42 ga SILVER magnet wire

[David Schwab]

You're not kidding, there aren't many positive comments on that demo, price vs. tone was the most mentioned. If they had been more affordable the comments would have been different.

Well that proves that they didn't make them expensive just to make them expensive!

Bimetallic poles, well that could mean anything...

It's 440C stainless around a pure nickel core.

You can read this right on their website:

Seymour Duncan New Products - SEYMOUR DUNCAN ZEPHYR™ SERIES ZEPHYR™ SILVER PICKUPS

The [Alumatone] concept and design is genius except it was done before Lace picked up on it...

Really? When? By Whom?

[David Schwab]

David,

The frame of the Alumitone pickup is the only thing made of alumium.

Yes I have examined Alumitones in person. I was wondering how one would make a connection using aluminum magnet wire.

[km6xz]

I, for one, do not believe it for a minute based on many true double blind tests with golden ears put into embarrassing positions of being utterly stumped in picking the fruits of their strongest claims.
If someone on the other hand can show data on measurements and correlation to human perception, there might be room for discussion but as it is, absent the reproducible data, it is all marketing hogwash. Sound or the brain's interpretation and perception of sound is individual and subjective so anyone's opinion is just as valid or invalid as anyone's.

What sounds good and what doesn't is more related to cultural experience than anything technical when discussing "re-production" but is totally unrelated to "production", which, if I am not mistaken, is the subject of these threads. At least with reproduction we have some standard from which comparisons can be drawn, which does not exist in production.
Our perception of sound and judgement of its quality depends greatly on factors that are not technical at all but based primarily on environment, content, emotional state and experience of the listener. The technical sound and the content communicated can hardly be isolated from each other in regard to judging quality making almost any tests to isolate them unsuccessful. Removing the person from the test feedback loop alters the test a great deal and does not help the marketer at all, so it is not done.
Technically "bad" or "good" electrical properties have very little impact on perceived quality unless lead to believe that it does, by suggestion. Every successful hi-fi salon sales person knows that and makes a good living from playing upon that fact. The subjective quality judgement of a music performance, of which the technical sound traits are a part of, is even less related to the technical characteristics on the original production side of the process.
If even one person of any audience can honestly say they enjoyed, or was didn't, a song or performance more because of some esoteric electrical property of a pickup it would defy logic and all history, let alone our accumulated knowledge of human perception. But it makes money for some pushing the claims that is it important and detectable. It is one thing to make a reliable serviceable product but quite another to make unsupportable claims intended to deceive the customers.

[frankfalbo]

So you've heard pickups wound with silver wire then?

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I, for one, do not believe it for a minute based on many true double blind tests with golden ears put into embarrassing positions of being utterly stumped in picking the fruits of their strongest claims.
If someone on the other hand can show data on measurements and correlation to human perception, there might be room for discussion but as it is, absent the reproducible data, it is all marketing hogwash. Sound or the brain's interpretation and perception of sound is individual and subjective so anyone's opinion is just as valid or invalid as anyone's.

What sounds good and what doesn't is more related to cultural experience than anything technical when discussing "re-production" but is totally unrelated to "production", which, if I am not mistaken, is the subject of these threads. At least with reproduction we have some standard from which comparisons can be drawn, which does not exist in production.
Our perception of sound and judgement of its quality depends greatly on factors that are not technical at all but based primarily on environment, content, emotional state and experience of the listener. The technical sound and the content communicated can hardly be isolated from each other in regard to judging quality making almost any tests to isolate them unsuccessful. Removing the person from the test feedback loop alters the test a great deal and does not help the marketer at all, so it is not done.
Technically "bad" or "good" electrical properties have very little impact on perceived quality unless lead to believe that it does, by suggestion. Every successful hi-fi salon sales person knows that and makes a good living from playing upon that fact. The subjective quality judgement of a music performance, of which the technical sound traits are a part of, is even less related to the technical characteristics on the original production side of the process.
If even one person of any audience can honestly say they enjoyed, or was didn't, a song or performance more because of some esoteric electrical property of a pickup it would defy logic and all history, let alone our accumulated knowledge of human perception. But it makes money for some pushing the claims that is it important and detectable. It is one thing to make a reliable serviceable product but quite another to make unsupportable claims intended to deceive the customers.

So basically, since you've found a few gullible people, all people therefore (except you of course) are gullible and anything put forth as sounding good must be hogwash unless there is empirical data? I say empirical because sitting down and listening and saying what you hear is in fact a datum - it just doesn't involve meters.

Not all parts of audio have been demonstrated to be measurable. If that was true then digital modeling would have outpaced what we do here by light years.

[Steve Conner]

Not all parts of audio have been demonstrated to be measurable. If that was true then digital modeling would have outpaced what we do here by light years.

