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What do pickups and wine have in common?
Hint: The answer is very educational.
Answer: Both need to breathe to appreciate their unique character.
Breathing is the wine analogy to pickup loading.
This question has stimulated some interesting discussions. One in particular is the need for some common terminology to describe guitar pickups. Maybe we could come up with a guitar pickup tone wheel that would work something like this.
1. Select pickup type, side 1: single coil, side 2: humbucker
2. Select pickup inductance
3. Select Pot value
4. Select cable length/capacitance 380pf for a typical 10 ft guitar-to-amp cable.
5. Read out whether the pickup is breathing or being choked by too much loading.
6. See how much the resonant point is being shifted by external loading.
The simplest way to listen to the effect of loading on a pickup is to build a simple source follower FET buffer amp with a 2.2 meg input impedance. Connect the pickup to this directly and then compare the unloaded sound of the pickup to the loaded sound of the pickup. Do this by connecting a one meg pot across the pickup then reduce the value of the pot to load the pickup and listen for the sweet spot. The sweet spot is in the ear of the beholder.
Check out the following web link to see a simulation of pickup loading. http://terrydownsmusic.com/technotes...itarcables.htm
Happy Holidays
Joseph Rogowski
Hint: The answer is very educational.
Answer: Both need to breathe to appreciate their unique character.
Breathing is the wine analogy to pickup loading.
This question has stimulated some interesting discussions. One in particular is the need for some common terminology to describe guitar pickups. Maybe we could come up with a guitar pickup tone wheel that would work something like this.
1. Select pickup type, side 1: single coil, side 2: humbucker
2. Select pickup inductance
3. Select Pot value
4. Select cable length/capacitance 380pf for a typical 10 ft guitar-to-amp cable.
5. Read out whether the pickup is breathing or being choked by too much loading.
6. See how much the resonant point is being shifted by external loading.
The simplest way to listen to the effect of loading on a pickup is to build a simple source follower FET buffer amp with a 2.2 meg input impedance. Connect the pickup to this directly and then compare the unloaded sound of the pickup to the loaded sound of the pickup. Do this by connecting a one meg pot across the pickup then reduce the value of the pot to load the pickup and listen for the sweet spot. The sweet spot is in the ear of the beholder.
Check out the following web link to see a simulation of pickup loading. http://terrydownsmusic.com/technotes...itarcables.htm
Happy Holidays
Joseph Rogowski