Lace Alumitone Short Technical Review

[Joe Gwinn]

What is the purpose of this one turn pickup with a transformer? Is it the "cool" factor so the thing looks really cool and space age or is there some kind of tone thing I am missing here :-) These pickups don't sound good to me. I don't quite get the point of doing one of these and trying to make it sound better than what Lace did. I also wonder how they patented something that has a previous patent only a couple years earlier using the same idea. Yeah they look really cool but they dont sound very musical to my ears....

The larger answer is that it's a radical departure from current passive pickup designs, and as such will have its own tradeoff space, all owned by Lace, who will be riding this for years, with variation after variation.

I would also mention that ribbon microphones are experiencing a renaissance, driven by the needs of digital mastering, even though ribbon mics are less sensitive than condenser mics. One-turn pickups are the pickup equivalent of a ribbon mic. For instance, US patent 6,434,252.

[bbsailor]

Here is another perspective to expand on what Joe G. mentioned about ribbon microphones.

Many years ago I built a guitar where I extended the truss rod into the body of the guitar to under the bridge. I used a brass nut and made a special conductive collar to connect the brass nut to the truss rod. This became the common ground return for all six strings and when combined with the signal from each string behind the bridge, made each string it's own independent ribbon-like vibrating element. The current is induced in the string when it vibrates in the presence of a magnetic field. In this case each string becomes the vibrating diaphram of its own microphone and the gets converted to a higher impedance by setp up transformers.

This direct string pickup, ribbon microphones, and the Lace Alumitone work on principle of low impedance induced current. The result of this current principle is the possibility to use less wire than on a pickup that obtains a high output with many thousand turns of wire and the side effect of having it's own characteristic resonance as well as susceptibility to noise.

Studying new appraches to making pickups broadens our insights into effecting changes that offer improvements under some circumstances. Any discussions about sound quality are driven by what we have been accoustomed to hear, acceptable musical and tonal quality as well as a technical way to describe and replicate what is pleasing. That is what we do on this forum.

It is my opinion that pickups that have a wider bandwidth can be equalized easier than pickups that may have some frequency limitations built into their fundamental design.

Joseph Rogowski

[madialex]

This light loading has a secondary effect of preserving the spectral balance of the source pickup, as overloaded pickups lose lows, and the overload also increases the width of the resonance, further changing the spectral balance.

Please explain what you mean by overloaded Pickup. I really want to figure out some of this stuff but it is all greek to me. Thanks for taking the time to explain this stuff Joe..... Much appreciated...

[DrStrangelove]

That not it... that's a variation used for acoustic guitars.

The patents are 5767431 and 5831196. Those are for the Transsensor pickups. The Alumitone doesn't have its own patent but uses the same principal.

Yo, Dave.

Please visit the Pickupedia patents section at http://pickupedia.info/index.php/Patents

I have added the incorrect reference for the Alumitone in the hopes that a more knowedgable fellow might log in and fix it.

(Bwa Ha Ha Haw! My evil plan (AKA Principle of Maximum Laziness) is coming to fruition!)

-drh

[Joe Gwinn]

Please explain what you mean by overloaded Pickup. I really want to figure out some of this stuff but it is all greek to me. Thanks for taking the time to explain this stuff Joe..... Much appreciated...

Enough theory. I think an experiment is in order. Take a guitar and wire a 100K resistor across the volume control pot. After adjusting the amp to obtain the same volume, listen and compare to the sound without the 100K load.

[Possum]

lace....

How can Lace own this idea, the previous patent from 1998 still exists so he can't own the principle behind the thing. He doesn't own the useage of the transformer which anyone can buy. He can't really own a one turn pickup with a transformer now can he? There's ample room for anyone to make something similar and sell it, but I bet you even money right now if I made one of these things I'd probably sell about four a year.....

[bbsailor]

Ear Muscle Motion

I Think I figured out why and told Jeff Lace what it was..

it was all about ear comfort as a listener - ear muscles seem to not move around uncomfortably from wire 43 at 6k as they seem to do when the receive notes from wire 42 at 6k -- now think of wire 45 & 46 much less muscle movement - easier to listen to for the average music lover -(non musician)

try this test - do not listen with your ears but feel the muscle movement instead -- the bigger wire cause's more movement - its actually uncomfortable to experience...

because of this I realized what was going on with Laces skinny wire 45 & 46 and that whole Love em or hate em out poring of approval or harsh criticism that seemed to plague the company - and still does today..

Players prefer that big tone with girth

Listeners want less girth and less ear muscle motion




Pupolohlic,

Can you please provide more information about how one might test "ear muscle motion"?

"Ear muscle motion" is a new concept to me so please help me understand it?

First, to research this concept, one would need to identify where the ear muscle is located and second, isolate it's motion under different listening situations.

Happy New Year

Joseph Rogowski

[David Schwab]

How can Lace own this idea, the previous patent from 1998 still exists so he can't own the principle behind the thing. He doesn't own the useage of the transformer which anyone can buy. He can't really own a one turn pickup with a transformer now can he? There's ample room for anyone to make something similar and sell it, but I bet you even money right now if I made one of these things I'd probably sell about four a year.....

The Transsensor was invented by Villen Khanagov, the same guy who makes Villex pickups, and not Lace. I think the Lace patent pertains to a particular version, which in that case was the pickup at the end of the fingerboard with the bar as a fret. The Transsensor patent is from 1995. The Lace patent (2002) is quite different in construction. The only thing they share is the single turn coil and transformer.

If someone invented something, no matter how simple, and its novel enough to get a patent, than they can.

But it's like the graphite neck. Rick Tuner holds the patent on that, but Steinberger made use of it, and then Moses has his own patent, which is for the contruction of a graphite neck, not the neck itself.

Another angle is taking someone's patent, making changes (improvements) and then getting a patent on that.

An example of that is Brian Beller from Duncan getting a patent on a variation of the Kinman design. It's different enough to not be a copy, even though it uses the same ideas.

You can get a patent on a Tele pickup if you come up with a novel way to construct it.. or you can even patent the method of construction, and not the pickup itself.

Lawrence has a patent on the construction of the L-500, and it doesn't go into the winding or function of the pickup itself.. just the form factor and parts.

[pupoholic]

Pupolohlic,

Can you please provide more information about how one might test "ear muscle motion"?

"Ear muscle motion" is a new concept to me so please help me understand it?

First, to research this concept, one would need to identify where the ear muscle is located and second, isolate it's motion under different listening situations.



Joseph Rogowski

Even My Mom who wears a hearing aid - was able to do this test -

play the guitar - pick hard on a few high pitched lead string notes and feel your ears moving -- is it comfortable? or uncomfortable?..

whatever the names of that stuff is thats in you ear be it muscles or whatever ??? I'm not sure - or do I care -

This happened cause I spent 5 years in daily sonic test at Jeff Laces lab - you tend to come up with "out of the box ideas" and weird test to try on these things we call pickups -
Advise: worst thing anyone can do is start making things much harder then it really is - or harder then it needs to be. IE naming ear parts and isolating etc..etc.. GOOD LUCK... LOL