A Q for the pros...

[Wired]

I've been wondering just how scientific you guys are when testing your pickups. I know that at the end of the day we plug these things into a marshall or a twin or something and let our ears decide, and every one talks about the dc resistance and the number of turns etc, but do the pro winders on this board test inductance?, capacitance?, impedence?, what about magnetic properties?

Do you test frequency response? - if so what method do you induce the tones? do you listen with Hi-Fi speakers so you can hear the top and bottom?

[WolfeMacleod]

No scientifics here. Way I see it, neighter did Seth and Leo.
Measurments mean noting in the grand scheme of things.

My best selling pickup, which I've sold well over 500 of in less than a year, I've never even heard in person - only recordings. Been too busy making it to make some myself, and people can't get enough of them.
Before it's reign, the previous best-seller took me three years before I got to hear one in person. Too busy making them. People bought them up faster than I could make them.

[NightWinder]

Wow Wolfe. So you have'nt heard you best seller? Wired, there are lots of meters and such to test the "proprties" of the coils, materials, and performance. Timeless clips with the same guitars, different pickups in the same guitar, measured with calipers micrometers as to get everything exactly the same. Some have different methods of testing that work for them. Lots of gear is needed for sure, and proper tools are essential to measuring distance from the strings to the top of the poles, etc. Some models take alot longer to develope......Some do, some don't I guess. I test for recording capabilitys, in the room tone, tape tone, live, Different cabs, same mic, same distance. Everything is marked, recorded noted, filed, and them sent to other users for their input befor I would sell It. Makes for great recommendations and communication between you and the customer. You may like a description, but with your rig and guitar you may be better off with a different model. Makes the customer happy.

[NightWinder]

No scientifics here. Way I see it, neighter did Seth and Leo.
Measurments mean noting in the grand scheme of things.

My best selling pickup, which I've sold well over 500 of in less than a year, I've never even heard in person - only recordings. Been too busy making it to make some myself, and people can't get enough of them.
Before it's reign, the previous best-seller took me three years before I got to hear one in person. Too busy making them. People bought them up faster than I could make them.

Thats alot of pickups

[nhall]

So whats the story....

Sorry for butting in here as a newby......but was wondereing what you are saying here (or really thinking) Wolfe.?....bearing in mind a comment Jason made in one of his articles , something about guys picking up his guitars and saying how great they thought they were, when he hadn't heard them make a single good note out of it.....do you think its a marketing thing?, is it a trust thing (if you can talk the talk) , or a word and mouth thing?, or are people genuinely searching out something, which you are helping them nail on the head...or (heaven help us) its that Muso's are just always on the hunt for that elusive something and are willing to give a 'magical' 'hand-build' a go, and are then well pleased/sold on it when they hear the results?...
Certainly most musicians I've met fall into two camps; those that are forever changing there gear / adapting it / adding to it / etc, and, those who stick with basic gear and spend all their time just playing / studying, and whould turn their back on you at the first mention of anything technical...
Nigel

[David Schwab]

I only measure DC resistance after I wind the coils. Mostly that's to verify that I have a valid wind. Currently that's also the only measurement I have equipment to take.

My test rig is my computer based home studio setup. I'm mostly doing bass pickups, so I listen both through some Monsoon monitors and headphones.

Then eventually I play in band situations with them in my main basses.

For guitar pickups I use the same rig... my digital mixer has amp modeling built in.

I think I did more scientific thinking than testing... I got what I was looking for on the second or third try and stuck with that. Now I'm refining the design and trying new stuff. I have more ideas than time!

I'm sure if I had the means to do other measurements, they would be written down and referenced to what I was hearing... but I couldn't see using them as a design criterion.

[Wired]

something about guys picking up his guitars and saying how great they thought they were, when he hadn't heard them make a single good note out of it

Man I was at the namm show a few months ago. We worked our backsides off to get those basses there, and 95% of people who picked them up didn't even listen to the tone - they just played a million slaps and pops.

I have more ideas than time

join the club.



thanks for your replies. When I design a preamp or something, as well as test tones etc, I like to listen to a CD through it - seems a bit crazy since the circuit might only ever get the signal from a bass guitar through it, but it really helps you hear and understand the timbre of a circuit.

I would still love to hear from someone who has a scientific approach to pickup design. Is there a simple way of inducing a test tone into a pickup? - I was thinking maybe with a tape head or something.

And surely someone has measured the field strengths of the different magnetic materials they are trying...

[Zhangliqun]

No help here. If anything I'm even more seat-of-the-pants then Dave S on actual testing, but then again what could be more scientific -- keeping in mind the end purpose of the product -- than just popping it in your axe and hearing it yourself?

[OFM]

I only make custom pickups, so I need to test every pickup I wind...

I've only had few customers, since I don't take pickup crafting as a full time bussiness. I prefer to see the guitar, look for everything it needs, hear the customer playing style and then wind the pickup.

I have a Small SS Amp for pickup testing. It's a Fender HOT (it' rated 4 or 5 out of 10 in HC) which may look like a piece of crap, but for me is the most "honest" amplifier for pickup testing I've heard, since it has fixed gain and EQ parameters, a single "Tone" knob, and enough volume for my bedroom.

After winding the pickups I always test DC resistance and check the magnetic flux with a "Poor-man-pseudo-gaussmeter" (Hall effect device). Then I put my pickup on my test-guitar and play a bit with it. Clean, Overdriven, Clean, Distorted, etc.

I'm only making one or two pickups per week and I don't have lots of measurement tools, so I think it's a different reality.

I agree, it's better to get scientific measurements somewhere in your pickup-carreer, maybe i'm buying an oscilloscope and a LCR meter soon. But now i'm trusting in my customers ears for making the right pickups.

