Cryogenic treatment of guitars warning

[Enzo]

Have you considered a local university engineering department as an alternative to commercial cryo? Possibly some grad student or post grad type might be willing to involve. Might get the treatment for nothing, and might even inspire some interest in their research direction. worst can happen is they say no.

[J M Fahey]

Tboy did.

He did it when I first founded Pickup Makers Forum on Ampage, or rather encouraged the original forum hosted in Australia to move to Ampage, and then to here, on the music electronics forum. Few old PMF old timers are older than I. Jason and Wolfe are among them.

Well, to begin with I don't believe you.
Lately self praise and bragging with no real proof have been rampant in this Forum, so for what is worth you might be Soundguruman or some other annoying leech trying to impress.
.................................
mmmhhhh, NOW I see, so you are Salvarsan !!!!!
Why having dual accounts in the same forum?

That's stupid at least and grossly unethical and cheap at worst if you use it, as I see, to argue under your official name, and then use the hidden identity to delete posts not favorable to you.

Another bug in this once great Forum which now is sinking like the Titanic.

And another proof that TBoy has taken some real poor decisions in the past, as in letting important Forum controls in the hands of those who can't handle them..

So you had your occult personality frozen since September 2009 and raised it from the grave just to apply the mentioned 2 by 4 to your personal enemies?

Are you sure that's what TBoy expects from you?

Are you sure that's good to the Forum?

[potatofarmer]

Unfortunately in the world of musical electronics "emperor's new clothes" events are frequently scoffed at because check out that TONE! Not to imply that Sal would do that, but someone will eventually. There'll be cryo'ed pickups or magnets or pickguard screws on the market at some point and it won't make a toss of difference if it has an effect on the transfer characteristics of the pickup. This is merely the first skirmish in an unending battle...

Not for nothing, but LN2 is cheap as hell. Someone grab a dewar and head to the gas distributor then toss a magnet in. Sure you won't get the nice gentle cooling curve, but it would be a start at collecting data and it would cost less than $10. Or toss it in the freezer for a few hours, then a dry ice / acetone bath for a few hours, then the LN2. Now we're up to $20. Maybe more for dewar rental.

Not that any of that will tell us how a proper cryo cycle will affect a magnet, but if you can just dunk it in LN2 with no effect then we're at the "myth busted" stage.

[Rick Turner]

A couple of points:

There's no myth to bust. This is a call for inquiry. The questions are: "Does anything happen to any of the materials used in pickup making when cryo treated?", "If so, then which materials are changed: copper coil?, steel polepieces, keepers, slugs, and screws? Alnico, ceramic, or rare earth magnets? and then, "If something happens, can we quantify it?", and finally, "If there are changes, do we like them subjectively?"

Cryo treatment of austenitic steels is done to a specific cycle; they don't just drop stuff into frothing LN2 unless they want to really screw up the parts.

An interesting side thread is that certain plastics are reported to change, too, with cryo.

The company I dealt with many years ago treated disposable razors as give-aways. They claimed much longer blade life.

Somehow, in some people's minds here this whole thing turned into a believers vs. unbelievers. It's been like religious fanatics vs. athiests...dedicated disbelievers in science vs. uncritical Kool-Aid drinking New Age mental sheep. But debates like this are as futile as was the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Hamm. I've tried to be the voice of the curious agnostic; I want to know more, not shut out more.

If the nay-saying attitude displayed by some here had been in force in the guitar industry in the early and mid-20th Century, we probably wouldn't have guitar pickups at all. Oh, it was in force! It has been reported that Lloyd Loar left Gibson in 1924 because upper management didn't approve of his experiments in making...drum roll here...an electric guitar.

[frankfalbo]

Okay so...I just found this thread. It's a spicy meatball. I need to limit my contribution to regurgitation of things I've already said, FBO trade secrets and what not. But it's all fairly cut and dry.

Cryo active pickup failure: I don't believe its a secret that many active pickups are made by winding a coil traditionally, wax potting it (or some iteration of a subassembly) then epoxy "potting" (sealing/bathing) it. I would not recommend cryo treatment of an epoxy sealed pickup. If we assume the magnet wire is not pigtailed and taped, but that magnet wire leaves the coil, and loops into a PCB via AND therefore is now entirely covered in epoxy, then it could be the epoxy's motion throughout temperature extremes that tugs and eventually opens the magnet wire. I'd think all the pcb components should be cryo friendly but I don't have definitive answers in this particular case.

Rick you are right to withold epoxied parts from cryo in my opinion. Wax potting is fine, although we didn't wax pot Zephyrs, I believe Duncan's position is that you can order a pickup from the custom shop and have it wax potted and cryo'd, and they would do it in that order, as well as take a new pickup in box and send it off to cryo as-is. The run to Strat and Tele eyelets is fine in my opinion. Even under wax there's plenty of slip potential. It's that trapped in epoxy LaBrea tar pit factor that is suspect.

Function: Among other things that have already been disclosed, every aspect of the Zephyr project was researched in isolation. We didn't make a silver/cryo/bimetallic/glass filled nylon 'bucker and marvel at its collective charisma. We looked at cryo in isolation, both on copper and silver. Someone asked about what it does to solder joints. It is my position that for a good solder joint it is only a net positive, not a possible point of failure in an active pickup unless the joint in question was already failure-prone. And I do believe it tidies up the surface of a wound coil, especially if you consider its wound under tension. That doesn't have to show up as a DCR delta in order for the skin to shift the phase balance of high frequencies. (Also undetected by simple amplitude of said frequencies)

Sound: I am of the opinion after my experiences that I can safely assume its a net positive. If someone offered me free lifetime cryo on any wire-wound pickup I would take them up on it. We all know better isn't always better. If you like muddy Humbuckers into 250k pots and a high capacitance coily cable because muffled = "warm" you MAY not prefer it, but honestly I believe even in that case, the underlying clarity and density would still be considered a positive. Maybe if you have a CBS Strat that you think is "just right" then cryo will make you think its "too brittle?" I don't know. I believe its quite universally positive. A performance enhancer.

