Seymour's new cryo-silver pickup

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Oh, Steve... I just read something about Edison toasting animals with AC current to prove that it was more lethal than DC... so in a manner of speaking, maybe he DID try a ham sandwich as a filament!

[Mark Hammer]

Well, Benjamin Franklin apparently used live chickens as his "meter" for discharging his Leyden jar capacitors.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

At least Franklin was kosher...

[Steve Conner]

Dill Pickle Light Source

Pickles work, are they kosher?

[frankfalbo]

All right, I'm going to take a crack at replying, forgive me if I get a little cross, there are a lot of direct insults. I probably should leave this alone, but it's pretty personal and direct.

Pickup makers like S.D. used rather a trial and error method rather than a purely theoretical approach.

You don't know anything about our development process on the Zephyr pickups. And guess what? A "purely theoretical approach" has produced most of the garbage this industry has seen over the past 50 years. Just check out the basement at NAMM.

For the SD Invaders for example, the shape of the screws was said to "focus better" the magnetic field towards the strings.
BULL.

Here's what it says on our website about the Invader: "The wide magnetic field pumps power into your amp with a totally heavy sound." and guess what? I just checked the 1986 catalog framed on our wall and it says the exact same thing. Maybe somewhere in this company's past the word "focus" was used, but the term "focus" doesn't have to mean narrowing. It means "shape the magnetic field the way we want". The flanking magnets in the Invader DO focus the magnetic field BTW.

...those sleeved slugs are apparently a primitive method for FLUX FOCUSING, using a high permeability core with a lesser permeability sleeve. I find that particularly stupid and a waste of money. It may change the sound but it won't be "better".

So now you're the arbiter of "better"? Guess what, they did sound "better" so you're wrong.

It would even exagerate the problems between slugs while bending a string for example. Why focus the flux with slugs spaced as in TRADITIONAL pickups ?
SD should have used a sleeved blade or double the number of sleeved slugs and dispose them as in Carvin pickups

Yeah because Carvin pickups are so sought after. You're wrong again. It did not exagerate the "problem" as you call it between slugs. Furthermore, it's not a problem to many. If it were, every pickup would have a bar.

Flux focusing by means of sandwiching different sorts of soft magnetic materials is used in hard disk reading/writing heads and it's purpose if applied CORRECTLY in guitar pickups would be to have lesser cancellation going on , less leakage , a narrower portion of sensed strings etc
There's more flux focusing going on with a double blade humbucker single coild sized than with a P90, and without fancy technology. It seems SD prefers exotic materials as a palliative remedy for a lack of imagination in terms of radically new designs.

Again, focusing simply means causing the magnetic field to behave the way we want it to. It has nothing to do with your preconcieved notions about narrowing aperture. But now you're starting to launch personal attacks laced with assumption errors.

-silver wire: SD states it's pure silver. At 5.36% less conductivity than "copper" without any further precision, you can guess the silver isn't the highest electrical grade. But even pitch copper is sufficient, all this silver story is plain stupid.

Wow, you're really starting to sound mean. Not the kind of behavior we like to exibit here on the pickup makers forum. What if I think you're stupid? Should I say it here? What if I think you're just a bitter egghead who is pissed that these things sound as good as they do, and you didn't think of it so it must be stupid? Should I put that here too?

The supposed astonishing winding qualities of silver wire are greatly overhyped too. Silver is less ductile than gold but more than copper, malleable enough to get "thinned out in the middle" (elongated) if you pull too hard when winding by hand. Less breakage, yes, but far more deformation occurs if you're not careful and apply the wrong amount of pressure while winding the PU. But who cares? That's their production issues, it has nothing to do with TONE !!

I think our 30+ year veterans know how to wind a silver coil. But I'm glad you pointed out these potential pitfalls for the newbs reading this. Maybe these are problems you've had when winding silver wire pickups. Oh, wait, you haven't wound any silver wire pickups.

-nylon & "glass filled" composite bobbin: the only valid argument.

Wow, thanks!

This dielectic material is a very good insulator,resists very well to repeated abrasion, perhaps one of the most shock resistant bobbin materials used up to now. Concerning the changes in tone, it was once again I bet, a simple trial and error test with similar bobbins of the exact same dimensions and different materials that were used.
How "transparent" to magnetic flux is a given electrical insulator , is another question and has been debated many times. It changes the Q factor.
But I don't understand the contradictory arguments given by SD about microphonics.
First they charge a LOT for vintage NOS bobbins in butyrate or whatever cheapo plastic was used in the 50'-60's, claiming they give a special nice tone, then the Zephyr argument is that these plastics are crap ..and that nylon-glass is better because it dampens the microphonics .

Nope, just a different sound, best suited for these pickups. If anything, it validates the butyrate differential rather than discount it as you incorrectly assumed. We never said it was "better because it dampens microphonics" we just said that it sounded the best, AND was part of a minimizing microphonics recipe, assuming the pickups would be played unpotted.

The unpotted bobbins SD shows are a mistake. Exotic polymer composite bobbins, unpotted, won't save the day in front of a loud amp. (Unless they wanted to show the pickups on the website, prior to having them potted of course)

Do you know how many Antiquities and Seth Lovers we sell? There is a large market for unpotted pickups. We will pot the Zephyr's upon request, but Peter Stroud isn't having any trouble with them on the road right now.

-cryogenic treatment: a f***ing joke.

Then why does the same pickup sound different when it comes back from the cryo lab? The gauss strength is still identical so it's not that. Once again, I didn't realize you'd listened to these, or other cryo treated pickups. Oh that's right, you haven't.

Cryogenic treatment is used for grain refining for specific use. Installation and use in a guitar isn't one of them.

It is now. Guitar finishes were once chosen for looks and protection. Guess what? Now we look at them as having tonal implications. You could also say that certain guitar finishes were developed for the auto industry so they are misapplied as well.

Who knows, next, SD will claim that the freeze drying of the maple spacers will make them more "tonally effective" , that the solder is "further protected from oxidation".
It's VERY EASY to make up similar a similar sales pitch, there's enouh blabla going around in the pickup world.

I might, just to piss you off.

All this overhyped garbage sales arguments are starting to become annoying especially in the 1200$ per set range.

Wait till all the glowing reviews of the sound start to pour in. Then you'll really be pissed off. How will you ever be able to live with all the injustice? These pickups sound fantastic, no matter what some forum thread says.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Dill Pickle Light Source

Pickles work, are they kosher?

Is that the pilot light on your amps, Steve?

[Dave Kerr]

So Frank - when are we going to hear a demo of these? Is there an official release date in the offing?

[frankfalbo]

I was going to make one today, not sure if I'll have time. It's definitely risky business. You'll have all sorts of uncontrolled listening environments. What I was going to do is chop it into narrow bands, because then I could show visually and audibly things like how there's more content above 10k, etc. What makes it even riskier is that it doesn't include the "feel" difference. These pickups have a bouncy, bursty, extremely fast response. You'll never hear that in a clip because you have to be the one playing it to feel it. Its like trying to record latency. It can't be done. As for a ship date, a few have gone out but next the Seymour Duncan 35 guitars will consume 35 sets. That'll be a little hiccup in the delivery time. Then more will start to ship to dealers.

[Xaar]

Frankfalbo, there was no direct insult, just a general rant against the general mojo factor bull that's going on, whether it's happening in major PU companies or independant PU craftsmen.
Am I not allowed to say that I do not appreciate what a certain brand claims? Do you think I'm working for Carvin, Dimarzio , Lace or whatever other brand? They bull people too with similar arguments , and you know it well, and the consumer has the right to know what's going on.

1) The "focusing" wasn't a pitch coming from your site but from a foreign site explaining how your pickups (Invader) were better, and in general, you know that marketing is closely supervised by companies. A site selling and distributing products will not say "anything" just to sell if it contradicts the original sales pitch.

By the way, there's a lot of leakage with large screwheads, but it seems that the goal of that particular design was effectively to sense the broadest section of strings possible.

2)I guess, I guess...of course I'm guessing many things, no need to be Lorentz or Tesla. Suffices to have a scientific background and to have observed for years how pickup makers exchanged ideas and started to introduce new mojo elements coming from the hifi autoproclaimed audiophiles who sear by beeswax caps and other stupidities.

3) Your job is to check in music forums to see if people are not denigrating your products and also you're there to "take the temperature " and get inspiration from the ideas emanating from DIY people . For free, but charging 1200$ then. You're not the only one, this being said, FAR from it. But at 1200 bucks gee whiz man.

