Seymour's new cryo-silver pickup

[David King]

At what frequency is skin depth an issue, -and how do we define skin depth? I remember something about it but apparently I've got it all wrong.

Magnut, you can change your name to Wirenut as soon as you coat the wire with nail lacquer using a Q-tip. I have some silver plated wire from way back and it tarnished badly after a few decades.

[frankfalbo]

I do not think that anyone has demonstrated that there are any advantages to silver wire at all.

Thanks for clearing that up for us. For a minute we thought it had sonic and conductive advantages. I guess we forgot to put a 500 ohm resistor on the end, rendering it identical to a copper coil. Silly us.


What did you call it? Snark?

[Mike Sulzer]

Thanks for clearing that up for us. For a minute we thought it had sonic and conductive advantages. I guess we forgot to put a 500 ohm resistor on the end, rendering it identical to a copper coil. Silly us.


What did you call it? Snark?

Conductive advantage? What are you talking about? You have not shown that reducing the resistance by a small amount has a sonic advantage. And if it does, you have not shown that it cannot be achieved better by a less expensive approach. The dc resistance is one factor that determines the height and width of the resonant peak. It can also play a role at lower frequencies if eddy current losses are large enough. So what? There are various ways of altering the circuit parameters in a pickup.

[copperheadroads]

A very special pickup for a very special guitar .........Very nice
I hope to hear it sometime

[Mike Sulzer]

At what frequency is skin depth an issue, -and how do we define skin depth? I remember something about it but apparently I've got it all wrong.

Magnut, you can change your name to Wirenut as soon as you coat the wire with nail lacquer using a Q-tip. I have some silver plated wire from way back and it tarnished badly after a few decades.

David,

For a general description of skin depth, see this: Skin effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The fact that current tends to flow on the surface to the exclusion of the center at higher frequencies can be expressed in various ways. One useful parameter sometimes seen in tables is: Maximum frequency for
100% skin depth for solid conductor copper, for example here: American Wire Gauge table and AWG Electrical Current Load Limits with skin depth frequencies.
This frequency rises for decreasing wire size (smaller wire). For example 0000 wire has a frequency of 125 Hz. Above that frequency, you are effectively losing conductor area, and should consider using multiple conductors or some other more efficient geometry. For #40 is is 2.9 MHz, well above audio. For #38 it is 1.75 MHz, still well above audio. It is 21 KHz for #19, so you can see at what approximate wire size the issue becomes important for audio.

Skin depth also depends on Magnetic permeability, decreasing with increasing permeability. This is an issue, for example, when steel is used as a conductor.

[Joe Gwinn]

Conductive advantage? What are you talking about? You have not shown that reducing the resistance by a small amount has a sonic advantage. ...

Now Mike, you are being far too technical:

Think of the Marketing Advantage -- Silver wire must yield silver tones.

Hmm. So, silver-plated wire must yield silver-plated tone.

Never mind.

[David King]

Thanks Mike,
That's starting to make sense again.

Regarding the silver wire, isn't the insulation going to make more sonic difference than the wire? So many choices and only one shot at getting it right...

[salvarsan]

The Hunting Of The Snark

Now Mike, you are being far too technical:

Think of the Marketing Advantage -- Silver wire must yield silver tones.

Hmm. So, silver-plated wire must yield silver-plated tone.

Yes, and the beauty of silver-plated tone is only skin deep.

With any luck, this discussion will softly and suddenly vanish away...

for the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

[Rick Turner]

What if....just what if....these pickups happen to sound really good? So far the only person here who has heard them is Frank...whose ears I trust.

Disclaimer time...Frank also works with D-TAR in which I have a minor ownership interest.

And you all should see the outrage over these pickups on the Gear Page!

And just BTW, when I talked to high end cable designer George Cardas about my experimental Litz wire pickups, his explanation of why the low end sounded so good was that he though group delay...essentially the phase response...was improved with the Litz construction. Just repeating what a respected expert said...

[David Schwab]

I do not think that anyone has demonstrated that there are any advantages to silver wire at all. And now this is silver plated wire under discussion. It has even fewer advantages, especially considering that with this tiny wire, skin depth is not much of an issue an issue.

Of course none of us have wound any pickups with it either. You have to do that first and then deicide.

What I'm curious about is what made the most difference, the wire or the pole pieces. And why change both at the same time? Did one require the other, or did each add something to the tone?

[salvarsan]

... deicide.

De-icide?

Like, "God is dead and we killed him"?

What I'm curious about is what made the most difference, the wire or the pole pieces. And why change both at the same time? Did one require the other, or did each add something to the tone?

It's not the carrots that make the stew, but everything else included.

When I was tweaking stomp boxes, a collection of incremental changes gave the best results.

Experience trumps any received mythology about component mojo.
Put another way, magical ascriptions to components are just plain wrong.

The rule "never let well enough alone" serves you better than dogma
when it comes to experimentation.

Whether pickups or stomp boxes, it doesn't need to be an exact replica
using antique parts in order to sound good.

[Rick Turner]

What I love here and especially over at the Gear Page is that so many people give me such good reasons to be incredibly cynical. Everybody's talking 'bout it, and NOBODY but a very few...like Frank Falbo...have heard these things. Opinions are so strong...and are based on vapor.

How 'bout we all agree not to comment other than respectfully and inquiringly about whether this is worth doing until we all hear the pickups.

This is like discussing and commenting on the sound of a band you've never heard.

[ScottA]

Of course none of us have wound any pickups with it either. You have to do that first and then deicide.

What I'm curious about is what made the most difference, the wire or the pole pieces. And why change both at the same time? Did one require the other, or did each add something to the tone?

Exactly.

And this is a data-based opinion, not based on vapor.

I haven't worked with silver wire but I have worked with multiple copper gauges and pole piece materials within the same design platform, and my perspective would be that the influence of the pole piece on the tone would significantly outweigh the influence of the wire.

Not to say that the effect of the wire would necessarily be insignificant. That remains to be seen.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

*warning: rant*

What I love is that two pages ago I pointed out that this wire would need a good R&D process to know how it can be used - I don't doubt that it has great sonic capabilities, but none of us can know what that is until trying it. As Rick just said, Frank is the only one thus far who has heard it. Everyone told me I was just too dumb to understand how to use the wire... then everyone argues about what it would actually sound like, because there was no obvious answer! The egos on this board have gotten way out of control - it is like a competition of who can throw more mud. Too many good contributers have been scared away from this message board for that reason.

[Mike Sulzer]

What I love here and especially over at the Gear Page is that so many people give me such good reasons to be incredibly cynical. Everybody's talking 'bout it, and NOBODY but a very few...like Frank Falbo...have heard these things. Opinions are so strong...and are based on vapor.

How 'bout we all agree not to comment other than respectfully and inquiringly about whether this is worth doing until we all hear the pickups.

This is like discussing and commenting on the sound of a band you've never heard.

Actually, nobody who has just heard these things as a completed product has any idea what makes them sound the way they do because there are at least three things that might do it alone or in some combination. Well, I think we can argue that the wire is a minor effect at best. At least that is what some of us have been doing.

Sound of a band you have never heard? Well, if a band consisting of two banjos and a dobro was described as sounding like a full symphony orchestra, I would be more than a bit dubious. That is the same way I feel about silver wire. If true, prove it. Otherwise, be quiet.