What about ADSR envelope of the tones transmitted by pickups?

[David Schwab]

Yes, but bear in mind my point about the two orthogonal sets of vibration modes. The singer would have to have two mouths, if only one set of vocal cords.

Bartolini Hi-A (high asymmetry) pickups were supposed to sense the vertical portion of the string vibrating, as opposed to the horizontal motion. His thinking was that's how the string on an acoustic instrument moves as it's vibrating the top. Regardless as to the effectiveness of that design, you can hear differences in the upper harmonics between different kinds of pickups. Fender single coils are very plinky. Something like a gold foil has a different top end. So this is all about filtering the upper partials. But it's not changing the ADSR of the string.

You need something like the Moog guitar for that, and that's accomplishing that by putting energy back into the string, to either excite it, or damp the vibrations.

[bbsailor]

Bartolini Hi-A (high asymmetry) pickups were supposed to sense the vertical portion of the string vibrating, as opposed to the horizontal motion. His thinking was that's how the string on an acoustic instrument moves as it's vibrating the top. Regardless as to the effectiveness of that design, you can hear differences in the upper harmonics between different kinds of pickups. Fender single coils are very plinky. Something like a gold foil has a different top end. So this is all about filtering the upper partials. But it's not changing the ADSR of the string.

You need something like the Moog guitar for that, and that's accomplishing that by putting energy back into the string, to either excite it, or damp the vibrations.

David, Steve, Mark, Jason, dor

Try this simple experiment on an electric guitar connected to an amplifier. Pinch the low E string between two fingers at a location midway between the neck and bridge pickups. Pull the string sideways about .25 inches, release and listen to the sound. Now, repeat the same thing but this time pull the pinched string up vertically and release it. You should hear a very different initial attack with the verically pinched string sounding brighter.

The traditional location of the pickup being under the strings creates some interesting things. There is an inherent asmymmetry in the plus and minus signals (reference zero volts) of all traditional pickups because when the string gets closer to the magnet on the downward swing, it is louder and softer on the upward swing farther from the magnet. The typical guitar strum initially excites the strings in a more horizontal motion, then after a few cycles the strings rotate their motion in multiple directions. If one were to make a pickups with tiny coils located in between the strings and on each end (seven coils and magnets in total) you would hear the initial attack of the string in a more dynamic way with stronger attack harmonics like the experiment described above.

Yes, it is like having two mouths or voices, the horizontal string movement voice and the vertical string movement voice. The physical location of pickups being under the strings tends to limit what we hear on the very initial attack of the string. This might provide food for thought about developing a new type of between-the-strings pickup or just explain more about what we are currently hearing and illuminate subtle factors related to this discussion.

Joseph Rogowski

[Mark Hammer]

I'm grinning right now because the first thing that popped into my head was to ask whether anyone had ever developed a pickup that was explicitly directed at detecting side-to-side motion, such as with polepieces between the strings. And then the subsequent thought was "Well that would really need to be situated down by the bridge, since the greater horizontal motion nearer the middle of the string would result in the strings banging against the polepieces." And of course, immediately recognizing that the confound between pickup design and pickup location would put us right back where we started, I had to chuckle to myself.

This would be the point where Rick Turner and Jason Lollar ought to chime in: Do horseshoe pickups have a greater propensity to detectvertical-vs-hoprizontal motion than more standard under-the-string type?

[bbsailor]

I'm grinning right now because the first thing that popped into my head was to ask whether anyone had ever developed a pickup that was explicitly directed at detecting side-to-side motion, such as with polepieces between the strings. And then the subsequent thought was "Well that would really need to be situated down by the bridge, since the greater horizontal motion nearer the middle of the string would result in the strings banging against the polepieces." And of course, immediately recognizing that the confound between pickup design and pickup location would put us right back where we started, I had to chuckle to myself.

This would be the point where Rick Turner and Jason Lollar ought to chime in: Do horseshoe pickups have a greater propensity to detectvertical-vs-hoprizontal motion than more standard under-the-string type?

Mark,

The best location for this type of pickup is about .5 inches in front of the bridge. See the Cosmo Corporation Bobbin Catalog on their main web site. Cosmo Corporation - Coil Bobbins, Knobs, Precision Molded Components

I would use bobbins with a .125 diameter magnet (from K&J Magnetics) about .25" long. Cosmo bobbin 4328-0 has a core diameter of .125; Length .198; flange diameter .437 and a wall thickness of .020. Other bobbins in their catalog will also work however the main restriction is the string spacing and the magnet size/strength to minimize string damping.

Place the bobbins with center magnets in the following order related to the strings. B=Bobbin; M=Magnet; +/- = Magnet Polarity; S=String Name. You will need seven bobbins and magnets to span all the strings

BM+SE-BM+SA-BM+SD-BM+SG-BM+SB-BM+SE-BM

What you have is a +(north pole) and - (south pole) magnet on each side of each string sort of working like a push-pull circuit. It will produce a more symmetrical output and if phased properly can also be humbucking. Unfortunately, it does not fully separate each string for midi control. It does produce a stronger attack on the initial string pick or chord strum.

Here is an application where a series of current loop, single turn coils could be formed to produce a very compact pickup in the space between the bridge pickup and the bridge.

It's satisfying to share new design ideas with folks who can appreciate them.

Joseph Rogowski

[David Schwab]

I'm grinning right now because the first thing that popped into my head was to ask whether anyone had ever developed a pickup that was explicitly directed at detecting side-to-side motion, such as with polepieces between the strings. And then the subsequent thought was "Well that would really need to be situated down by the bridge, since the greater horizontal motion nearer the middle of the string would result in the strings banging against the polepieces." And of course, immediately recognizing that the confound between pickup design and pickup location would put us right back where we started, I had to chuckle to myself.

If you read the two Bartolini patents from 1977 (3983777, 3983778), Bill's idea was that rod magnets produced a tall field which allowed the side-to-side movement of the strings to be sensed more so than the up-and-down movement. Therefore he tried to shape the field to be flat and low over the pickup (Fig 2).

This would be the point where Rick Turner and Jason Lollar ought to chime in: Do horseshoe pickups have a greater propensity to detectvertical-vs-hoprizontal motion than more standard under-the-string type?

I was thinking the same thing earlier.