Stainless steel on Lawrence?

[salvarsan]

Most of these alloys you'll find are priced like gold. I got a quote on some Carpenter stuff, it was only available in 1/2" diameter. A foot length of it was $150!!!

Heh.

More likely, your attitude frightened them and they wanted to get rid of you.

A few short years back, I priced HyMu-80 wire .2012" dia for roughly $1/ft. in 200 ft total length since they wanted a $200 minimum.

You could get a 6" engineering sample for free, make slugs out of it and slap a ceramic/alnico/Neodymium magnet on the bottom to see if it's worth pursuing.

Otherwise, type 400 stainless steels will also work, just not sure how well.

Go to any machinist and ask about type 413 or 416, the most common (i.e., cheapest).

-drh

[David King]

I got the impression that the wires stopped at .020" dia, did I misread that? Is there wire all the way to .200"?


Someone, Dave Meadows i think, told me that the hi mu materials really won't make a difference in a pickup as our signal voltages are so small that we aren't getting anywhere close to flux saturation point of any magnetic metals. At least I think that's what he was saying..

[Possum]

..

Nope, it was a legitimate quote and was gotten for me by a rep, I wasn't even involved. All the alloys quoted were similarly expensive. All of the companies I contacted by email, none of them reply to email. I forget which Cartech alloy it was, but it was actually the cheapest alloy we could find. So you would have to put it on a lathe to get it down to slug size to boot. I guess if you sold your pickups for $500 each you could make a profit :-) Couldn't find anything thinner than about a quarter inch too, seems to be a standard for raw alloy stock. One sample I tried completely jammed the lathe, too soft, the rod bent under cutting pressure.
The most affordable quotes I got were from China but you also have to have it made into a product before you buy it, otherwise there is some sort of tax over there on raw material so you end up paying the same for raw stock as finished pieces, crazy system. Plus, they have big miniums over there, we're talking $5,000 so get out your checkbook :-) I also looked at wire stock and couldn't find anything that worked there either. Magnetic stainless is probably the only thing I didn't consider...

[salvarsan]

Wire, we here.

... I forget which Cartech alloy it was, but it was actually the cheapest alloy we could find. So you would have to put it on a lathe to get it down to slug size to boot. I guess if you sold your pickups for $500 each you could make a profit :-) .

It is cheaper in quantity, of course, and that quantity is a 500# roll that you send to a specialty wire place to be drawn down twice to 3/16" dia.

The difficulty is getting enough people to go in with you on it. (like, Duh).

As for pickup pricing, parts need to be a lot more expensive for $500 new.

I priced silver wire a while back, ran some numbers and came up with a ~$35 materials cost, or a $175 pickup by the 5:1 rule. After a while, it's not the materials but the most reasonable price that will keep you in business.

-drh

[David King]

Hey Dave,
I just bought a Hardinge DSM turret lathe so I can theoretically really crank out the small parts in a big hurry. Unfortunately it only runs of 440V 3 phase so I'm looking for a three phase step-up transformer of the 3kva size. Once I have that going I can do slugs in any dimension in seconds if you can source the materials. You would love this machine I bet.

Has anyone tried SK's SS slugs yet?

[David Schwab]

Hey Dave,
I just bought a Hardinge DSM turret lathe so I can theoretically really crank out the small parts in a big hurry. Unfortunately it only runs of 440V 3 phase so I'm looking for a three phase step-up transformer of the 3kva size. Once I have that going I can do slugs in any dimension in seconds if you can source the materials. You would love this machine I bet.

You can't just replace the motor?

[David King]

Nah, I can have it rewound for $440, that transformer is about $350 used. (A new motor is probably $1400, it's a two speed job in a 184TZ frame.)

[Possum]

....

Well I don't agree on "the most reasonable price" being a guarrantor of staying in business :-) If that were true I wouldn't be selling anything, all my prices are substantially over Lollar and Fralin's prices. Tom Holmes buckers are about $600 a pair if you can convince him to make you a pair, or you pay that amount for a licensed pair in Japan. I price by how much my time is worth to make a set of pickups enough to feel like I am making money doing my products. In this business you make your own niche, sure there are those who niche is the lowest prices but you get what you pay for. My niche is my tone and it sells pretty well.

To get others to buy into a large quantity of something like a magnetic alloy is a tough deal because they all sound different and no one is going to fork over a bunch of money without trying it out. I nearly made a huge mistake in buying some stuff from China thinking it was what I needed, turns out it wasn't, I was just lucky, could have been a disaster. I suppose you could get samples but then they are the wrong size and some of them aren't machinable. Its a tough deal, no simple answers and no place you can just buy the right size stock and play around with it. Sucks....

