As far as Noiseless goes, Whats the major prob with Dummy coils

[pupoholic]

Anyone know what Is the complaint that it's too humbucker-ish.. or dulls the top end, thats all I seem to recall.. but I've never had one to play here.

I wonder why in does not catch on, like some thought it would when they first started doing SRV's guitar.. It sure did not wreck SRV's tone. and I spoke with Rene Martenez about it and it was in SRV's guitars.. Rene pulled it out after Stevies untimely death.. because it was Renes invention and he felt the need to protect it becuase Fender had already been asking about it.

later on in the Powerhouse Strats I found the dummy in those while servicing one. the guy let me keep it.. I think I sent it to Rene..

I'm going to wind one up,
to try it on my axe for a while, and see If I can tweek it out to be note worthy?

any ideas why this just never flys like front page news?
seems odd if it works and yet its still gets shunned by the GP..

DON MARE

[David Schwab]

I wonder why in does not catch on, like some thought it would when they first started doing SRV's guitar.. It sure did not wreck SRV's tone. and I spoke with Rene Martenez about it and it was in SRV's guitars.. Rene pulled it out after Stevies untimely death.. because it was Renes invention and he felt the need to protect it becuase Fender had already been asking about it.

The problem is usually that the pickups just sound different. If you are going to stack two coils and make them fit the profile of a Strat pickup, each coil will be smaller than normal. The magnets will be different. You'll have to wind with thinner wire to get the turns count up. It just sounds like a different pickup.

Then you have either phase cancelation issues which cancel some low end (stacks), or the increased impedance of the second coil dulling the top end.

There are good sounding passive stacked pickups, but they never sound exactly like a single coil. I think a dummy coil would work, but you wither have to design the pickups with the dummy in mind, or use an active summer like Alembic does.

As far as getting shunned.... there's a LOT of people playing EMG strat pickups out there. They sound enough like a single coil and they are quiet.

By the way, I don't know who Rene Martenez is, but famed luthier Rick Tuner pioneered using dummy coils in the first Alembic basses back in the 70's. The Series I basses still have a dummy coil mounted flush with the top between the two single coils. Rick even posted a suggestion on the MIMF forum back in November 2000 saying:

Dummy coil area counts, too. You can enlarge the area picked up by the dummy coil and reduce the number of turns..... A series dummy coil made the same size as the perimeter of a control cavity and wound with fairly large wire might cancel a fair bit of hum with minimum effect on tone.....Just a thought.

Why I think he just invented the Suhr BPSSC System!

The Powerhouse Strats were designed by another Turner.. Bill Turner, who worked at EMG. The mid boost in the Powerhouse Strats is to compensate for the tone with the dummy coil. The patent for the noiseless pickups is 6291759.

Why on earth would the owner remove the dummy coil?

[pupoholic]

Thanks, Great info, David

I knew about the "stacked coil " issues always sounding like humbuckers and all.

The Coil I'm speakin' of is probally the same effect..

but it goes under the control cavity and one coil is then used for all 3 Strat pups...

What interests me still, is SRV had this, and his tone was Big Fender that I heard..

Thanks
Don Mare

[David Schwab]

Thanks, Great info, David

I knew about the "stacked coil " issues always sounding like humbuckers and all.

They don't sound like side-by-side humbuckers, but they don't sound like single coils either. I think the small side-by-side Strat sized humbuckers (such as Bardens) sound better than stacks.

The Coil I'm speakin' of is probally the same effect..

but it goes under the control cavity and one coil is then used for all 3 Strat pups...

Right, that's a dummy coil.

What interests me still, is SRV had this, and his tone was Big Fender that I heard..

It can work. Check out the Suhr system.

[Possum]

Suhr's system

The Suhr thing is THE best method for retaining the single coil tones. If you were going to use a dummy coil in the traditional method, I would stay away from too close a match, you'll still get alot of hum cancellation but too close a match and the pickups just sound dead. I would try other methods too like using heavy build magnet wire will help in keeping the tones open, maybe SRV's dummy coils were wound that way who knows. I know at the time of SRV's Number One autopsy by Fender in that hotel room (the video on youtube by the way) there was no dummy coil in that thing, but the pickups were wrapped with copper foil........

[pupoholic]

I have a hunch, like all things, Shur's system will get duplicated, going right around the patents..

I too support the system and suggest it often to phone customers..

but because its almost 4 bills with tax..

I have a hunch somebody will re-invent it and skate around the patend..
call Asia and order a container

and put it out for less the a 100.00 ...
-------------------------------------------------

Also I was going to put a coil under the Teles controls.

then I said wait..

while its in the middle... two pups in parallel will be feeding into that one coil,
the hum cancling will not work in the middle..

normally we wind the Tele necks RW/RP here -- but for this adventure I did not... so I could use the dummy coil..

but we decided, to let the neck and bridge buzz and keep the middle quiet.

and ditched the test..

is this true.. that with 2 pups on no more humcancling?

then what about the Suhr system.. when 2 pups are on?

anyone.......?

[Joe Gwinn]

I have a hunch, like all things, Shur's system will get duplicated, going right around the patents..

Did the patent ever issue? I don't find it at the Patent Office in the list of granted patents.

I don't have the energy to pursue this, but while googling for something else, I stumbled upon a perfect bit of prior art on the matter of using dummy coils for humbucking, which bears on US application 20050204905 (to Chilliachki):

"Air-core induction-coil magnetometer design", Kari-Pekka Estola and Jaakko Malmivuo, J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum., Vol. 15, 1982.

Section 4.3 is the key:

"4.3. Differential magnetometer construction
Biomagnetic signals are often embedded in environmental magnetic noise. We have adopted two different methods to overcome this inconvenience. Firstly, the measurements have been carried out in an aluminium eddy-current shield and, secondly, we have constructed an asymmetric first-order gradiometer. The second coil has 4.5 times the diameter and (1/4.5)^2 of the turns compared with the primary coil in order to obtain the same effective area. Because of the big difference in the coil radius the coils can be placed on the same level. The second coil decreases the intrinsic signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of 0.2 dB but it rejects the existing magnetic noise by some 50 dB."

So, there are two coils, one 4.5 times larger than the other, with turns count of the smaller being 4.5^2= 20.25 times larger than that of the larger. That's my area-turns product. The smaller coil is the pickup coil, while the larger is the dummy.

The authors, in 1982, speak of this as commonplace, not claiming discovery, so any possible patent will have expired by now.

[David Schwab]

The Suhr thing is THE best method for retaining the single coil tones.

I agree. I heard clips of it, and the guitar sounds exactly the same with the coil in the circuit than out, except with most of the noise removed.

Of course, that's exactly what Rick Turner said, and he seems to have said it before the Suhr system was patented (can't find the patent at the moment...)

If you were going to use a dummy coil in the traditional method, I would stay away from too close a match, you'll still get alot of hum cancellation but too close a match and the pickups just sound dead.

I agree here as well, and from our conversation on mismatching coils, and my stacked Tele experiment, I'm convinced this is the way to go with same size coils.

I would try other methods too like using heavy build magnet wire will help in keeping the tones open, maybe SRV's dummy coils were wound that way who knows. I know at the time of SRV's Number One autopsy by Fender in that hotel room (the video on youtube by the way) there was no dummy coil in that thing, but the pickups were wrapped with copper foil........

I never heard of him using one either.

[David Schwab]

Did the patent ever issue? I don't find it at the Patent Office in the list of granted patents.

I don't have the energy to pursue this, but while googling for something else, I stumbled upon a perfect bit of prior art on the matter of using dummy coils for humbucking, which bears on US application 20050204905 (to Chilliachki):

Chilliachki is the inventor of the Suhr system... so that's the same application.

Now that you mention it, I don't think the patent was issued yet.

This was applied in 2005, and Rick Turner stated this idea in 2000.

