Zexcoil pickups

[David Schwab]

You'd get yer ass chewed off here and in Austin, lol ;-) You may think you know the blues.

No I wouldn't because I'd play circles around these guys, and I don't give a crap about the blues. How's that?

The reason I like Portland is its one the remaining places where west coast blues is still played, there's a whole seperate blues guitar language for that stuff that came straight from Charlie Christian and others. Its sometimes called jump blues or swing and its not easy to play. Its more reminiscent of when blues guitar and jazz were still real close to each other. I had to learn how to play over II-V changes when I moved to Portland and get beyond the mindless boring pentatonic junk everyone plays badly, but finding this stuff was exactly what I needed as I was really bored with pentatonic simpliicities. Think Charlie Baty, Junior Watson, Duke Robillard, if you can stand on the same stage as those guys and not get yer head cut off I'd be surprised ;-) You wouldn't catch me trying that ;-)

Learn to play jazz, and then you wont have any problems. That's where all this comes from anyway. Charlie Christian wasn't a blues player. Learn some Django and even Charlie Parker. The guys you are mentioning are all good, but that's all they can do. When I hear them play some John McLaughlin then I'll be impressed.

The first time I saw SRV was in Los Angeles and they booed him for being another Hendrix clone. It was all he played that night and they hated it, pretty sad because his first album had come out and he didn't have the confidence to play his own stuff, so flopped badly.

Thats the problem when you are imitating someone. I was a big Stanley Clarke fan back in the 70s. Then I realized if I met him and he asked me to play something, I'd only play an imitation of him. That's when I stopped copying people. SRV did develop his own style, with a lot of derivative Hendrix thrown in, but he's no Hendrix.

I'd rather listen to Shawn Lane. None of those guys you mentioned can touch that.

I hear alot of guys tell me oh blues is easy and boring to play its too simple blah blah. and I used to think that when I was younger. Now I realize that to play it as good as the originators of the music is incredibly difficult. Take a look at Albert Collins, that guy could play one note and have a whole crowd on its feet jumping for joy. Hubert Sumlin, Clapton and others have tried to pull off his simple licks and they never have the same soul or feel. Freddie King, holy crap, look at the ton of great songs he wrote, what a fiery guitar. Those guys invented electric blues, people try to copy it but guys like Joe Bonamassa will be long forgotten compared to Freddie, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson.

Dave that's you. There are guys that are good blues players, right? Do you think its hard for them? My landlord Dave who lives upstairs can play all that old time blues stuff and nails it. No one ever heard of him though because he only plays in his living room. If you have been playing it long enough you develop a vocabulary of licks. Then you can mix and match. That's how playing works.

I got to see Freddie King live back in the 70s. He was good, but it was nothing special.

[David Schwab]

Man, you guys love to take a thread on a walkabout!

Dave's a lovable ornery old coot, and you have to set him straight! He's pretty much a luddite, while I'm all for advancing the art.

I'm tired of people living in the past, in both music and guitars.

Thanks again for the kind words and support. It certainly isn't easy to get a lot of guitar players to use something new. I think people in general do want less noise, but they've become conditioned to believe that "noiseless" has to be a compromise. I've gotten some really great feedback so far though, some pretty discerning users saying these are the best noiseless pickups they've heard (and the frequency analysis supports that the response is closer to a true single coil), so I'm encouraged although I realize it'll be an uphill battle.

People hear what they think they should hear. If you gave them a pickup where they didn't see the blades and told them it was a single coil, they wouldn't know the difference. It's like that argument that one stye of tone cap sounds different from another. You see the YouTube clip, and they all sound the same, but people start swearing they can tell the difference. And that's because it's written in big letters on the screen. But if you mix it up and mark it A. B. C. etc., they wouldn't be able to tell.

[salvarsan]

I like this design. Seeing the patents, its intent is obvious after the fact, but is clearly the result of a lot of refinement.

Over-simplifying, it looks like the ultimate split-coil design, but I see that any one string rests over TWO poles and not one. This is bound to affect the final sound.

I wonder if the frequency curve is fine-tuned by altering the 'pitch' angle of the poles ... or was that one of those dead ends?

If anyone else was watching, SteveA uses the briefly-discussed Syscomp CGR-101 for his frequency sweeps.

[edit] ... all that, and I'm generally more sympathetic to anyone with a brass rat on his ring finger.

