Not strictly pickups but......

[Spence]

Not strictly pickups but maybe this stuff will tame harsh pickups and turn your amp into Class A

http://www.altmann.haan.de/tubeolator/default.htm

Or maybe it's utter bollocks.

[Mystic]

I had to check the calendar, Nope, it's not April 1st. What was that P.T. Barnum said?.....

[Spence]

Sadly, it seems he didn't say that but got the credit for it.




P. T. Barnum is most often associated with the circus sideshow and the display of freaks. While this is true, he is also the founding force behind one of America's most famous circuses: Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum is also affiliated with the famous quote "There's a sucker born every minute." History, unfortunately, has misdirected this quotation. Barnum never did say it. Actually, it was said by his competitor. Here's the incredible story.

From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how to pull off a hoax. It seems that many an evangelist at the time had been preaching that there were giants in the earth. In June of 1868 Hull traveled back to Fort Dodge, Iowa where there was a gypsum quarry he had recalled seeing two years earlier. Even then, he had noticed that the dark blue streaks running through the soft lime rock resembled human veins. Realizing this its appearance was tailor-made for his hoax and it was easy to carve, Hull hired a group of quarry workers to cut off a slab measuring twelve feet long, four feet wide and two feet thick.

In November, Hull had his gypsum wrapped in canvas and hoisted onto a wagon. Since the nearest railroad was forty miles away, it proved to be a long, difficult job. He then had the slab of gypsum shipped by rail to Chicago where he had hired a stone cutter named Edward Burghardt to carve a giant. Burghardt and his two assistants, were sworn to secrecy and agreed to work on the piece in a secluded barn during their off hours and Sundays. The instructions were to carve the giant as if it had died in great pain, and the final result was an eerie figure, slightly twisted in apparent agony, with his right hand clutching his stomach. All of the details were there; toenails, fingernails, nostrils, sex organs and so forth. Even a needlepoint mallet was used to add authentic-looking skin pores. When the carving was done, sulfuric acid and ink were used to make the figure look aged.

The giant finished, Hull then had the figure shipped by rail to the farm of William Newell, his cousin, located near the town of Cardiff, New York. In the dead of night, Hull, Newell and his oldest son buried the giant between the barn and house. They were instructed to say nothing about it and that Hull would let them know in about a year of what the next stage was.

Luckily, about six months later, on another farm near the Newell's, some million year-old fossil bones were dug up. Newspapers around the country reported the finding. Hull was filled with glee in reading the accounts.

True to his word, one year after burying the giant, Hull sent word to his cousin on October 15, 1869, to start the next stage of the hoax. Newell hired two laborers to dig a new well near his home. Newell directed them to the exact spot he wanted the well dug and went back into the house to wait -- anxiously. Sure enough, well into the day, the two laborers rushed up to the house to announce their discovery: a giant turned to stone! The laborers and both Newells carefully excavated the area surrounding the giant.

News of this amazing discovery spread throughout the valley and soon wagon loads of neighbors streamed into Newell's farm to see the giant. By mid-afternoon, Newell erected a tent around the "grave" and started charging 25 cent admission. Two days later, the Syracuse Journal (New York) printed an article about the discovery. Being greedy, Newell raised the price to 50 cents, and a stage coach company made four round trips a day from Syracuse to the Newell farm. Thousands came every day. Among the visitors were clergymen, college professors and distinguished scientists. Before long, the expert's opinions split into two theories; one side claimed it was a true fossilized human giant and the other side pronounced it an authentic ancient statue. No one asserted that it was a fake!

About ten days after the discovery, and about the time the Cardiff Giant, as the papers had named it, started receiving national attention, Hull sold two-thirds interest in the giant for $30,000 to a five-man syndicate in Syracuse, the head of which was a banker named David Hannum. The syndicate moved the giant to an exhibition hall in Syracuse and raised the admission price to a dollar a head. Unknown to them, P. T. Barnum sent an agent to see the giant and make an assessment. The particular Sunday the representative saw the giant, the crowds were abnormally large -- about 3,000 people. The agent wired the news back to Barnum and Barnum instructed him to make an offer of $50,000 to buy it. Hannum turned his offer down.

