Dailtone Pickup

[Mike Sulzer]

Certainly the string sample function matters; extreme case: single coil (one region) versus standard humbucker (two regions). Other than that, what matters? In any case, you must not consider the pickup coil independent of the circuit it operates into because it has so much inductance. Either the cable matters, or if you isolate it from that with electronics (or use lower impedance), then you have to set the response yourself, either by resonating it, or by using active filters. But else matters? A lot of differences in tone claimed for magnets are actually just differences in amplitude, which then have different tone because they are tested with the same non linear circuit, so of course it sounds different if the level into a nonlinear circuit is different. Or with different steels, you have different permeabilities and so different inductance, and different frequency responses

In short, nobody has yet come up with an equivalent circuit that predicts pickup sound. Coil frequency response...which can be modeled...doesn't tell but half of the tale.

[DialtonePickups]

"I think your delineation is somewhat artificial. Everything can really be reduced to an equivalent circuit."

No, I don't think so. I think the coil/magnet assembly has to be considered separate from any internal or external passive or active electronics. Certainly that's how things work in the microphone industry. Sure, condenser mics have internal electronics, but everyone is very clear about the differences between a certain mic capsule's performance with a tube front end and an FET front end. And that mental exercise of separating the circuit blocks even extends to electret mics...look up "Linkwitz Mod" for the Panasonic capsules. Ditto, too for how ribbon mics perform with different internal transformers.

You may prefer to think of it all as one piece, but that is only helpful if you're trying to muddy the waters and make it hard to understand what's going on. We here are even separating out types of steel and types of Alnico used within what I'm going to insist upon calling "the pickup". You can't just lump it all together.

And...it's very clear that just substituting one FET or IC for another in an active stage will affect what comes through from the source. So I'm not going for PSPICE accurately predicting the performance of a pickup/preamp/EQ or filter system and explaining everything we'd like to know.

I can tell you this...if you take the Alembic variable low pass filter circuit and apply it to an Alembic pickup and dial in a Strat pickup frequency response curve, it doesn't sound exactly like a Strat. Etc., Etc. Not that it isn't very useful, but if the coil/magnet assembly isn't that of a Strat, it won't sound like a Strat even if the curves predict it will. PSPICE may predict a lot of aspects of an electronic circuit's performance, but it doesn't do diddly for pickups unless you are way far ahead of everyone here with regard to understanding why pickups sound as they do and you've added some modules to PSPICE that nobody knows about.

The coil/magnet assembly is "the pickup", and what comes after that, wherever it's packaged, is the first stage of electronics in my book.

Hi Rick,
Let me explain further to try and clarify, but by now it seems like more of an issue of semantics.You can use lumped parameter analysis to get at what affect you are having in frequency space. At least for me it gives me a sense of what different circuits can do. How it sounds is a different matter. The only way I've figured out how to get at this is to experiment. I would argue, however, that this type of approach can provide valuable guidance for design.

The system is actually physics rich and complicated starting with the non linear interaction of the string with the coil. Further, the stress states of the guitar body material actually matter too when you start to look at what is actually going on. People publish some fun academic papers on these subjects. Kinda fascinating, but not so practical.

Even identical makes and models of guitar can sound different as I'm sure you are aware due to subtleties like this and variance in manufacturing.

At the end of the if you truly want exactly a Strat you should get a Strat that you have played and know.

[DialtonePickups]

Yes, that's the idea! After changing my pickups about four times, I got tired of it and came up with the idea of Dialtone Pickups instead.

[Rick Turner]

I would suggest that an apt analogy would be trying to make a small diaphragm condenser mic sound like a large diaphragm mic without resorting to DSP. I don't think you can lump the diaphragm in with the front end and get convincing results.

Useful? Yes. But superimposing a response curve using analog circuitry onto a low Z pickup does not reproduce the full sound of a Strat, '58, Toaster, Tele, etc.

However...you might want to check out what they're doing at Antares (the Auto-Tune people) with DSP and electric guitars. Pretty scary...and pretty convincing. And not analog...