4)Don't even dare talking to me about cryo treatment, I'm no bull, please.
Cryo annealing or grain refining has nothing to do with freezing a magnet or a nylon bobbin or even silver wire.
If you wanted cryo treated wire, you'd buy from your supplier...some cryo treated wire. Not put an entire pickup at liquid nitrogen temperature, that is really really primitive and appealing only to ignorants who dwell ion the guitar world, those who have no clue,, at best read 3 lines on wikipedia and gobble up all the sales blabla

Why don't you cryo treat entore guitars with the pickup in them, tube amps too, you know, the whole gamut, all deep frozen to get some better "tone".
Put your hand in liquid nitrogen you may play better too, who knows!


5) this "all the time we spent in development" PLEASE: designing the number of turns, shape of the coil and choosing the bobbin material, I agree completely. But opting for ridiculous slugs, silver wire and cryo treatment can only appear in the mind of people who dwell on audiophile forums or read audiophile magazines.
These ideas are really old and can be gathered in a maximum of 5-20mn, chrono in hand, and you know it. I'm aware of this gimmick consisting in "years of painful development " as I read on some sites. It's to hide the truth.

6) I didn't listen to cryo pickups before,true, as I've still not listened to cryo treated guitar picks or guitars made from olivewood coming from the holyland, blessed by the pope himself.
It's once again the same sales gimmick you're giving: "you have to listen to it first".

If ever some zephyr models emphasize far more upper range harmonics let's say than an almost muddy pickup, you'll immediately claim it's due to silver and cryogenics, while the truth will be that the design of the coil will resemble that of similar tuned pickups such as a Screamin' Demon or a Custom custom for example.

7)"It is now. Guitar finishes were once chosen for looks and protection. Guess what? Now we look at them as having tonal implications." You said.
The tonal implications are minimal, since we're not into classical non-amplified instruments . As long as you don't have 1/2cm thick coating, and even then, look at Van Halen's butchered axes poorly repainted: he didn't have advanced luthier skills but his tone was GOOD.
Same thing with Paul Stanley from Kiss: his "broken mirror" guitars used a hell of a lot of glue but he had an excellent tone live with them.
The lutherie was top notch even if the coating wasn't always tone friendly according to lutherie mojo.

It's not the finish that will muddy the sound, it's more the cables, pickups and general poor setup (if it isn't just a sloppy playing technique) that will blur everything in far greater proportions. The 0.5% change due to a poly or nitro coating let's say will have NO impact despite what some luthiers and companies say.

8)"I might, just to piss you off."
Don't worry I won't get pissed off, I'm used to reading tons of similar jokes. At least your arguments are ALL directly lifted from silver,gold, cryo, beeswax& paper, handrolled plastic film caps etc audiophile preachers. No surprise.

Who knows the pickups will perhaps sound good, no doubt, but I bet they won't sound any different in terms of sound quality than most of your already more than decent sounding pickups available.
Going from standard grade copper to OFC to silver wire to (what you didn't use) ultra high purity silver.

9)Focusing is a vague term and when you say you prefer to "shape" the flux in your design development, it means that in some places you need it wide and in others more focused , nothing else.
But where it becomes idiotic is when the technique used resembles grossly that used in hard disks. If a design deviates a tad too much from the classical PAF, you know it won't sell as well, even if the sound is good, such as the parallel axis pu.
Thus you chose classic slug disposition and shape. Carvin pickups aren't the very best , I was merely talking about the dispostion of their screws, almost the double, disposed very closely as if it were a compromise between usual spacing and bar pickups.



Here's one interesting article for those who would like to read about hifi mojo and make their own opinion BY MAKING AFFORDABLE BLINDTESTS. One excellent article amongst others,still it's unfortunate that we don't see enough of these:

Speaker Wire MOJO

[Xaar]

Frankfalbo, one last thing: I agree completely with you when you say that music products based solely on theoretical behaviour of materials yielded some of the poorest results.

But that's what good engineering is all about: not basing a design solely on trial and error with little understanding of the phenomenons occuring, or solely on theory as can be seen in formula handbooks.
But surely not on mojo "word from mouth" unverified claims.

It seems in the music world , that engineering (or a simulacrum of engineering) is nowadays aiming often more at marketing tricks than anything else, recycling without end past designs with no real improvement.

[Rick Turner]

I would not use Edison for an example here...he tried literally thousands of filaments before he got the first successful light bulb. He said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. He was the pragmatist to end all pragmatists which may be why he didn't get along with his one time employee, Nikola Tesla.

I'm so gratified to know that I'll be able now to tell a good stereo system from a crappy one based on graphs in Stereo Review. What a waste of time it is to listen to stuff before passing judgment. I'm also so glad to see it inferred that all the possible relevant measuring techniques related to audio gear have finally been worked out. I guess science can just leave audio alone now and go deal with other problems. It's all perfect now, right?