The Cardiff Giant was the most talked about exhibit in the nation. Barnum wanted the giant to display himself while the attraction was still a hot topic of the day. Rather than upping his offer, Barnum hired a crew of workers to carve a giant of his own. Within a short time, Barnum unveiled HIS giant and proclaimed that Hannum had sold Barnum the original giant and that Hannum was now displaying a fake! Thousands of people flocked to see Barnum's giant. Many newspapers carried the version that Barnum had given them; that is, Hannum's giant was a fake and Barnum's was authentic. It is at this point that Hannum -- NOT BARNUM -- was quoted as saying "There's a sucker born every minute." Hannum, still under the impression that HIS giant was authentic, was referring to the thousands of "fools" that paid money to see Barnum's fake and not his authentic one.

Hannum brought a lawsuit against Barnum for calling his giant a fake. When it came to trial, Hull stepped forward and confessed that the Cardiff Giant was a hoax and the entire story. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling Hannum's giant a fake since it was a fake after all. Thereafter, Hannum's name was lost to history while Barnum was left with the misplaced stigma of being the one to say "There's a sucker born every minute."

This whole cock-up could have been re-written by Les Paul and Seth lover....

[David Schwab]

This guy was serious about this... it wasn't a joke! I had several email discussions with him about how nonsensical this is, but he swore by it.

Of course he also claimed that stripping the poly finish off his cheap Fender, and making his own spirit varnish (he called it lacquer) improved the tone.

Check out the main page http://www.altmann.haan.de/

This isn't the first time for something like this. There's a guy that makes these tiny bottles of "lacquer" he calls C37. He claims that if you paint this on EVERYTHING on your stereo rig it "adds transparency, detail and musical informations to your system."

C 37 lacquer by Ennemoser

Oh, and that's $88 /72 Euro (10ml bottle) - 255 Euro/$312 US (50 ml bottle)!!!

This and the people who remove the plastic wrap on aluminum can electrolytic caps to improve the tone, and then buy $485 wooden knobs (painted with C37)... Silver Rock Signature Knob


It's so damn sad... really it is.

[Possum]

could be...

now you guys are ignoring physics and alot thats been discussed here. remember eddy currents? You got a chip right, so your audio circuit sounds harsh and digital right? So you paint some stuff that has metallic dust in it on top of a chip and what happens? The metal creates eddy currents and dumbs down whats happening in the chip. It makes total sense really, to me. You could probably get the same effect by laying a small piece of steel over the chip, I bet you could measure the effect on test gear easily. Probably all this guy did was take some aluminum powder in some lacquer or something, stupid simple.....

[David Schwab]

now you guys are ignoring physics and alot thats been discussed here. remember eddy currents? You got a chip right, so your audio circuit sounds harsh and digital right? So you paint some stuff that has metallic dust in it on top of a chip and what happens? The metal creates eddy currents and dumbs down whats happening in the chip. It makes total sense really, to me. You could probably get the same effect by laying a small piece of steel over the chip, I bet you could measure the effect on test gear easily. Probably all this guy did was take some aluminum powder in some lacquer or something, stupid simple.....

I thought that at the time too... The thing is, he says it's only for plastic IC's because plastic sounds unnatural.

He also states:

Wait about 20 days while monitoring the sound, until the lacquer is cured. You will then have a complete comprehension about what the "Tube-o-lator" lacquer does to the sound.

This is what he says is in the stuff:

Tube-o-lator lacquer consists of:

carbon 76,4 %
oxygen 23,1 %
sulfur 0,20%
natrium 0,17 %
silicon 0,09 %
chlorine 0,03 %

He says he doesn't know why it works, but might be due to "dielectric dispersion"

[Spence]

Quote:
Wait about 20 days while monitoring the sound, until the lacquer is cured. You will then have a complete comprehension about what the "Tube-o-lator" lacquer does to the sound.