[pupoholic]

"I know at the time of SRV's Number One autopsy by Fender in that hotel room"

Correct,
Prior to Jimmy Vaugh reciving the #1 Rene Martinez pulled the coil out,
I once flew to Florida with Rene, he was on his way to tech with Santana, I was on my way To do my Buck Cannon stick In Lakeland's Music Ranch..

we remain frineds since.. we were talking about dummy coils for Santana, I Fed Ex-ed some coils to Rene on that tour.. along with pickups..

during our many coversations I found out about the secret Dummy coil that he had in SRV's #1 and found out that Rene was able to retrive it prior to Jimmy taking possesion of it, It was Renes invention and he was right to pull it out and keep it from public eyes.

I do not thing it was any different then the coil seen in the powerhouse Strat, because I send him one from the powerhouse to use.
DM

[David Schwab]

It was Renes invention and he was right to pull it out and keep it from public eyes.

Except it wasn't his invention... it had been done before.

I do not thing it was any different then the coil seen in the powerhouse Strat, because I send him one from the powerhouse to use.

So he used the coil from the PowerHouse Strat, and it's his invention? You've lost me now.

[Steve A.]

I've put dummy coils in a few of my guitars. I've used coils similar to the pickups (not necessarily the best idea) and wired them up in series- with a switch to take them out of the circuit. Here are 2 sound samples followed by a song:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/mp3/sa...coil_strat.mp3

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/mp3/sa...90dc_noise.mp3

Song:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/mp3/samples/p90_w_dc.mp3

With the dummy coil you lose some of the brightness and the sound is more compressed, but otherwise has the same basic characteristics as the stock pickups. I consider it to be a better compromise than the various stacked pickups and strat-sized humbuckers I've tried.

I haven't tried the Suhr system but it sounds very promising. Here's the patent application:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/misc/p...chiliachki.pdf

BTW with the Suhr system you want all of your pickups to be of the same polarity and winding direction- like the original sets in the 50's and 60's. However, by using a 4pole 5 position "mega" switch you could reverse the 2 wires going to the dummy coil and remove it from the circuit for the positions which are naturally hum-cancelling (assuming that one of your pickups is RWRP with respect to the other(s).)

However, I believe all of that will be irrelevant in a few years as electronic devices will be able to remove all of the hum and noise in our guitar signal. The ISP Decimator was made by the guy who designed the HUSH circuitry for Rocktron but takes it ahead one giant step. This is not a noise gate (which opens and closes) but more like noise reduction plug-ins for computers which actually cancel out the noise. They have a stomp box for $150 or a rack mount model for $400, which has two channels which are linked together. The first channel is between your guitar and your amp and the second channel goes into the effects loop of your amp.

http://www.isptechnologies.com/decimatorproducts.htm

Steve Ahola

[Possum]

suhr patent

There's should be an easy way to get around the Suhr patent, Their idea was a big open loop coil, square, if you think about it there are alot of ideas that easily do the same thing and get around the coil shape. Only problem is you gotta alter your guitar to get it in there.....

[pupoholic]

Hello, again
The Powerhouse dummy coil was for Texas Specials in Santanas axe.

I sorta knew Rene was not the first -- just that it was his (meant in another way.)

We just did one here -- just finished.. the hum reduction was pretty good but not like humbuckers.. more like Lace Sensor reduction .. I ( mismatched them too far possibly.. 7.8k 42awg Bridge pup -- and 8.2k 43awg dummy coil ...

there was a slight loss of volume and some top end presence/ snap -sparkle..

but not bad really..

I think next would be to use sheilded wire from the jack and on the pups,
and start reducing any long lengths of unshelided wire.....

it would be worth the hassle to have one onboard if we can get a tad more hum out of the circut.


Don M.

[Joe Gwinn]

There's should be an easy way to get around the Suhr patent, Their idea was a big open loop coil, square, if you think about it there are alot of ideas that easily do the same thing and get around the coil shape. Only problem is you gotta alter your guitar to get it in there.....

There is no Suhr (well, Chilliachki) patent just yet, so one could use what it teaches, the danger being that if the patent did issue, you would have to stop.

A better solution is to prevent the patent from ever being granted by pointing out the prior art to the Patent Office. It's far more trouble to get a patent rescinded than to prevent if from issuing.