Liquid Pickups

[copperheadroads]

I thought this video was very interesting ,Just thought I'd share
Ferro-Kings Fluid Sound Technology & Liquid Pickups Intro.wmv - YouTube!

[SonnyW]

I thought this video was very interesting ,Just thought I'd share
Ferro-Kings Fluid Sound Technology & Liquid Pickups Intro.wmv - YouTube!

At the high technology defense contractor where I worked for the last 37 years until January of this year we used those ferrofluids for a lot of things. So there may be something to what they are working on there. Probably the biggest use we had was a couple of machines that did "Magnetorheological Fluid Polishing". That's a big word so we just called it MRF. Those machines were able to control the shape of a ferrofluid polishing pad and make it almost rigid. The shape could be controlled to within millionths of an inch and it was used for very high accuracy military optics. An complex CNC controlled electric field was used to shape the polisher. Another use we had for the stuff was a "Ferrofluidic Feedthrough Coupling" which was used to transfer a rotary motion through the wall of a vacuum chamber.

[Joe Gwinn]

I looked at the Ferro-Kings videos, and some postings, and what I see is an ordinary 6-pole pickup with what amounts to a changeable thich cover, where one can use covers made of different materials, each material having its own sound.

One can emulate this by taping sheets of metal between ordinary pickup and the strings.

It isn't clear to me that the ferrofluid "cover" will sound any different from a bit of ferrite.

[Joe Gwinn]

I looked at the Ferro-Kings videos, and some postings, and what I see is an ordinary 6-pole pickup with what amounts to a changeable thick cover, where one can use covers made of different materials, each material having its own sound.

One can emulate this by taping sheets of metal between ordinary pickup and the strings.

It isn't clear to me that the ferrofluid "cover" will sound any different from a bit of ferrite.

[Possum]

You're right, I did that experiment a long time ago. Just cut a piece of steel sheet in the shape of the top of a strat pickup and let the magnets hold it, then drop the pickup down to listen to what it sounds like. First thing it does is drop the gauss at the top way way down, then you have one broad top pole, with all the eddy current and inductance action going on. Bottom line is it doesn't sound all that great. A related idea is where you have a pickup like the monkey on a stick DeArmond where inside the laid a piece of steel going over the B string area to diminish the string output. The ferro thing is a cute idea but not really practical for much.

[Joe Gwinn]

You're right, I did that experiment a long time ago. Just cut a piece of steel sheet in the shape of the top of a strat pickup and let the magnets hold it, then drop the pickup down to listen to what it sounds like. First thing it does is drop the gauss at the top way way down, then you have one broad top pole, with all the eddy current and inductance action going on. Bottom line is it doesn't sound all that great. A related idea is where you have a pickup like the monkey on a stick DeArmond where inside the laid a piece of steel going over the B string area to diminish the string output. The ferro thing is a cute idea but not really practical for much.

Did you also try sheets of copper, brass, nickel silver, stainless steel, ...? Ferro-Kings tried many of these in the video.

[Mike Sulzer]

Did you also try sheets of copper, brass, nickel silver, stainless steel, ...? Ferro-Kings tried many of these in the video.

But let's not forget the high permeability liquid. We have no idea what its properties are. Could it also be conductive? This seems like one of the silliest experiments I have ever read about (and listened to, i. e. no comparison to the sound of the system with a normal pickup). Perhaps that provides some unneeded balance on the day that the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced!

[big_teee]

Sounded a little strange to me.
A novel Idea though.
T

[SonnyW]

But let's not forget the high permeability liquid. We have no idea what its properties are. Could it also be conductive? This seems like one of the silliest experiments I have ever read about (and listened to, i. e. no comparison to the sound of the system with a normal pickup). Perhaps that provides some unneeded balance on the day that the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced!

I believe that the ferrofluid is conductive. What they are doing, and how they explained it makes some sense to me, having been around the ferrofluids. They do move around in response to electric fields as well as magnetic fields. And they are non-newtonian fuids also something like very thin silly putty. But I don't think that the eddy currents imposed by a pickup in a various metal containers are going to be enough to make the ferrofluid do a lot of moving, and besides there is also the effect of gravity, which it seems to me would work against their theory unless they play the strat dobro style. Another thing is that over time unless they are kept agitated some of them will set up, and have a different set of properties. When we were not using the fluid it was kept agitated. They even had a backup power supply on the agitator so that in the event of a power blackout the fluid would not be ruined. Imagine quicksand, in which the particles of "sand" are iron, or whatever metal or alloy the fluid uses.

To give some idea of the motion capabilities, many of the effects in this music video are done with ferrofluids. (Starting about half way through)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEPB7uzKuh4

[Possum]

No, I didn't try brass or copper, I didn't like the sound of a broad flat steel pole fed by 6 skinny magnets. I also tried it over humbucker poles, yuk. Actually I remember now I did put a brass piece over the slug coil, it didn't add anything I wanted to hear. I'm no fan of putting steel baseplates on strat pickups either, it makes the sound hard edged and you lose the soft kind of feel, probably because the flux can't circulate freely past the plate. It works for Tele bridges, probably because the coil is alot bigger and wider....

[David Schwab]

I didn't like the sound of a broad flat steel pole fed by 6 skinny magnets.

Kind of like this?

I'm no fan of putting steel baseplates on strat pickups either, it makes the sound hard edged and you lose the soft kind of feel, probably because the flux can't circulate freely past the plate.

Sure it can. It goes up from the edges of the plate. All the plate does is increase the inductance.

It works for Tele bridges, probably because the coil is alot bigger and wider....

It's barely bigger. They are almost the same size. They are wound differently is all.

[Jazz P Bass]

Perhaps that provides some unneeded balance on the day that the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced!

They 'kind of' announced the discovery of a Higgs like particle.
It is in the correct range (126Gev).
But then again there are theoretically a few different Higgs particles.
Which specific one it is, at this time they are not sure.
Phew. Talk about it is it ain't.

[rjb]

Kind of like this?

OK, I'm an ignoramus.
What, exactly, is "this"?

[David Schwab]

OK, I'm an ignoramus.
What, exactly, is "this"?

That's a drawing from the 1976 Bartolini patent (#3983777). That's one of their single coil pickups.

24 is the flat pole top. 26 is the coil, and 22 is a ceramic magnet. The poles were "T" shaped.

[Mike Sulzer]

They 'kind of' announced the discovery of a Higgs like particle.
It is in the correct range (126Gev).
But then again there are theoretically a few different Higgs particles.
Which specific one it is, at this time they are not sure.
Phew. Talk about it is it ain't.

But just finding such a high energy thing is a tremendous boost to all of those theory variants. This is not going to lead to a "theory of everything" any time soon in any case!