I bet he offers a full 19 day no-quibble moneyback guarantee too for those who can remember what the audio sounded like before...

[David Schwab]

...for those who can remember what the audio sounded like before...

That's what cracks me up! I'm sure one can convince themselves that it's sounding better every day! "Let's see... $300 for a bottle of black nail polish... yeah.. I think can hear it..."

$500 wooden knobs really get me... they even say "remove the Bakelite knob, and listen how much better it sounds" OK.. so leave the damn knob off!

I bet those knobs would make any guitar sound vintage!

[nhall]

All you HiFi nuts...

Hmmmm...

This brings back memories of my days scouring all the HiFi mag's back in the 80's...anyone (who was into HiFi) remember Peter Belt and all his 'crazy' (well depends on your point of view!) ideas about tearing pages out of books on your listening room shelf so as not to have anything with even numbers upsetting the acoustics in the room...and offering for sale (at really inflated costs) little silver foil tabs that you had to wave under some magic water, then stick facing inward towards the spindle of your record player on your favourite HiFi record label to unlock the key to the innermost secrets of the record groove?........I wonder what has happened to him....and why all the HiFi industry didn't start using his stuff ?
I seem to remember that he did convince quite a few people at the time, and the main HiFi mag's (in the UK anyway) ran many articles on his diff. ideas back then..

Shows that there are many people out there just waiting for the next great invention that will conquer all that came before, and give the purchaser an immediate pass to audio Nirvana..

[David Schwab]

I have no doubt that there are things we don't yet recognize that affect audio signals. So, yes, I can see where we have different dielectric effects of insulators, and even the skin effect.

But I draw the line with wooden knobs, that even if they did sound better, shouldn't be $485, and using some lacquer to paint on the platter and tone arm of your turntable (as well as everything else you have... including the $485 knobs)... Notice how these things are VERY expensive? I think that's a tip off right there. This knob HAS to be good... it's $485!

Geeze, gimmie a lathe and some beechwood. There's a niche to be filled!

This I can understand... GaborLink, and it's kind of the same idea as time aligned speakers and the BBE processor.

There's probably a lot of geometries and things that can be done with pickups that haven't been explored yet.

Maybe magnet wire that changes diameter as you go from the inside to the outside of the coil?

[DrStrangelove]

...and he's got a bridge he wants to sell ya, too.

Not strictly pickups but maybe this stuff will tame harsh pickups and turn your amp into Class A

http://www.altmann.haan.de/tubeolator/default.htm

Or maybe it's utter bollocks.

Fill in the blanks:

A ____ and his _____ are soon ______.

-drh

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[Mark Hammer]

$500 on knobs to improve harmonic response is nothing. Try $50B to improve world harmony by getting all the WMDs out of Iraq.

Sometimes, though, people really DO hear something, even though whatever it is they hear may be caused by something completely unrelated to what they think. They get into trouble when they don't double-blind test whether they hear something ALL the time, and they get everyone else into trouble when the effect is so subtle that a little bit of persuasion can go a long way in convincing others that they hear it too. If it ain't ground up peach pits for curing cancer, it's Q-tips and carbon to rub on ICs.

[SteikBacon]

I got the chance to try a platform that had same weight as the cd-player to stop earthvibration to reach it. And vibration from cd-player would stop too... It would be the balance in weight that would make this work.

Didnīt believe too much about it, but when me and some friends did a blindtest it got interesting. Almost 80% of the music were prefered when it were used.

[Possum]

........

if the stuff really works it should be measureable in audio analyzer software, the lacquer has a high carbon content, how that will effect eddy currents I don't know, maybe Joe Gwinn can comment. Thing is though there is such small current running through those chips, probably, unless they are power chips, that I doubt there'd be enough current to generate much eddy current action. anyway, it could work and it might be fluff......

[NightWinder]

Thats a cool observation. I have some custom pedels, and I notice that one builder in paticular uses something....and his specs are avaliable to the public. I understand its different, but was just in the same thought of vibration/eddys/current perhaps?