wire. We did it blind, too.

This is what I'm referring to when I talk about your assumptions. They are as flagrant and blatent as if I had said to you "When you woke up this morning, you should have taken a shower. Now you probably don't smell good" but the whole time, you knew that you DID take a shower this morning and you are clean. What do I do when my accuser is not only wrong, but reaching conclusions based on invented premises?

I didn't complain about you as you have suggested. I reported your post that was 90% vulgar, off topic smut that I don't think belongs on a pickup makers forum. You can hate on Zephyrs, silver, and cryo all you like.

[Xaar]

Because you've left out the chance to discover differences that could occur for reasons other than increased conductivity. You've made a decision about what it will sound like
[...]
It is like archaeologists measuring skulls in the 19th century to prove the superiority of the white race among humans.
[...]
You're no Odysseus, dude. You're more Dwight from The Office.

It's very interesting that you mention this, because famous scientists often started their experiments with AN IDEA or a GOAL already in mind!!
The great discoveries they made sometimes contradicted what they initially thought.
Not everyone was right from the beginning. any history of science books shows this very well.

Amusing again, now that you compare me to a nazi scientist. I'm well aware of their pseudo-scientific garbage, which consisted for some to fill some cleaned skulls with marbles,sand, liquids etc trying to quantify the cranial volume of the cortex , cheating of course while taking the largest skull available of a white adult "german" male and a relatively small adult male "african" skull. Biased.

The same way a car company, a nutritional supplement company(read my post about the "Flex magazine syndrome" ) a hifi company or even a pickup company will provide fake tests since they're supposed to sell a maximum of their products.
Why should Seymour Duncan denigrate their own Zephyrs and say "hell guys, the most expensive upgrade is only 0.5%-2% better than the lowest entry model and isn't really worth the 1000% increase in price"
In fact there aren't really low entry models, so basically they're all good models more or less, nothing "out of this earth" that would make you forget all their other models.

Truth doesn't sell, everyone on these forums knows it. It's like a golden rule.
Some elements are good to reveal to the public while others are bet kept...hidden.

So please stop repeating 50 times the same thing about my proposition of doing honest blindfolded AB tests bien "asinine" according to you.

I told you already my name wasn't Odysseus, it's "Nobody".

You're the second member on this forum to imagine me as a fat coca cola nacho eating couch potato geek.
You guys better stop looking in the mirror, you'll end up thinking every human on the planet has the same face as you, a bit like in the flick "Being John Malkovich" , in fact the "Dwight from the office" you're describing is yourself.

I was joking with the Odysseus quote, but you couldn't understand even that, which shows that there's really nothing funky going on with you, Kikuchiyo.

[Xaar]

We did. And we did it with both silver wire and copper wire. We did it blind, too.

This is what I'm referring to when I talk about your assumptions. They are as flagrant and blatent as if I had said to you "When you woke up this morning, you should have taken a shower. Now you probably don't smell good" but the whole time, you knew that you DID take a shower this morning and you are clean. What do I do when my accuser is not only wrong, but reaching conclusions based on invented premises?

I didn't complain about you as you have suggested. I reported your post that was 90% vulgar, off topic smut that I don't think belongs on a pickup makers forum. You can hate on Zephyrs, silver, and cryo all you like.

The post you're talking about, a joke I pulled in fact, wasn't the only post removed. And you know it too.
Two posts were removed instantly with warnings.
Including my initial post on the subject which didn't contain any personal insults whatsoever.

I would like to believe your personal test, but my personal experience made me stop believing in Santa Claus when I was a kid.
Especially i that range of price, how could one base his purchase solely on the chie designer's opinion who says it's fantastic??

I'm sorry but as long as I don't read one day in a materials engineering book that cryo treated magnet wire delivers more high frequencies and are subject to fewer losses, I won't change opinion.

Your "invented premises" , let's talk about them: you expect me to take them as a joke,which they are, but with an insulting tone... but when I joke in return, you report immediately two posts of mine to the mod like a crybaby.
That's not what I call equal treatment.

Nothing personal, be sure of it, let's leave it at this point.

[frankfalbo]

So if I understand you correctly, if you heard the difference with your own ears, you would believe the textbook?

[Xaar]

You're one salesman you

I think that after all these posts you know exactly what I mean, no need to turn things around endlessly.

If I had to choose , for a structural project, between two steel alloys for example, one that costs almost nothing and let's say another one that's just been developed a few months ago in Japan for cutlery and guns, I'd first wait until the first independent lab tests come out before ordering anything for a given design.

If I was a metal alloy supplier specialized in electrical conductors and decided to sell to YOU some special alloy wire that I alone would claim is produced in a specific manner such that it would outclass silver by let's say 10-15% (let's say a worldwide exclusivity) you would be intrigued and excited at first (which would be normal) and perhaps you would like to order a small spool or two.
If I told you such a spool is worth 25000 bucks, would you buy it to make some tests? I'm sure you would NOT...not until you read positive reviews, I mean positive VALIDATED reviews coming fom independant labs, just for confirmation.

No one can make a leap of faith making such a risky investment only by hearing "word from mouth"!

You shouldn' worry, rich lawyers don't surf too much on the web before buying expensive custom guitars& pickups, they're too busy drinking an old cognac with a chick on their lap

[salvarsan]

So if I understand you correctly, if you heard the difference with your own ears, you would believe the textbook?

Here's one for the Sunday crossword:

doc·tri·naire Adjective /däktrəˈner/
Seeking to impose a doctrine in all circumstances without regard to practical considerations.