[DialtonePickups]

I would suggest that an apt analogy would be trying to make a small diaphragm condenser mic sound like a large diaphragm mic without resorting to DSP. I don't think you can lump the diaphragm in with the front end and get convincing results.

Useful? Yes. But superimposing a response curve using analog circuitry onto a low Z pickup does not reproduce the full sound of a Strat, '58, Toaster, Tele, etc.

However...you might want to check out what they're doing at Antares (the Auto-Tune people) with DSP and electric guitars. Pretty scary...and pretty convincing. And not analog...

Hi Rick,

This is Tory. John is out fishing with his kids all day, but I wanted to get back to you. It seems that we might be getting caught up on terminology & technicalities, and moving further away from the point. The point is that we're offering something simple, easy to use, convenient, and in a way that has never been done before. The technology is sound and the pickups work really well.

To respond to the apparent implication behind your Antares comment - John had a ton of ideas on achieving the tonal options he's looking for, but in the end, what we're offering now is what he determined was best given careful evaluation of all options and priorities. It was very important to him that the end product be simple, and that it not be an after-effect. Dialtone Pickups do not manipulate tone after the fact; they work with the true tone of the guitar. I'm not a player myself, but in my opinion, this is a huge deal. With after-effects, as related to pickups as well as many other things, it just seems like at some point, you'd be better off using a computer to automatically do everything if precision and technical possibilities are what you're after. In many ways, humans just can't compete with computers. Surely, a computer can play the guitar more precisely than a live person, and the possibilities with tone and effects that way are endless. So why not just get rid of physical guitars completely and have a computer do it all? Or who needs an artist when you can have a computer paint a flawless picture? That sort of logic can be applied to just about anything and it's quite a slippery slope.

Dialtone Pickups will appeal to a certain audience, specifically those who want simplicity, quick access, and to work with the true tone of their guitar, but they are absolutely not a good fit for everybody. We're aware that the folks on here probably aren't going to be ordering pickups from us (except, maybe, here and there to take them apart out of curiosity!), but when the conversation is productive, John is really having fun discussing with others who share his interest in the technical side of pickups. He's been monitoring this forum for years, and just thinks it's so cool that you guys are actually talking about something he made.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend everyone!
- Tory

[big_teee]

Good luck in the adventure.
One thing I learned early here, You will never out talk these guys or ever get the last word.
Like my Hero Will Rogers once said.
“When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.”
Enjoy the 15 minutes!
T

[DialtonePickups]

Good luck in the adventure.
One thing I learned early here, You will never out talk these guys or ever get the last word.
Like my Hero Will Rogers once said.
“When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.”
Enjoy the 15 minutes!
T

Hey, I'm a big fan of Will Rogers too!! That's the first time I've heard that quote - definitely a useful one. I should probably reference it more often than I'd like to admit.

[David Schwab]

Hi John

It looks like someone is daft enough to make it again. GIZMOTRON® OFFICIAL WEBSITE GIZMOTRON.COM - NEW GIZMOTRON® 2.0 COMING IN 2014! I hope no one asks me to fit one. Although I must say the idea wasn't bad.

Cheers

Andrew

It wasn't a bad idea, it was a bad implementation. Godley and Creme said the person working on the prototype took it upon himself to make changes to the design which caused a lot of problems, like putting serrated wheels on it.

[Mike Sulzer]

For passive manipulation, true low Z is a problem: caps get too large, pots too small, need transformer. But for medium impedance it works fine. You are, after, manipulating the tone just as done with Hi Z pickups, just working with more convenient values, allowing greater flexibility, and removing the effect of the cable, which is hard to control. It works great, as it should, because it is like what has been done along with Hi Z with poor control and often without understanding what is happening. Just need an external low noise preamp for high gain. (Of course guitarists never put anything between the guitar and amp!)

Useful? Yes. But superimposing a response curve using analog circuitry onto a low Z pickup does not reproduce the full sound of a Strat, '58, Toaster, Tele, etc.