I believe we had also disclosed that (while I did not perform these two tests personally) there was no tested difference in DCR or gauss strength at the string. But I can't tell you what their temp/margins are. Also no visible shift in resonant peak, Q, center, or height. This was very important because if a customer wanted to cryo a stock 59 or JB or whatever, they could be assured it wasn't shifting the fundamental character of the pickup. To me it is extremely important as I'll try to suggest in a thread such as this, that we could clearly hear the difference, though the time honored methods of testing at "a leading pickup manufacturer" did not quantify.

[LtKojak]

The human interaction shown and the display of content loaded with a heavy dosage of pettiness make the entertainment-factor of this thread one of the most valuable since the days of the Gundry-Possum battles for the "My PAF replica is More PAF than Your PAF replica" undisputed trophy.

I'd miss some name-calling, though. Would you gentlemen provide?

[rjb]

And I do believe it tidies up the surface of a wound coil, especially if you consider its wound under tension. That doesn't have to show up as a DCR delta in order for the skin to shift the phase balance of high frequencies. (Also undetected by simple amplitude of said frequencies)

Man, I really have misgivings about entering this discussion... but here goes.

In the interest of separating "beliefs" from "facts", I ask:
Do you have or know of test results that indicate a shift in the phase balance of high frequencies?

[Rick Turner]

This gets back to the whole "group delay" issue which certainly does not show up in "time honored methods of testing at "a leading pickup manufacturer"". Which is not to say that said manufacturer did not use something other than "time honored methods"...though that is indeed a great pun when discussing phase response/group delay characteristics! This gets me back to wanting to do FFT analysis. Time for the exploding wire over a pickup test...

[Rick Turner]

Also, you all should know that Frank is probably under some non-disclosure agreements with a couple of pickup companies. He's not in a position to be as open as he'd probably like to be, and we should honor that. I'm happy to glean whatever I can from his experiences that he can share.

[frankfalbo]

In the interest of separating "beliefs" from "facts", I ask:
Do you have or know of test results that indicate a shift in the phase balance of high frequencies?

Totally fair question, I can't answer it. It brings up another dreaded term, speed. For my sake, let's reference phase anomalies as the result of raw speed at various frequencies, and/or convoluted information across neighboring pole pieces and stray flux. The former would be in question, the latter should remain constant between before/after listening tests. For now you'll have to go on my ability to hear harmonic alignment as a byproduct of "faster" or more aligned high frequencies. That is all I can disclose; I hear it. I'm familiar with the sound AND feel of less impeded treble and brilliance.

[big_teee]

A quick insert here on the question yesterday about the preheat and post heat when the cryo treatment is done?
I emailled Cathi at Cryoplus.
She said the heat cycles can be omitted, just put a note in, with the parts?
T

[salvarsan]

Well, to begin with I don't believe you.
Lately self praise and bragging with no real proof have been rampant in this Forum, so for what is worth you might be Soundguruman or some other annoying leech trying to impress.
.................................
mmmhhhh, NOW I see, so you are Salvarsan !!!!!

Wow! Nuthin' gets by YOU.

Why having dual accounts in the same forum?

The purpose of dual accounts has been explained elsewhere above, and to attribute malice on my part to the ignorance on yours would be precious were it not so tiring.

And, if certain people received some heavy-handed moderation, maybe they deserved it for being self-admitted assholes (in their own words) for making me and others dislike them for their excessively rude obstructionism. Maybe I moderated them because I could, but I certainly enjoyed it, no maybes.

It is, of course, too much to hope for, that this thread might return to the topic of cryo treatment services and where to get them.

[Rick Turner]

With pickup design, I think we may be in the same relative knowledge range as we were with preamp and amplifiers before Walt Jung did his groundbreaking research on Transient Intermodulation Distortion which led to the important specifications for slew rate or before Thiel and Small did their work on loudspeaker specs. In both cases, there were good products before some important factors could be quantified and understood. Now we have a better handle on the issues.

In both of those cases, human hearing led in front of meaningful measurements. The science lagged behind the art, if you will.

What Frank is talking about is similar to my own experiences with the Litz wire wound "classic core" pickups, though I took the extended high frequency response as an expected given with the low impedance of the coils. My experience was in hearing significantly tighter low end response...great impact and "speed". Slew rate improvement, if you will. Can I measure this stuff yet? No, but I have some pals at Stanford who might be able to help.

[salvarsan]

A quick insert here on the question yesterday about the preheat and post heat when the cryo treatment is done?
I emailled Cathi at Cryoplus.
She said the heat cycles can be omitted, just put a note in, with the parts?
T

Outstanding news, Terry.

Kathi sent me email after hours, too, asking what we were trying to achieve. I told her, asked about leaving off the heat cycles so it looks like she's pretty well informed about what we think we want.

[salvarsan]

Have you considered a local university engineering department as an alternative to commercial cryo? Possibly some grad student or post grad type might be willing to involve. Might get the treatment for nothing, and might even inspire some interest in their research direction. worst can happen is they say no.

Excellent idea, Enzo.

I'm affiliated with a chemistry department but their magnetic resonance spectro service is pretty tight-assed about the cryogens.

Must be used to dealing with young 20-somethings instead of adults, I suspect.