Zexcoil pickups

[ScottA]

Just buy 'em from me. It's a lot cheaper in the long run, trust me!

Scott, thanks for chiming in on the discussion. Love what you're doing and the wealth of information that you share on your website. You lay it out there for everyone to see and come to their own conclusion. My previous comment was not aimed at you. To finish my thought on the use of plots.... because the plotting equipment is so inexpensive, prevalent use of plots by manufactures would make the industry self policing. Plus the software and electronics are easily accessible to anyone who is motivated enough to assemble a plot device.

There's a guy a few years back who did quite a bit of multi coils experimentation and produced a wealth of plots, I think his name was Johan Forrer

Experimental noise-canceling pickup

I think his work with individual coil forms correlates to your pickup work in that individual coils peak resonance character can almost effortlessly reach 8K plus range and beyond. It's easy to see how your pole design eliminated the between string sound notch of the double coil pickup and allowed for more optimum use of individual coilforms to produce greater/lesser output. I know you can't comment for legal reasons but from your patent drawings I'd guess that you're using a neodymium and magnetic shunt to produce the Alnico magnetic pattern around the pole slugs. Actually all this is just a long way of say I'm so hyped by all these ideas kinda coming together that I'll probably try and mock up a set of pickups styled like your's...personal use only mind you. Hope you feel imitation is the best form of flattery, I just hope my ideas actually result in an interesting pickup. Oh BTW, I found an old spool of 44Ga wire that I had stashed away back in 1973! when I made my first guitar, I almost thought of selling it on eBay a couple weeks ago.

[ScottA]

They sound pretty good, I enjoyed the playingCool pickups by the way, thanks for the link
Ethan

Well, after hearing several demos, color me impressed! WANT!

Nice work Scott, your pickups sound very nice. And you know I appreciate new designs in pickups.

huh .. Im glad you chimed in Scott
They are pretty cool design ..............well done

Thanks for all of the nice comments!

Coming from this community, it means a lot!

[David Schwab]

Thanks for all of the nice comments!

Coming from this community, it means a lot!

I particularly enjoyed the Tele bridge video. That's the type of tone I go for even with bridge humbuckers.

Now we have to talk about how you got into my house to read my note book 5 years ago!

[tmenss]

I stuck a tele set on my xmas list..let's see if I've been naughty or nice this year. I tinker allot so I'm more apt to dissect a pickup than play it! Your Zexcoils got me interested in getting back into experimenting, so have Mike Sulzer's, JBForrer and BBsailors experiments. Its the type of stuff you just gotta try it out yourself and see if you can return anything of value for the effort.

[Mike Sulzer]

Sure. It would be physically impossible to nail every aspect of a humbucker response in a single coil form factor....

I got to a faster internet and watched the Signature set video over lunch break. They are really nice pickups, and you can hear the sound set up on each of the three. He starts with the neck and works his way down, getting to the bridge at about nine minutes. (He says "neck", but he must have meant meant "bridge".) What I wanted to hear was the wound string harmonics (the ones missing with a standard humbucker) on your buckers. Even though the bridge pickup has a low resonant frequency, low Q sound, you can hear that the wound string harmonics are there. This is more evident on the neck bucker, which has more upper mid and high frequencies, of course.

I prefer a strat bridge pickup with more highs, but that is taste and why different sets are available.

[tmenss]

If you fill a single coil with 44 gauge wire, it's going to be really dark sounding. Rickenbacker uses 44.

And noisey, and squeals, and makes people mad at you for not delivering on a promise for a hot strat pickup. So I can tell you I really appreciate what you guys do and share on the pickup forum.

[Alan0354]

That's the stuff. It's nylon filled as well. Not sure about dissolving it, but it's impossible to chip away. Their website shows it's pretty impervious to chemicals.

It's expensive, but it's the best potting epoxy I have found.

Sound's like you have a lot of good ideas, do you sell your pups on the market?

[tmenss]

I prefer a strat bridge pickup with more highs, but that is taste and why different sets are available.

Mike, what are you looking for when you say more highs from the bridge pickup? A higher frequency for the peak resonance? Where would an ideal peak resonance be? thanks

[Mike Sulzer]

Mike, what are you looking for when you say more highs from the bridge pickup? A higher frequency for the peak resonance? Where would an ideal peak resonance be? thanks

By my ear, that bridge pickup is set up to have its best sound when overdriven pretty hard. And that is great, but that is not what I like most about a strat bridge pickup sound: a bit more sparkle on the treble strings, more of the string sound on the wound strings, and played with not too much overdrive. Tastes vary, of course. I have always like LPs more for heavy overdrive, but that is probably what you would expect at my age!

Putting numbers on it is hard because conditions vary so much, but connected to a C to simulate a normal cable, I like about 4.5KHz with a high enough Q to emphasize the string sound.