[Rick Turner]

Mike, with all due respect, I can't imagine that the circuit NOT being described here consists of passive manipulation in an active pickup. Please know that I was doing medium impedance pickups with active electronics as early as 1970 with Ron Wickersham at Alembic. We settled on the variable low pass filter as being a reasonable way to superimpose Hi-Z pickup frequency response curves onto pickups that had self resonance in the 25 kHz range. That experience was invaluable to my understanding that while you can manipulate a pickup to duplicate the coil response of whatever...Strats, Teles, humbuckers, etc...that still would not duplicate all of the tone of the original pickups. It's very useful. It's not the same. But the variable low pass filter circuit is the most reasonable one to use with a low or medium Z pickup. And it does not preclude one from using passive RC circuits with the pickup. I currently use an RC passive tone circuit between stages of active preamplification in my Model 1s...which have Hi-Z pickups buffered at about 7" of cable length. And then I also have a semi parametric EQ option for that preamp.

So there are many ways to skin the cat, and none of them look like any other way. I still maintain that there is a strong "magnetic signature" tone to each and every pickup design that is irrespective of the LCR factors of the pickups. And if anybody on this forum would take me up on winding the low Z coils onto classic cores with wire that is sized to give the same coil bulk as the originals, they would also come to understand this "magnetic tone" thing. But I seem to be pissing in the wind with that challenge. Are folks really so uninterested? Whew!

[Mike Sulzer]

Please know that I was doing medium impedance pickups with active electronics as early as 1970 with Ron Wickersham at Alembic. Whew!

Yes you were, but that is not what I am talking about that I think gives the best results: using a medium impedance passive, but adjusting the resonance with switchable Cs (and Rs for the Q a necessary) in the guitar. The cable effect is negligible, but the response can be just like a cable would give with Hi Z pickup, or not as you want. An external low nose FET preamp is used to give better SNR than you get with a 12AX7 and Hi Z.

[Rick Turner]

Mike, I'm with you on that. It's not what we were mostly doing, though we did so a few early guitars and basses with passive tone shaping of medium impedance pickups immediately followed by buffer/line drivers. So I do understand what you're getting at, and yes, it works really nicely. There are several tone control units on the market now with switched caps instead of a cap and a pot, and they're a lot more subtle than a VariTone. Good stuff, me thinks, and with a zero load factor...if you want it.

[charrich56]

Mike, I'm with you on that. It's not what we were mostly doing, though we did so a few early guitars and basses with passive tone shaping of medium impedance pickups immediately followed by buffer/line drivers. So I do understand what you're getting at, and yes, it works really nicely. There are several tone control units on the market now with switched caps instead of a cap and a pot, and they're a lot more subtle than a VariTone. Good stuff, me thinks, and with a zero load factor...if you want it.

One of the first things I came up with in playing with low-Z, to relate to what you guys are discussing, is shown here. It's a valid approach but I am working with a slightly different approach now.
pickup-sim-comp-for-flat(1).pdf

A cute trick here when you want to get "flat" all the way to the amp/processor with a cheap preamp is to create a little resonance through the transformer to boost the response of the highs to compensate for the high frequency loss of the cable capacitance, and drop the response like a rock over 20-22 KHz for EMI/RFI suppression.

One thing that is not shown is that on the center tap of the transformer "output" side, the impedance works out so that a stock Stellartone Tonestyler type switched capacitor circuit works very well to provide a range of resonant frequencies. A couple of models of Tonestyler also have a "bypass" which would allow flat response out of the instrument with this setup as a switch position.

The submini transformer is a 5/8" cube. It is a couple of dB down at 75-80 Hz so this would not be the best for bass, but for guitar, no worries.

This more or less "voices" the whole instrument at once with variations of course when you switch different pickups and combinations in with different inductances.

This setup which I have built and tested (without the Tonestyler, though - just different caps) on a Strat-type SSS guitar sounds especially amazing in multi-pickup positions, because, I theorize, the low-Z pickups allow much stronger and (maybe) more complex electrical interaction between pickups than happens with a "normal" hi-Z pickup set. It would be a true bear to model, but it does sound really, really good.

-Charlie