[Possum]

The sad truth is that "jazzers" may "think" they can play blues but unless they were reared on that stuff, the stuff they play sounds like white boy crap. Jazz CAME from the blues, jump/swing blues came from blues but was more sophisticated, Charlie Christian was totally a blues enfluenced player, I'm amazed you cant hear that. The guys who tell me they are great players and blues is stupid are the guy who get onstage at blues jams play a bunch of tweedle deedle meaningless notes real fast, the audience listens for 2 seconds then tune out and start talking to eachother. I've seen that happen with guys like Robben Ford, who at a gig I was at, went on an insanely mindless 15 minute solo that had no meaning to anyone except him, the audience completely lost interest in him and was up there playing to no one while people chatted and didn't watch. Alot of complicated notes with no soul. There are very few white guys I would even consider real blues players, Johnny Winter qualifies, and offhand can't think of anyone else. Bonamassa plays "retail" blues, that guy bores me to death, he doesn't even have his own recognizable style. You obviously have zero understanding of what blues is about, but thats ok, few do. In my younger years I didn't understand blues either and used old blues recordings to jam to, not even appreciating the richness for what it was. I can listen to Albert Collins all nite, Bonamassa, maybe 3 minutes before I tune out, there's just nothing there, no meat. Anyway, its pointless argument, you either get it or you don't, an old coot's opinion. Now a few notes from Albert, stupid boring blues:

As for the Zexcoils, I can see the potential for alot of switching combinations, maybe you should sell a prewired pickguard, but keep the number of controls down, too many combinations I think will confuse players, maybe some kind of blend controls to simplify it.

[Possum]

Just for yuks here's a little toon I did of your typical blues jam genius ;-)

[David Schwab]

The guys who tell me they are great players and blues is stupid are the guy who get onstage at blues jams play a bunch of tweedle deedle meaningless notes real fast, the audience listens for 2 seconds then tune out and start talking to each other.

The people who say it's meaningless notes can't play that way and don't understand what they are hearing. It's an unsophisticated ear. If people actually educated themselves to different forms of music then it would make sense to them. So I suppose Charlie Parker and Coltrane played meaningless notes? Joe Pass? Django? How about Mozart? Thats a lot of notes too! It's always that lowest common denominator of ignorant musicians that say stuff like that. Any typical classical violinist can play circles around a typical rock or blues guitarist. Even little kids. Isn't that just sad? You don't hear guitarist that can play fast putting down blues players, just the other way around. And always by players that don't have chops. They say they don't want to have chops, because they don't have the talent. Now of course some musicians over play and have no taste. That's also true of blues players who want to hang on one (or five) note(s) all night.

A good guitarist can play any genre well. Theres nothing magic in that. Also the audience in a place is there to hear a certain type of music, so of course they might tune out of something they aren't interested in. But popular does not equate to good, otherwise we would all be listening to Lady Gaga.

But don't strive to be good at anything when mediocre will do. And certainly don't rock the boat and play better than the next guy.

As far as "stupid boring blues"... I also dislike country music, but I like a lot of the guitarist. But the music IS boring. As far as Albert Collins, yeah, he's a fine player, but who can't play that way? That's easy stuff.

[Steve Conner]

Man, you are going to have a hard time selling these new-fangled pickups to people who still think Lonnie Johnson is the best thing ever. Wes Montgomery could eat him for breakfast.

The technical details don't actually matter to the end user. With enough technical chops you can make any arrangement of wire and magnets sound like anything you want. What matters is the taste of the pickup maker and what he wants his arrangement of wires to sound like.

I personally think the Zexcoils look great, but I get worried when I hear phrases like "pickup platform" and "library of design knobs", that sounds like software engineering talk!

And, I think with regard to Mike's comments, there is a 6dB/octave ambiguity in what it is that a pickup actually senses. I always wondered myself whether it should be considered a lowpass or bandpass filter. (How come all those old Fender amps have a smile-shaped frequency response with the tone knobs at 5? Maybe Leo decided his pickups were bandpass, and wanted to compensate for it.)

Everyone except Zexcoil uses lowpass, so I went with that. But as you say it is the same raw data, just presented in a different way.

[fieldwrangler]

Fellas -

Regarding this noise business, count me among the Hum-o-phobes. In high gain situations, the tone & sustain are affected by the combination of pitches that dogfight for the preamp's affections when playing any note other than a slightly bent B flat.

Plus, back in my session days I really didn't need for producers (&/or engineers) to give me That Look.