[tmenss]

By my ear, that bridge pickup is set up to have its best sound when overdriven pretty hard. And that is great, but that is not what I like most about a strat bridge pickup sound: a bit more sparkle on the treble strings, more of the string sound on the wound strings, and played with not too much overdrive. Tastes vary, of course. I have always like LPs more for heavy overdrive, but that is probably what you would expect at my age!

Putting numbers on it is hard because conditions vary so much, but connected to a C to simulate a normal cable, I like about 4.5KHz with a high enough Q to emphasize the string sound.

I'm inclined to think that strat sound would also depend upon you amp setup, touch sensitvity. I've always been impressed with the Guytronix low watt amp and this sample is how I'd characterize your sound description.

http://www.guytronix.com/images/Brent_Hammel_1.mp3

[ScottA]

There are much Stratty-er bridge pickups than that one. I don't actually have any clips of the really Stratty stuff in the bridge (i.e. the ones that are designed for the neck and middle), but this one is about 10% hotter than the neck and middle:

Zexcoil Vintage Single 5 Set Demo - YouTube

and this one is just a tad hotter than the one above, but still very Stratty.

Zexcoil Fat Vintage Set Demo (Higher Res) - YouTube

The one you guys are talking about is designed for a P.A.F.-like response, so not very "Stratty" at all. The Signature Set is H-S-H voiced.

[Mike Sulzer]

The one you guys are talking about is designed for a P.A.F.-like response, so not very "Stratty" at all. The Signature Set is H-S-H voiced.

I understand and will listen to the others later when I get to goof internet.

[David Schwab]

I understand and will listen to the others later when I get to goof internet.

I was on the goof internet once, and it was, well, pretty goofy!

[Possum]

Its a cool design I guess, but must be hell to make those things. The resonant peak video is a little whacked in my opinion, you can lower the resonant peak with a little thing called a tone control or change your tone caps or pots; you can't really "model" a pickup based on a frequency response sweep alone, strat pickups all kinda look identical, same with humbuckers, rolling your tone knob back to drop the peak will never make a strat sound like a humbucker. A real PAF and most commercial humbuckers in a frequency sweep look nearly identical but sound nothing like eachother. Brings to mind a funny 70's ad insert I have from DiMarzio "proving" he had nailed a true PAF replica because his old tube oscilloscope traces were near identical, pretty funny, I should scan and post it.

I don't quite hear the big difference between the tones from this design versus a Joe Barden idea, both have alot of treble, maybe yours has better cancellation. I like the diagonal blades, thats a great way to cover more string length as the string vibrates. Velvet Hammer made a pickup with individual string coils, they are so rare I've never seen one yet ;-) but it used traditional alnico rods. Good job, hope they sell for you, how long does it take to make one of these things?

[ScottA]

Its a cool design I guess, but must be hell to make those things.

They don't go together anything like a conventional pickup, but it's actually pretty straightforward to put one together. I did do a lot of development on the design to make it easier to build.

The resonant peak video is a little whacked in my opinion, you can lower the resonant peak with a little thing called a tone control or change your tone caps or pots; you can't really "model" a pickup based on a frequency response sweep alone, strat pickups all kinda look identical, same with humbuckers, rolling your tone knob back to drop the peak will never make a strat sound like a humbucker.

The resonant frequency video is not at all "whacked". Actually there is a lot of information that you can pull out of the frequency response and electrical measurements that can enable some extremely subtle differentiation, even between pickups of the same type. All strat pickups do not look identical, neither do humbuckers. I'm not in a position to talk about it yet, but I've come up with a model for interpeting these data, coupled with a library of well characterized design knobs, that allow me to quantitatively and predictively dial in very subtle shades of tonality. It's pretty ground-breaking stuff, and I think you guys will find it very interesting when I do publish it.

Also, it isn't about "post-processing" with a tone control or cap, this just colors the response you already have coming out of the pickup. It's about changing the fundamental response of the pickup itself. As you've noted, you'll never make a strat sound like a humbucker by lowering the resonant frequency with whatever kind of loading or filtering, because that fundamental response is still buried under there. You need to design the pickup itself to generate that response.

I don't quite hear the big difference between the tones from this design versus a Joe Barden idea, both have alot of treble, maybe yours has better cancellation. I like the diagonal blades, thats a great way to cover more string length as the string vibrates.

The point is, I can dial in tones across the board with the same design platform. There's not one tone, there's a whole range of them. I don't know if mine have "better" cancellation than some other designs, but I think they have more "efficient" cancellation, in that the tonal quality is less affected by the hum cancellation (see the comparision to the state-of-the-art hum-cancelling pickup in the video for example).

Anyway, thanks (I think?)!