You could argue that it actually has, in sales volume at least.

I remain happy with my modestly priced set of Alnico 2 Pros and believe the Zephyr pickups (and Frank's forum postings relating to them) are nothing but a PR stunt.

[frankfalbo]

I...believe the Zephyr pickups (and Frank's forum postings relating to them) are nothing but a PR stunt.

And you'd be wrong. Sometimes I'm wrong, but today it is you. You don't know me, and you're questioning my integrity over pickups you've never even played, and research you've never conducted. Good luck with that.

[big_teee]

You could argue that it actually has, in sales volume at least.

I remain happy with my modestly priced set of Alnico 2 Pros and believe the Zephyr pickups (and Frank's forum postings relating to them) are nothing but a PR stunt.

I disagree with the calling it a PR stunt.
It is called Options!
They won't appeal to all, but Like Frank says!
If you haven't tried and played them, how can you knock them!
I admire SD for going the extra mile and offering so many different Pickup Types.
That way at least it Aint the same old Tired PAF BS to Knock about, and to mull over!
Keep Rockin!
Terry

[Mark Hammer]

Some of the best science and innovation comes from a starting point of "I wonder what would happen if....". The results of that exploration may well result in something you can't quite put your finger on, but it's...different.

It is in the dimensionalization of what IS "different", and the description of those circumstances where it is different in this way or that, that we learn things of value. It may well end up that the perceived differences are more, or less, robust than we first thought, but we gain something of value in understanding WHY and how they are different.

As I'm fond of repeating, when Thomas Edison went around to county fairs making wax cylinder recordings of your voice for a fee, newspaper reporters described the wax recordings as uncannily lifelike and hard to tell apart from the real thing. You would have thought they were describing 24-bit/96lhz samples captured with Neumann U87s through $2000 mic preamps.

Obviously things have changed considerably since then, and not in one big step either. At each stage along the way, somebody tried something different and asked "It's different, yes, but how?". And bit by bit, we moved from those wax cylinders to audio that is substantially more life-like, yet not always indistinguishable from "the real thing".

I won't tout the Zephyrs as the natural end-point of pickups, but it would seem they do something different, some of which is appealing to people. Worth learning what that something is.

[Mike Sulzer]

And you'd be wrong. Sometimes I'm wrong, but today it is you. You don't know me, and you're questioning my integrity over pickups you've never even played, and research you've never conducted. Good luck with that.

A really good demo (not the one from NAMM, no comparison, low fidelity, very brief) comparing them to another fine pickup could go a long way towards convincing people. Without that, "silver, so what?" is an understandable position to take.

[salvarsan]

If even one person of any audience can honestly say they enjoyed, or was didn't, a song or performance more because of some esoteric electrical property of a pickup it would defy logic and all history, let alone our accumulated knowledge of human perception. But it makes money for some pushing the claims that is it important and detectable. It is one thing to make a reliable serviceable product but quite another to make unsupportable claims intended to deceive the customers.

Last time I looked, guitar pickups were made for players, otherwise the audience would be selecting them.

[Mark Hammer]

Yeah, listening to that NAMM Youtube on cheap headphones through the default audio on my work desktop is far from persuasive; and that's a circumstance many folks will be listening to it in. Not being critical; just noting that it's a bit like judging a beauty contest through a welder's mask.

[salvarsan]

10 years ago, I modded a lot of Tube Screamers for friends. There was no single
change but several in aggregate that made the difference worth listening to.

I think that a few of your are, by concentrating on the silver wire, missing the bigger picture.
SD and Frank Falbo have told us about the important parts:

• Silver wire
• Nickel-440C slugs
• rigid non-microphonic bobbins
• cryogenic treatment

There is doubtless more that they haven't told us.

I suggest that these design/implementation changes in aggregate are
more important than what a squinty-eyed focus on silver wire suggests.

Personally, I''ve a squinty-eyed focus on those 440C-wrapped nickel poles, and
have more than a lingering curiousity about what cryogenic treatment does
to alnico's crystal structure.

[Mike Sulzer]

Mike,

Both voltage and current transformers follow basic transformer theory,...i

I have been looking into current transformers. I notice that a particular kind was invented by one Walter Rogowski. Are you relatives?

Mike

[bbsailor]

I have been looking into current transformers. I notice that a particular kind was invented by one Walter Rogowski. Are you relatives?

Mike

The Rogowski Coils' inventor in not related to me (that I know of). However, I was thinking how I could be wrapping a few hundred turns of AWG 32 around a thick AWG11 primary loop that might be connected to both a current transformer and a traditional 8 ohm to 20K ohm transformer with the spiral AWG32 loop.

Joseph Rogowski