Bob Palmieri

[ScottA]

Man, you are going to have a hard time selling these new-fangled pickups to people who still think Lonnie Johnson is the best thing ever. Wes Montgomery could eat him for breakfast.

The technical details don't actually matter to the end user. With enough technical chops you can make any arrangement of wire and magnets sound like anything you want. What matters is the taste of the pickup maker and what he wants his arrangement of wires to sound like.

I personally think the Zexcoils look great, but I get worried when I hear phrases like "pickup platform" and "library of design knobs", that sounds like software engineering talk!

And, I think with regard to Mike's comments, there is a 6dB/octave ambiguity in what it is that a pickup actually senses. I always wondered myself whether it should be considered a lowpass or bandpass filter. (How come all those old Fender amps have a smile-shaped frequency response with the tone knobs at 5? Maybe Leo decided his pickups were bandpass, and wanted to compensate for it.)

Everyone except Zexcoil uses lowpass, so I went with that. But as you say it is the same raw data, just presented in a different way.

I guess a better way to frame it (than what I said in the video) would be to say that I'm looking at an "equivalent" or "analogous" response that closely approximates a band pass filter.

Fellas -

Regarding this noise business, count me among the Hum-o-phobes. In high gain situations, the tone & sustain are affected by the combination of pitches that dogfight for the preamp's affections when playing any note other than a slightly bent B flat.

Plus, back in my session days I really didn't need for producers (&/or engineers) to give me That Look.

Bob Palmieri

Hum-o-phobe!

[fieldwrangler]

Hum-o-phobe!

A very important distinction resulting from that there vowel...

[ScottA]

A very important distinction resulting from that there vowel...

It is kinda.....catchy!

[Mike Sulzer]

And, I think with regard to Mike's comments, there is a 6dB/octave ambiguity in what it is that a pickup actually senses. I always wondered myself whether it should be considered a lowpass or bandpass filter. (How come all those old Fender amps have a smile-shaped frequency response with the tone knobs at 5? Maybe Leo decided his pickups were bandpass, and wanted to compensate for it.)

Everyone except Zexcoil uses lowpass, so I went with that. But as you say it is the same raw data, just presented in a different way.

If you are talking about the response of the pickup circuit, there is no ambiguity. It is a well defined response and can be determined. It is a low pass filter. If you add the effect of the law of magnetic induction, then it becomes a bandpass filter since the response also goes to zero as the frequency is decreased. But this is more confusing; it is better to discuss one thing at a time.

The fact that guitar amps can emphasize both bass and treble when adjusted on "fives" is not relevant. All kinds of other reasons are now in play! Keep it simple when possible. It is always complicated enough.

[David Schwab]

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.

It wont squeal if it's potted. But single coils are noisy.

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

Yes I do. Currently just bass pickups, but I'm introducing some guitar pickups in the near future.

[fieldwrangler]

I've seen that happen with guys like Robben Ford, who at a gig I was at, went on an insanely mindless 15 minute solo that had no meaning to anyone except him, the audience completely lost interest in him and was up there playing to no one while people chatted and didn't watch. Alot of complicated notes with no soul.

And I've heard Robben snap a whole roomful of people to focus on every nuance of the music with a dead-centered time feel that pretty much puts an end to the "lotsa notes/less notes" arguments. True, he can sometimes follow a track that takes a lot of the lines into smarty-pants territory but his sincerity has never seemed questionable to me.

But the heaviest example of this sort of thing I've been close to was when I had the misfortune of playing in the last band on a triple bill with Bobby Blue Bland and Albert King in Philadelphia (I was playing with a jazz-pop singer who had a big hit at the time.) Albert was killin' so hard that a wave of non ticket holders made it into the gig 'cause the cop that was s'pposed to keep them out had his eyes closed and was compelled to play air guitar with his billy club.

Bob Palmieri

[David Schwab]

And I've heard Robben snap a whole roomful of people to focus on every nuance of the music with a dead-centered time feel that pretty much puts an end to the "lotsa notes/less notes" arguments. True, he can sometimes follow a track that takes a lot of the lines into smarty-pants territory but his sincerity has never seems questionable to me.

Yeah, it's like no one listens to anything other than simple blues. And that's absolutely false.

Here's a crowded room hanging on every ridiculously fast note, and in Dallas Tx no less...

It all depends on what the audience came to hear. I'm sure Lady Gaga's crowd would glaze over real fast at this concert.

As long as we are talking about someone playing a lot of notes....