Stereo still doesn't work, though...

[Rick Turner]

What are verified claims in a subjective field? Can you verify that Picasso was a better draftsman than Frank Lloyd Wright?

That people think it's OK to rip Seymour, Frank, Kevin and co a new one without listening to these pickups just blows my mind. Y'all have no idea what you're talking about until you listen. You're all up in your heads and you've left your hearts way behind. This is getting positively soul killing around here.

[Xaar]

Rick, you're using the same argument as Frankfalbo:

"you have to listen to it"

I already explained that if they would sound good (I don't see why they shouldn't, they have a similar design compared to previous buckers: maple spacers, nickel silver baseplate, classic dimensions, no unusual gauge for the wire, unpotted bobbins, classic magnet material and dimensions, nickel slugs)
Nothing new, besides the choice of silver (no audible difference I already heard thousand dollar cables before in HIFI boutiques, nothing special compared to a good quality 20 buck one) and sleeved slugs.


Do you need to listen to it to know there's nothing revolutionary?

It resembles that age old argument about some weird dudes called "bears" in slang who swear that you can't tell if the funky sh*t they're proposing you is cool or not since you refuse to "give it a try".

Salesman are like perverts they insist too much.
Now I never said they WERE pervs , I said "like".

Besides, I'm sure you didn't like that link about debunking audiophile myths in the hifi cable world: all you had to say about it was that you didn't appreciate the references in "stereo review" mag.
The article was all about comparisons in REAL blindtests and how some magazines were sometimes honest, sometimes not, depending on how much funds they received from the cable brands.

the guy is a true engineer and has no interest in bulling anybody, he doesn't sell chinese made cables and even explains how one cheapo cable didn't live up to the expectations.
Quite the contrary, this engineer even INCITES us to try and compare, instead of believe marketing ...and not to read reviews in "stereo review" or any other magazine, bypassing personal experience,as you falsely claimed the link I provided supposedly stated.

His conclusion was realistic and with no commercial intention: with sufficiently thick enough gauge, you could make HIFI speaker cables which could easily SURPASS existing mojo factor audiophile cables costing 1000's of $ , for a fraction of the cost, with simple electrical grade copper.
Without resorting to silver or exotic braidings that look cooler than they really sound

It's just that your "science" argument isn't valid. There' isn't ONE single scientific VALID paper to prove that cryogenic treatment of silver wire or even of a whole pickup (which is puerile, why not put the whole guitar to be treated too) improves sound in the human audible range.
It improves grain refinement in steel and other alloys, to improve mechanical wear and overall strength.

SD didn't discover any new exciting property of cryogenics, they just applied a most sought after and quite recent option that can be seen in "want lists" on audiophile crap forums and litterature.

Will SD offer paper oil caps costing 20bucks each in their guitars too ? Geeeeee

Science is very important to music nowadays and mojo factor it's greatest enemy, the latter being a true blackhole for our modest purses too.

Nothing to do with "leaving our hearts back and being negative" . It's just not accepting to hear bull you know what every day, that worsens as time goes by, and to see prices raise exponentially as a direct consequence of all that marketing.

PS: SD didn't "sweat 99% of the time" for a 1% inspiration as in Edison' example , since you're talking about it. Rapid reading of a few forums and voilą !!
I guess you're a buddy of SD's marketing department too in fact. OR a fan.

[Steve Conner]

Yes, this Xaar guy is too much of an objectivist even for around here.

I think engineers generally don't understand subjective fields. Where's the spec? How do you know it's going to work? I am an engineer myself, and the best way I have of understanding it is that subjective fields are stories. They have only the most tenuous connection to the physical objects caught up in them, which are basically props. Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater was, by all accounts, an utter pain to live in, but that didn't stop it becoming legendary, because its story was irresistible. Mercurial, world-famous architect builds ultimate summer cabin, disregarding patron's wishes completely for the sake of art.

Duncan's pickup has a great story too. Precious metals, space-age treatments, world-famous designer... It's going to sell. Not to engineers, but they're not really the target market. Lawyers have more money, and stories are their business, too.

Sure, stereo doesn't work. It requires a suspension of disbelief. Music has stories to tell too, altogether more intriguing than stories about different kinds of cables and tubes.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Can we ignore Xaar and start talking about the pickle pilot light again? I think I can get a gerkin into my Super Reverb...