Why attempt to reason with someone whose position was not reached by reasoning?
Some people come to forums with intent to pick a fight; they are a waste of time and life.

In a few weeks, you and SD will have reaffirmed your street cred as innovators in a mature medium, while an obnoxious detractor won't even be a memory.

[LtKojak]

In a few weeks, you (Frank Falbo) and SD will have reaffirmed your street cred as innovators in a mature medium, while an obnoxious detractor won't even be a memory.

Amen!

[Mike Sulzer]

To get back to engineering and science discussion:

For that matter you could say a parametric EQ on copper could get the "same" sound as silver. But it can not replicate the lightening fast rise time, or the early envelope dynamics.

I am not saying that a parametric EQ would do the job, but if you did duplicate the frequency and phase response, then that would duplicate "the lightening fast rise time" and "the early envelope dynamics" if
1. the circuit is linear
2. small enough so that propagation effects do not matter.

(2.) is certainly true, and it is hard for me to believe that (1.) is not since we are not dealing here with the geometry of the string in the steady magnetic filed, but with the circuit properties of the coil, etc.

I would think it much more likely that you could do this equalization with a pickup than with acoustic guitars. That is, it should be much more difficult to make one acoustic guitar sound like another with equalization techniques.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

How can one dumbass be so arrogant? It boggles the mind.

[Steve Conner]

Mike, are you sure about the linearity? It seems to me that the early envelope dynamics, etc. are when the string's amplitude is greatest, so any non-linearities from the magnetic part of the transducer, due to spatial non-uniformity of the field lines, would be noticeable there.

Maybe those bimetallic cryo-treated slugs produce some kind of multi-layered mojo-rich forcefield with undertones of raspberries and road tar, or whatever.

I noticed in the specs for 440C stainless that it actually recommends cryo treatment.

This thread is like a car wreck. I can't not look. And I'm actually thinking, hmm, maybe I could afford a single Strat one... Hey SD, want to send me one for a delightfully biased glowing review?

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Agazziz and co long preceeded the nazis, and were independent of the 19th century aryan movement, which was revived in post war Germany ultimately becoming the nazi movement.

How a pickup sounds is the single most important datum in pickup making. If you really gave a *#&^$ about "science", you'd actually listen to them.

"You guys better stop looking in the mirror, you'll end up thinking every human on the planet has the same face as you, a bit like in the flick "Being John Malkovich" , in fact the "Dwight from the office" you're describing is yourself."

Dude, did you really just say that? Really? You've degraded yourself to "I know you are but what am I!"... the amazing legal perecent of Pee-Wee Herman.

I'm taking Salvarsan's advice and blocking you. I wish the moderators would just boot you off, but I'm not a moderator so I'll just get you out of my face.

Oh, and I'm funkier than you'll ever know.

[Mike Sulzer]

Mike, are you sure about the linearity?

Well, bbsailor has correctly pointed out that the string moves through a spatially changing magnetic field, generating a significant level of harmonics, especially just after picking. Thus the time varying flux passing through the coil contains harmonics not present in the string vibration. This induces voltage around the coil loops, and current flows depending on the circuit elements of the coil system and the external load. But this latter part of the process should be incredibly close to linear. Thus the frequency and phase response also determine the transient response.

[Steve Conner]

Yes, I agree that the latter part of the process is linear. I think the other part is where the mojo is hiding. Maybe SD's use of multi-layered metals of different permeabilities gives the magnetic field a weird shape that makes the thing sound good. I can see how that would correlate to the claims of "jumpy", "bursty" and so on.

The regular Lemme kind of "pickup analyzers" can't measure this at all. You would need some kind of mechanical device that actually waggled a simulated string.

[Mike Sulzer]

Yes, I agree that the latter part of the process is linear. I think the other part is where the mojo is hiding. Maybe SD's use of multi-layered metals of different permeabilities gives the magnetic field a weird shape that makes the thing sound good. I can see how that would correlate to the claims of "jumpy", "bursty" and so on.

The regular Lemme kind of "pickup analyzers" can't measure this at all. You would need some kind of mechanical device that actually waggled a simulated string.

I see; that is a very interesting possibility. Modeling with FEMM should show that since it can handle cylindrical geometry.

[Mark Hammer]

I hadn't checked in to this thread for a little while and hadn't realized how heated and downright antagonistic it had become.

I think it bears noting that SD will continue to proudly sell all their other pickup models that do NOT use silver wire, without any apology or embarrassment whatsoever. So I think one should not interpret the silver/cryo combo as some sort of proclamation that everything else is crap. It's an experiment that seemed to have worked out and will benefit a limited, though grateful, market niche.

One should neither exaggerate or otherwise inflate the sonic differences, nor brush them away with a wave of the hand. The market niche for this is small enough that Frank and his colleagues have little or no incentive to be deluded into thinking they hear something not really present, or deceive anyone into thinking they hear it. I can see wads of $500-800 guitars coming out with standard SDs in them, but I'm not seeing wave after wave of guitars produced with these silver/cryo babies stock.

I am certainly well aware of the very many ways that humans can be tricked into thinking they perceived something not there, and boy oh boy is the audiophile world ever rife with that sort of nonsense (here I concur with Xaar, as will many, I expect). But frankly, the inducements to be tricked so seem rather sparse here. That does not mean the actual sonic differences are sufficient to justify the extra outlay and entice buyers, OR alternatively that those who are enticed won't be hearing more than Frank does (it's their nickel, after all, not his).

One of my kids has "Zephyr" as a middle name. He's bright, sweet, and a little different than other kids, and has cost us more than his older brother. But I think he's worth it.