Minimum change in winds for perceivable change in tone

[frankfalbo]

Turn count is a tonal and amplitude modifier. Don't forget with Yngwie, its also a matter of output. He wanted more output than he got from the Dimarzios, but at a certain point, hard pick attack is more garbled by comparison to the hammer ons and smoother, more fluid playing, and that's simply a function of the gain structure, and where the gain is happening in the chain. In other words, whatever fraction of a decibel 100 turns produces at the pickup could be enough to skew the final outcome, without having much impact on the actual "tone" signature. I have perfect pitch too, but I don't think it helps me with amplitude judgement in isolation. I can hear gain changes and their net effect on clipping, as well as isolate whether the change is really just gain or if its accompanied by an alteration in frequency content, and that might have something to do with perfect pitch, in that I have good frequency memory. But you probably hit the nail on the head when you said with Yngwie it's also a matter of memory. He's been playing the same basic rig for 30 years.

We had a similar experience with Slash, but different in that there is a tonal shift between the AIIPro and the AIIPro Slash. He had the Derrig LP there, and a bunch of other Les Pauls loaded with Alnico II Pros, and the Slash prototypes, although wound with different wire and techniques, were all within a few hundred turns of one another. Oddly enough, the two he liked were on the far end of the spectrum regarding turn count, but the wind and wire were different. So what you had was a lower output pickup vs. a higher output pickup, but they both had the same basic midrange tonal footprint, and both were tonally shifted vs. the original AIIPro in the same manner. Imagine the AIIPro was red, and both AIIPro Slash prototypes were orange, but one light orange, the other darker orange. The Derrig Les Paul is an extremely loud and resonant guitar acoustically. So while we captured the tonal footprint in both of the prototypes, it was the louder of the two that made his playing experience with the other LP's behave like the Derrig. So in his case output and tone were isolated. I think in Yngwie's case, he was vacillating between the two in tandem.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

You have perfect pitch Frank? I hate you.

Seriously, I always associated the phenomenon of perfect pitch with the ability to basically hold sounds in your head. I might also be confusing musical talents - I'm also thinking of the ability of some people to simply hear a song and then play it/transcribe it. If your head works well enough to keep track of the pitches/rhythms/harmonies that well, I imagine it would be a bit better than others in remembering tonalities. You don't think that is so? Maybe I just need to read up on "perfect pitch" a bit more.

Good point on Yngwie - he knows the Marshall Plexi/Fender Strat thing as well as anyone. Having his own signature line helps too - gives you a bunch of off the rack instruments that while may not be consistent or all up to what he wants, they are all familiar to him.

[Mark Hammer]

Everybody has some degree of perfect pitch memory, just the way everybody has some degree of photographic memory. If you've listened to the same tracks on an album in the same order enough times, it's easy for even the most non-musical person to "hear" the next track in perfect pitch before it starts. Happens all the time. Same way you can flip through a book or magazine and "see" in your mind's eye that the thing you are interested in was right underneath a picture in the upper right hand corner of the page ion the left side.

The difference between those who can claim to have perfect pitch, and those who have snippets of it is analogous to the difference between those people who can remember a fact completely out of context (Who was Jimmy Carter's vice-president?) and those who need some assistance or context to recall ("What's the name of Egypt's former President? It starts with an M. Has 3 syllables.").

And yes, Frank, I think you are spot on with respect to what permits a guy like Malmsteen to be able to hear small differences in pickups on HIS guitar with HIS rig.

[frankfalbo]

I hate you.

But I like you.

Seriously, I always associated the phenomenon of perfect pitch with the ability to basically hold sounds in your head. I might also be confusing musical talents - I'm also thinking of the ability of some people to simply hear a song and then play it/transcribe it. If your head works well enough to keep track of the pitches/rhythms/harmonies that well, I imagine it would be a bit better than others in remembering tonalities. You don't think that is so? Maybe I just need to read up on "perfect pitch" a bit more.

That's why I think it helps with shifts in the frequency spectrum but I can't say it helps with amplitude. I'm getting better, but right now if you gave me a straight clean boost blind and told me to guess how many dB I'd be hard pressed. I also think some days I'd think 6dB was 4dB, and some days I'd think it was 8dB. Unless the next thing is saturating. Then I can use the distortion characteristics to pin it down. But if a mild mid hump centers at 650hz and it moves to 600hz I can hear that, and also call out the approximate frequencies. That's related to perfect pitch but its definitely learned, and it's not related to pitch itself. In other words I don't hear a resonant peak, then say "That's an Eb" and then do the math in my head to determine what frequency that is. I just know what frequency bands sound like. I think pitch memory is part of that, but I know people without perfect pitch that can do the same thing just from experience.

Mark as for pitch memory amongst the non-musical, I'd say in my experience the opposite is true. I've worked with a bunch of singers that are great singers, and hold pitch accurately when they are singing, but literally seconds after the music stops, they're humming or singing the tune in a different key. These are seasoned musicians. So maybe the non-musical person could hear a characteristic shift whether a song was sped up or slowed down, but not call out when the pitch was matched on a piano, or start singing the song in key. For me pitch isn't dependent on any outside source. Its more like a nerve. Like you'd know if someone was touching you on the back, or the arm, face, hand, etc. Pitch hits me like that. G always feels like G.

[peskywinnets]

I can hear a difference down to three windings (& I can say which way north/south the guitarist is facing) ....mind you there was only ten windings on the pickup to start with!! (shurely there mush be shum mishtake - ie shouldn't we be talking about % change in windings vs a discernible difference?)

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Mark - I missed your original point. I agree completely. That is why I'm so interested in hearing everyone's opinions... I'm hoping that by considering a multitude of opinions we can have a good mental picture. I thought you were going in a more empirical, EE direction... nevermind.

Okay Frank, I guess we can be friends if you give me ear training lessons. The way you're talking about resonance tells me you might have some experience tuning drums? Percussion instrument junkies have entirely different ears. I think I learned more about how to listen talking cymbals with some guys than anywhere else... but I digress.

Would it be absurd to wonder if the brain processes amplitude and frequency/waveform in slightly different ways? The way Frank describes his own ears it seems plausible. Heck, maybe we process sound as MIDI!

[Mark Hammer]

Yep, I'm not disputing that people CAN hear such differences, but context is everything. Can people hear a pin drop on a granite floor in an otherwise silent room? You betcha. Can they hear it in a noisy nightclub? Obviously not.

So, there will be some circumstances where a given individual, with a given knowledge of a given type of pickup, used under given circumstances, can hear tonal and perhaps level differences as a result of a small number of winds. But outside of those parameters, fuggedaboudit. The untutored novice user may be able to hear tonal differences with as few as 600-700 turns under "normal" conditions (e.g., in a music store), but anything smaller will be completely lost on them.

I think it is also safe to say that at a certain point, differences in the number of winds start to translate into differences in degree of coloration resulting from the amp, and are not exclusively tonal differences in the pickup itself. So people can certainly hear it, but what they hear is something more than the pickup.