Greetings,
Ben

[kevinT]

bottom line

I think what it boils down to is what is most meaningful to the average player when they’re in the market to buy a new pickup. Most guitar players are the artsy fartsy type (including me) and find all the measurements and terms, and understanding the numbers as it relates to the actual voicing of the pickup alien.

DC resistance is probably the easiest measurement to understand and the most widely used because it describes the output of the pickup, even though it doesn’t really tell us too much about how the pickup is actually going to sound in a particular guitar. Moreover, you don’t have to be an electrical engineer to understand what dc resistance means.

I think what’s more important and is key to pickup makers is to provide a clear description of the pickup’s tone in the marketing materials. In other words, describing the sonic characteristics of the pickup in plain English (words that players can relate to) so folks can easily understand the tone that they are buying. If you look at some makers web sites, the descriptions can get pretty creative and that is what players are buying into.

Don’t get me wrong, its good to know all the measurements of your pickups and how they all come together to affect tone. But to most small pickup makers, purchasing the expensive test equipment is simply not feasible and also when the average player really doesn’t care about inductance, capacitance, impedance, frequency response, and resonant peak. The average Joe is just worried about whether the pickup is going to sound good and what type of return policy you have if it doesn't.

[Possum]

not following the herd....

I use an LCR meter, a gaussmeter, very rarely a frequency analyzer, and of course a mutlmeter. Leo and those guys had none of that stuff, they did it by ear. Fine, it works but its S---L---O----W. And there are things your ears can't hear, especially if you are testing minor changes in a new pickup design that isn't one of the standard models. I have a bunch of pickups that are my own designs, not just rehashes of rehashes of rehashed stuff. So, if you are INVENTING a new pickup from scratch, you need to hone in to details really quickly and cut to the chase, or you could spend years trying to get one that works in real life playing situations. I use inductance, AC resistance (which is more important in my view), DC resistance as a rough guide, gauss for levels of charge, and as previously mentioned , very rarely frequency analysis software.

For the regular pickup models, like buckers and Fender type stuff, I use the LCR meter to insure repeatability, but more importantly to spot coil shorts. the LCR meter immediately shows me if a coil has a short inside or is shorted to the magnets in a Fender type single coil. An ohmeter won't. Your ears might....well, do you really want to have to listen to every pickup you make, when a meter will show you in two seconds if its a bad one?

NOw, all that said, I don't go as far as Bill Lawrence, or Lace and crank out sterile sounding over-designed pickups that look great on paper and are ingenious beyond belief but just lack any kind of human sounding tone. Those guys are geniuses but their pickups don't stand the test of time like the basic models have.

So, everyone does it different, for me I don't just make copy pickups, I have invented my own pickups from scratch, the test gear is essential for that stuff, its also essential for UNDERSTANDING HOW COILS WORK, in black and white numbers. I don't think I would be as far along as I am if I hadn't listened to Joe Gwinn and others and learned how to use this stuff. If you pull one pole out of a humbucker can you HEAR what it does to the coils? The LCR meter shows immediately what that missing piece of metal does to the frequency response right away, you might not be able to hear that change with your ears.......

[kevinT]

I

For the regular pickup models, like buckers and Fender type stuff, I use the LCR meter to insure repeatability, but more importantly to spot coil shorts. the LCR meter immediately shows me if a coil has a short inside or is shorted to the magnets in a Fender type single coil. An ohmeter won't. Your ears might....well, do you really want to have to listen to every pickup you make, when a meter will show you in two seconds if its a bad one?

So, everyone does it different, for me I don't just make copy pickups, I have invented my own pickups from scratch, the test gear is essential for that stuff, its also essential for UNDERSTANDING HOW COILS WORK, in black and white numbers. I don't think I would be as far along as I am if I hadn't listened to Joe Gwinn and others and learned how to use this stuff. If you pull one pole out of a humbucker can you HEAR what it does to the coils? The LCR meter shows immediately what that missing piece of metal does to the frequency response right away, you might not be able to hear that change with your ears.......

Damn,

you just made me order an LCR meter.

[David Schwab]

For the regular pickup models, like buckers and Fender type stuff, I use the LCR meter to insure repeatability, but more importantly to spot coil shorts. the LCR meter immediately shows me if a coil has a short inside or is shorted to the magnets in a Fender type single coil. An ohmeter won't.

Actually I found shorts recently with an ohmmeter. I had forgotten to tape the cores in 3 pickups I was winding, and only realized what I did wrong when taking ohm readings. They were lower than they should have been, and one coil with more windings was lower than another with less! This was of course because they had shorted turns.

How do you use the LCR to spot shorts? I plan on picking one of those up soon.

[black_labb]

Actually I found shorts recently with an ohmmeter. I had forgotten to tape the cores in 3 pickups I was winding, and only realized what I did wrong when taking ohm readings. They were lower than they should have been, and one coil with more windings was lower than another with less! This was of course because they had shorted turns.

How do you use the LCR to spot shorts? I plan on picking one of those up soon.

wouldnt you be able to use a multimeter against the pole pieces and one of the ends of the coil to find a short? obviously that doesnt find wire to wire shorts.

[jason lollar]

I said " I can't tell you how many people have tried one of my guitars and said that it sounds great, while I'm thinking. "You haven't even hit one good note yet.? Fortunately, there are enough players around that do know how to draw tone out of a guitar to keep the small guys like me going."
I make time to listen to everything I make, I would consider myself lame for not doing so.

On another thread, reviews and talk on websites- these do not reflect whats really happening, more stuff is happening off the web through guitar techs and roadies etc than through any internet bulletin board like the LPF. You would assume thousands of people hang at those boards but its not really the case.