[salvarsan]

Well I don't agree on "the most reasonable price" being a guarrantor of staying in business :-)

Let's be very clear about this. With emphasis added, I wrote:

the most reasonable price that will keep you in business

-drh

[David Schwab]

Well I don't agree on "the most reasonable price" being a guarrantor of staying in business :-) If that were true I wouldn't be selling anything, all my prices are substantially over Lollar and Fralin's prices. Tom Holmes buckers are about $600 a pair if you can convince him to make you a pair, or you pay that amount for a licensed pair in Japan.

The other part, as I'm sure you are familiar, is perceived value. People have no problem overpaying for things that seem "special" or "exclusive" to them.

As an example, Alembic has no trouble selling $10,000+ basses, and when someone on their forum wanted a price to update his very early bass to Series II electronics, Mica quoted him "about $3,000". That's for the pickups and electronics. The pickups aren't make much differently than anything we do here, and the electronics have five 5534 audio op amps and three FETs, and a handful of other parts. The system's worth about $300, not $3,000!

I have a story I like to tell to demonstrate this... years ago when I was still learning lutherie, I had a friend Phil who worked for Tobias Guitars when they were still in Florida. Phil was teaching me to do refrets, and was quite expert at it. I was still working on my chops. The guitarist in my band had a nice vintage Jazzmaster that needed a refret. So Phil offered to do it so I could watch and assist, and did a perfect job. Naturally he didn't charge my guitarist anything.

A few days later I overhear my guitarist showing the guitar to someone... he said; "yeah I just had the frets done on it. They are OK.. but it was free so what do you expect..."

So there's always that margin where you are either undercharging, and appear as cheap junk... but people will buy it, like GFS, or you overcharge and appear to be elitist, like Alembic, and people will still buy it.

I think somewhere in the middle is a good place to be... maybe upper middle. If you have a good product, charge what you think it's worth with conviction, and people will buy it.

That's my take on it anyway.

[Possum]

ooops....

Sorry misread that

But anyway, its a good hijack topic
Its weird, I have found there is a price for humbuckers and if you go over that price they won't sell. That price for me is $365. I priced my new set at $370 and no one went for it, dropped it five bucks and sold about 8 sets right away. Its a perceived value thing in a distorted way, perception of "is this too expensive for me to buy these." In this case too I don't think customers give a darn that I sweat my brains out making this stuff by hand, its real slow, they don't care really.

[David King]

Well since we're into the hijack hour on this thread and apparently no one can comment on SK's stainless slugs, -is there there a market in the guitar world for wood volume knobs of a very high quality?

[David Schwab]

It's like the old "Under 100 dollars" thing.. and it sells for $99.99. I mean is it really under 100 dollars? That same penny people wont stop to pick up on the street!

It's good to use psychology.

[David King]

Well I can tell you a good part of why this stuff is so expensive is that Carpenter ships a 1 oz, trifold, 4 color brochure on heavy cardstock via UPS 2 day Express Hard Pack.

The info presented is;

5 soft magnetic alloys in order of cost from lowest to highest:
Iron, Silicon Iron, Ferritic Stainless, Nickel Iron, Iron Cobalt.

In order of Permeability (sensitivity) -low to high:
Ferritic Stainless, Iron Cobalt, Iron, Silicon Iron, Nickel Iron.

In order of strength (Flux Density) -low to high:
Nickel Iron, Ferritic Stainless, Silicon Iron, Iron, Iron Cobalt.

Nickel-Iron alloys seem like they would be the most promising for pickups and they are recommending HyMu "800" for tape head laminations.

Is that making any sense to anyone?

[Joe Gwinn]

Well I can tell you a good part of why this stuff is so expensive is that Carpenter ships a 1 oz, trifold, 4 color brochure on heavy cardstock via UPS 2 day Express Hard Pack.

The info presented is;

5 soft magnetic alloys in order of cost from lowest to highest:
Iron, Silicon Iron, Ferritic Stainless, Nickel Iron, Iron Cobalt.

In order of Permeability (sensitivity) -low to high:
Ferritic Stainless, Iron Cobalt, Iron, Silicon Iron, Nickel Iron.

In order of strength (Flux Density) -low to high:
Nickel Iron, Ferritic Stainless, Silicon Iron, Iron, Iron Cobalt.

Nickel-Iron alloys seem like they would be the most promising for pickups and they are recommending HyMu "800" for tape head laminations.

Is that making any sense to anyone?

Yes. I've seen those selection-guide charts on their website. They must think you're good for a railcar load of something.