Question About Microphonics

[David Schwab]

He's not a troll. He's a regular over on the amp side. I don't understand his arrogance in the face of an opportunity to be corrected and learn.

FWIW the harmonic node effect is not only relative to pole position (which changes when a string is fretted) but the specific effect is also relative to where and how a string is plucked. Considering that right hand position (for right handed players) doesn't change much AND the string length is changed there are harmonic differences all over the place no matter where a pickup is located.

The relevance of pickup placement harmonically is where it is located on a strings length. Obviously this changes when a string is fretted. Is this getting through??? Hello... Is this microphone on???

Plus, he keeps insisting Lester Polfuss did all these designs that he didn't do, like pickup placement and neck angles!

Les was a brilliant guy who besides being a gifted musician, helped develop the solid body guitar, and gave us things like multitrack recording and tape echo.

Now Les does have a couple of guitar related patents.

Here's one for a bridge/pickup combo (3,018,680). Look where he placed the pickup! Right up against the bridge!



His other patent is for the trapeze tailpiece/bridge on the LP.



So that should show what he did and didn't do for Gibson.

[tonedeciple]

I think it is also important to bear in mind a pickups range of sensitivity. Since a pickup's magnetic field extends beyond the area directly above the pole pieces, it can sense the strings vibration for several inches in either direction. That alone would make ideal placement a futile endeavor. Furthermore, even if ideal placement were possible, wouldn't the effort to accomplish this be thrown out of whack just by changing the strings to a different gauge?

[Chuck H]

Plus, he keeps insisting Lester Polfuss did all these designs that he didn't do

Lester Polfuss.!.

I haven't read that name since I was fifteen and learning all this stuff for the first time. Thank you.

In fact I did experiment with taping a phonograph needle onto my acoustic guitar (before I knew that Lester did it!!!) and found that if you positioned it right, it sounded pretty good.

After someone told me that it had been done I did some research. Lester Polfuss was part of what I learned during that process.

As for the thread content... My riding crop is worn out. I'm going to need a sturdier tool to beat this dead horse.

[David Schwab]

I think it is also important to bear in mind a pickups range of sensitivity. Since a pickup's magnetic field extends beyond the area directly above the pole pieces, it can sense the strings vibration for several inches in either direction. That alone would make ideal placement a futile endeavor. Furthermore, even if ideal placement were possible, wouldn't the effort to accomplish this be thrown out of whack just by changing the strings to a different gauge?

And with humbuckers if you position the pickup so it straddles the node, you lose open string harmonics! I do think neck pickups sound good close to the neck, which would be roughly under where the 24th fret would be. But if you had less frets, it would sound good where the 19th would be. It's a little tighter sounding on 24 fret guitar, but that can be adjusted in how you wind it.

Bridge pickups sound fine as long as they aren't too close to the bridge, but then that might be the tone people want. On my lucite longhorn I left a spot between the bridge and the pickup because I was going to stick a hexaphonic pickup in there, but never did. I was going to use that for a hex fuzz circuit I was building. But the guitar sounds fine with the single pickup where it is. I also came up with a switching setup where I can tune the coils with caps, and made it sound like a neck pickup.

[fieldwrangler]

Once Upon a Time in the 80's (late '82 or early '83) I spent a very, very long evening with Les in his living room. It started around 6:20, and despite the fact that it kept getting darker & darker outside he wouldn't turn on any more lights than this one thing in the corner that must've been about a 30 watt incandescent. We barely moved from out chairs 'till about 10:30, and he just kept looking more & more like some kindof twinkly-eyed wizard; it was a somewhat surreal experience.

I quickly got the message that he thought the history books should read "Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Lester F***ing Polfuss."

He did in fact address this issue of where along the scale the pickups should go, and it basically went something like "Put them where you think they sound good, 'cause you're gonna gain something & lose something else at every position." This was surprising coming from a guy who had very definite opinions about how just about everything else should be done regarding the engineering of electric guitars (and pretty much everything else.)

Bob Palmieri

[David Schwab]

That's a great story Bob! I take it that was up in Mahwah. I was once in a music store in NJ (Muscara Music, for any NJ old timers here), and it was lunch time, so the store was empty. I looked over and on the other side of the store was the owner talking to Les! They were sitting on a window sill. I said to the daughter of the owner something like "Wow, it's Les Paul!" She said "don't bother him" and we went back and forth about it, and I decided to leave him alone. But I really wanted to go and shake his hand.

A friend of mine did some work in his house once, but at the moment I forget the details.

I never did get to see him play in NYC, even though I'm only about 40 minutes away. Procrastination is never a good thing.

[fieldwrangler]

It was indeed in Mahwah.

Ironically, this hang came about as a result of me playing in another music store in North Jersey (don't remember the name but I think the owner's was Jim Hovey.)
One of Les' sons walked up and started asking some questions, and this was during my tenure with Maynard Ferguson. Somehow Les' son seemed to feel that this qualified me as someone that "Dad" (a word which initially sounded disturbingly like "Dead" in this guy's voice) would like to spend some time schpieling to (sp.?)

I actually have a few more significant things that I remember from that meeting but they would be best passed around in a non-written forum, preferably a hang of some kind. Which brings me to a question that's been on my mind for awhile...

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but is there any possible way that we could find some practical way to arrange some kindof event where a number of the regulars here could actually get together some Sunday for some face time? I know that we're pretty geographically dispersed, but there's just gotta be some way to do this. Anybody planning to go to NAMM in January? (Should I start a new thread about this?)

Bob Palmieri