Originally posted by bea
View Post
Some musicians would regard having to use an XLR balanced mic cable into a mic preamp, instead of a 1/4" mono cord into a guitar amp, a weakness.
Les Paul himself certainly didn't think so, even though his ideas did not catch on well in the market in the early 1970's.
There are also a lot of guitarists who are vintage purists and cannot stand the idea of having an onboard preamp with replaceable batteries in their instrument. Most bass players are over that thinking now. 8-)
So "strengths" and "weaknesses" have to be judged by what you are trying to accomplish and what kind of tool you envision putting into the hands of the musician, and even by the musician's style or genre of music. For example, I don't see ultra-high fidelity pickups making a big impact on the thrash and heavy metal musicians.
So I didn't think Joseph was putting his low-Z pickup research out there to be a universal solution. It is, however, a very good way to get a very high fidelity signal from the strings, where you have a lot of design freedom to put magnetic fields and pickup positions on the strings where you want them instead of being constrained by a conventional outline and position on the instrument.
A single loop ultra low Z pickup isn't very susceptible to E-field noise but M-field noise can be an issue. Joseph did address this with a "humbucking" design with two loops however, if I remember the long thread correctly.
Mike, I like the flat low-Z pickup idea a lot. I can see an archtop jazz instrument with something like that integrated in. Even under the pickguard of an Esquire.
-Charlie
Leave a comment: