Bartolini humbuckers.

[Possum]

I have a difficult customer who after trying two sets of my buckers, wanting a "single coil" kind of tone, finally tells me he wants Tuck's tone of Tuck & Patti. These I suspect aren't even remotely related to normal humbuckers. the model Tuck uses is 1CTA. Does anyone know anything about them?
I suspect they are the ones in patent 3983777. No way is a regular humbucker going to sound like one of those things. If anyone has taken one of these apart let me know, need some help here. Not sure what to do here, he's already used up his two tries and sent both sets back. French with not very good communication skills...I don't do refunds either...

[Spence]

Bartos are shit. Great bass pickups but way too Hi-Fi for guitar. They are resin encapsulated too. Just bite the bullet with a refund and wave him off with the Agincourt salute.

[Sweetfinger]

Mama said there'd be days like these. Tuck pretty much wires the pickup (he doesn't even HAVE a bridge pickup in his guitars) straight(no switches, or tone controls) to a pre-amp buffer, and then EQ's the hell out of it. I suspect that if you bought a Barto and stuffed it in your cover and sent it to this guy, he'd send it back.

I dunno how far you are willing to go to satisfy the customer, and you didn't elaborate on the particulars of what you already tried in the pickups you did send, but I'm assuming that you wound your cleanest, smoothest brightest PAF. The next option is to try a non-PAF based build going for clean and Hi-Fi response.
Narrow coils, thin steel blades, and coils wired parallel OR stuff a Charlie Christian style under a cover.

My advice: tell the customer that he needs to have an interpreter translate for him. You need to know :
what guitar, effects(if any), and amp he is using
what combinations he has used in the past that did not work for him
what pickups he has tried and did or did not like in the past
The style(s) of music he will be playing
is he specifically after TUCK'S tone? what other tones does he like
Has he ever played the guitar/amp combinations of his "tone heroes"?
He needs to know:
his tone will NEVER sound like 'the record' unless he records it THEN listens
Tuck uses a BOATLOAD of outboard gear to get his tone.
He will need a BOATLOAD of gear to GET Tuck's tone.
Part of Tuck's (or anybody's) tone is in their HANDS. This is not your area of expertise, and the customer must consult a transplant surgeon and various characters with low moral values in order to have those
He needs to know that if you DO decide to wind another set for him, it will be the LAST set. PERIOD. no refunds, no crying.

If you do not like the answers and aknowledgements that you get from the guy i.e. get the sense that even with good communication/interpretation, that he has unrealistic, or even nutty expectations, cut him loose. Explain that you feel that you are not able to satisfy his tone needs, refund his money and privately notify all the other winders that you like and/or respect, not to do business with this guy. Depending on how evil you feel, you may enjoy referring this guy to your worst enemy
Either way, you'll rest uneasy knowing that you have learned a valuable lesson about being in a customer service based business.

[David King]

If Tuck's are like the High-A pickups then I'm betting it's just a larger ceramic magnet, say 1/4" x 1/2" x 2.25" with relatively low turns of 43 or 44. Big magnet, less turns = flat frequency response. That's the way most of the bass pickups are too.

[David Schwab]

Tuck actually talks about his tone on his web site. It ain't just the pickup!

He uses a preamp and boosts the hell out of the top end with a graphic EQ.

His recording guitar has a 1HCX1. His live guitar has a Bartolini 1CTA pickup. Not a Hi-A, but they are the same thing. I'm sure it has the planar tip poles.



Vocal and Guitar Sound

My recording guitar is a 1953 Gibson L-5 CES. My road guitar is a 1949 Gibson L-5 CES, stuffed with foam rubber and socks to reduce feedback. Each has a single Bartolini neck pickup (1CTA on road guitar, 1HCX1 on recording guitar, although prior to Learning How To Fly it was also a 1CTA). Neither has a bridge pickup; what looks like a pickup is an empty shell. On the road guitar we built a preamp into that shell; on the recording guitar the preamp is attached to the inner back of the guitar using Velcro. The pickup feeds the onboard discrete (no ICs) buffer preamp, which was removed from a Carrotron foot pedal made in the 70s (long since unavailable). We modified it, increasing the power supply from 9V to 18V (two 9V batteries in series) to give it plenty of headroom without distorting. Its input impedance is 1,000,000 ohms, and its output impedance is 100 ohms. One of the pots on the guitar adjusts the preamp gain between unity and +20 dB. The preamp output feeds another, passive volume pot (always turned all the way up), which is wired to the output jack of the guitar. All other pots and switches are disconnected. Mogami cable was used throughout. Even though they are vintage Gibson L-5s with humbucking pickups, they sound much more like Strats with single coil pickups due to the pickup/preamp combination. To improve shielding, we completely wrapped the pickup of the road guitar with copper foil, attached to the guitar's ground, but with a switch hidden under the pickguard to unground the foil when needed. Then we put black gaffer tape around the foil for cosmetic purposes.

The buffer preamp is amazing. Guitars are invariably impedance mismatched relative to whatever follows them, with a substantial but unnecessary loss of clarity before even going through any circuitry. We all grew up hearing and therefore loving that sound, but I have come to prefer the sound of the more theoretically correct approach. I have not fully tested it yet, but Bill Bartolini designed an onboard buffer preamp using my Carrotron as a reference then built it into a pickup (the TXE), and reports that he surpassed it in all respects, which I don't doubt. This is very unscientific, but I would estimate that about half of my sound is the pickup/preamp, and the other half the extreme EQ we do (discounting the role of the guitar itself and the fingers). I haven't used a guitar amp in almost 30 years, and given that I basically just use one tone with the goal of a crystalline orchestral sound, that has turned out to be a good move.

The he talks about using a "normal guitar" to get his tone:

Amp tone: At the risk of sounding discouraging, the odds of your getting very close to the tone you are used to hearing from me are low using a different, high impedance guitar and the limited tone controls of any guitar amp. The amount of EQ we do in mixing (and live) is drastic.

He's kind of vague about it now, but he used to say exactly what frequencies he boosted. It was like the right half of a 31-band EQ sloping up all the way.

From Barts site:

http://www.bartolini.net/information...uitar_pu_s.htm

1C our first humbucker ~1975 - same wire, unequal windings for a clear, clean tone that tends toward single coil - less warmth in the mids than equal winding designs

1CTA very near the 1C tone (part way to single coil tone) but equal windings for best noise rejection - at Tuck Andress's request ~ 1980 - used only in neck position

TXE neck - active 1CTA (single coil in HB shape with hum-canceller coil), high output (+9volt / +18volt operation )

In the two Bart patents, you see a multi coiled pickup, with the planar top pole, and a two coil pickup, with the same flat pole top. I'm guessing the 1C is that two coil pickup.

OK.. I went and dug out my old Bartolini Hi-A catalog... the 1C is also called the Beastie II.

I don't have a 1C, but I do have an old Hi-A 2C "Mini-Beastie II" model which was the mini-humbucker version of the 1C. He says it's the same specs as the 1C.

The catalog states the 1C has a 40% wider aperture than conventional humbuckers. The catalog lists it as: "DC Resistance 8.0 K-ohms, Peak impedance 190 K-ohms"

On mine the two coils read: 4.62K, & 3.4K

4.62 closer to the bridge.

Have fun trying to copy a Bart! You might want to tell the guy to get a Bart TXE if you don't want to do all the R&D.



Spence, some people like hi-fi on guitar. Like Tuck. You are way too reactionary lately. Barts are actually cast in epoxy, they don't have cases. The newer Bart guitar pickups have a more conventional PAF type tone and even have metal covers.

[Possum]

...

Yeah I read all that stuff on their website. Well, its a pisser all he told me up front was he wanted a single coil type of tone and wanted to try a Platinum set. "Single coil tone" to a humbucker player usually doesn't mean hi-fi flat shrill, most who ask for that just want a clearer tone, less muddiness and dullness. This wasn't communicated well to me and I went through building two sets of pickups and all he said were they sound "nasal." Well, no shit, Just about every blues/rock tone out there is "nasal" and desired :-) Now he is vacillating between Bartolini/Tuck tone and "clear PAF tone" and then tells me Tom Holmes is a friend of his and says my pickups dont sound like Tom's. Well, no shit, I'm not Tom Holmes and TH pickups aren't exactly my idea of a true PAF sound. Then he brags about what great ears he has etc. He's a nice guy but can he be satisfied is now really in question. Of course I'm going to try but everytime I think I know what I'm going to do he gets more confusing :-)

[David Schwab]

Some people are never happy. I bet if you gave him a Bartolini TXE he wouldn't like that either!

And that's Tuck's signal chain in one package.

[David King]

I think I'd just send him an eb3 bass neck pickup and be done with him.

[Sweetfinger]

Dole out the Heisman!

Yeah I read all that stuff on their website. Well, its a pisser all he told me up front was he wanted a single coil type of tone and wanted to try a Platinum set. "Single coil tone" to a humbucker player usually doesn't mean hi-fi flat shrill, most who ask for that just want a clearer tone, less muddiness and dullness. This wasn't communicated well to me and I went through building two sets of pickups and all he said were they sound "nasal." Well, no shit, Just about every blues/rock tone out there is "nasal" and desired :-) Now he is vacillating between Bartolini/Tuck tone and "clear PAF tone" and then tells me Tom Holmes is a friend of his and says my pickups dont sound like Tom's. Well, no shit, I'm not Tom Holmes and TH pickups aren't exactly my idea of a true PAF sound. Then he brags about what great ears he has etc.

Know what the Heisman trophy looks like? That's what you want to do to this guy. Refund, warn others, accept life lesson, and move on to better things.

[Possum]

....

Well, if he takes any of my suggestions it would be an opportunity to try some designs I"ve been thinking of like a double slug pickup, or double alnico bar blade pickup, which would probably get in the ball park of what he wants. What bothers me is he says stuff like all the old classic PAF recordings were of rock guys on "high gain" amps. Boomfield on a Super Reverb is not a high gain amp :-) Duane Allman on a Twin Reverb isn't either. None of those amps were really high gain, you just turned them up til they distorted...

[David Schwab]

None of those amps were really high gain, you just turned them up til they distorted...

And picked hard...

[Spence]

"Spence, some people like hi-fi on guitar. Like Tuck. You are way too reactionary lately. Barts are actually cast in epoxy, they don't have cases. The newer Bart guitar pickups have a more conventional PAF type tone and even have metal covers."

OK David, don't want to be upsetting anyone.

I was recommended Bartolinis for my 1970 SG many years ago. I was taken by the look of them. I was promised they would be the answer to all my dreams. They were the pickups that would give me instant Billy Gibbons.
Well, they didn't fit in the routes. So I had to make the routes bigger and in they went.
Here's the verdict; they were simply the worst pickup I have ever heard. They were worse than the cheapest, nastiest guitar pickups in the world.
They were the final straw for me which is why I used Seymour Duncans exclusively until I was able to make my own pickups.

Now, at this point just to stop David tearing his hair out, I will say that they make truely fine bass pickups.

But to continue, if they are cast in epoxy then I wouldn't buy them. They are clearly designed with the 'sealed for life' philosophy. That's OK for things like water pumps on cars but not pickups.

The main point of my original response to Possum was actually designed to be supportive. Sometimes, in every area of sales there will be a customer who will not be happy with your product regardless of what you do.
It now seems like this guy is a friend of Tom Holmes too. Well why couldn't Tom Holmes get him the sound he wants?
A refund is the only sensible thing to do. The Agincourt salute is optional but recommended by generations of Welsh Archers.

Lastly, I'm curious to know how you ( David ) rate your own pickups against Bartolinis and do you think you could help Possum with this customer?

[David Schwab]

They were the pickups that would give me instant Billy Gibbons.

Who would have said such nonsense? In a 1975 issue of Guitar player was a small ad for Hi-A pickups. It said "For the Clearest Sound Around", which is why I ordered one.

I remember back in the early 70's my guitarist wanted them for his Les Paul, but the guy in the store talked him out of them because they were so clean sounding. he went with Dimarzio PAF's instead.

They are made to sound like an acoustic instrument... not Billy Gibbons!

You can hear Hi-A guitar pickups in the old Heart song Magic Man.. the real clean sounding solo part. (not a favorite band, but I remember the guitarist used them).. not exactly a sucky tone.

Now their laminated blade humbuckers were another thing altogether. They were quite midrangy and loud.

Here's the verdict; they were simply the worst pickup I have ever heard. They were worse than the cheapest, nastiest guitar pickups in the world.
They were the final straw for me which is why I used Seymour Duncans exclusively until I was able to make my own pickups.

What's your criteria for worst sounding pickups? Obviously Tuck Andress doesn't agree. It's only your opinion. I think most Strats have the worst sounding pickups... but who agrees with me?

I'm not sure when you tried Barts, but when I started using them there were no Duncan pickups, except for his rewinding service.

Now, at this point just to stop David tearing his hair out, I will say that they make truely fine bass pickups.

Because bass players want a clear tone. But look at Alembic... they sell a lot of really expensive guitars too that don't sound like Billy Gibsons.. so some guitar players must want a clear tone also. Lace is selling a lot of Alumitones too. Sure seems like some people want clean pickups.

By the way, I made a guitar for Billy Gibsons when I was at American Showster. It had a custom wound Duncan.

But to continue, if they are cast in epoxy then I wouldn't buy them. They are clearly designed with the 'sealed for life' philosophy. That's OK for things like water pumps on cars but not pickups.

Why? What purpose would it serve to open a Bartolini pickup? Nothing in them is like any Gibson clone pickup. What are you going to do, rewind them?

The main point of my original response to Possum was actually designed to be supportive.

The guy wanted Tuck's tone, and no PAF style pickup is going to get that tone. So the tone you think sucks, is what the guy wants. It's a humbucker that sounds like a single coil.

Lastly, I'm curious to know how you ( David ) rate your own pickups against Bartolinis and do you think you could help Possum with this customer?

I make bass pickups mostly. So that wouldn't help his customer out. My bass pickups sound similar to some Barts, but have a different vibe. Barts are more mellow sounding. I couldn't tell you what mine would sound like on a guitar.

But.. a low output humbucker run though a buffer would get close, and I'd bet that customer hadn't even thought about using an active pickup.

An EMG-H would also work... that's a single coil in a humbucker case.

[Possum]

...

I am partly hoping the guy will just get frustrated and go away. I clearly state on my website that I don't give refunds, I have to stand by it, I just don't have enough cash around to refund almost $400, he did send both sets back, so I do want to go one more push to try to satisfy him. It doesn't pay to have an unhappy customer out there in the world, unless they are a total nut case drug addict schizo head case or something. I've given him 3 options, my clearest and best PAF which is what he paid for, a double blade bucker with magnets as the blades, or a double slug coil pickup. I've told him this is the last one so he better be real clear in his choices. I did tell him to forget Tuck's tone, even Holmes isn't going to give him that :-) Its always a red flag to me when customers name drop, tell me they have great ears, or are a "pro" player and are personal friends with so an so. I don't care about all that stuff, it usually means they want special treatment or free stuff. I just want to do my job and do it best as possible and get my money and make a profit. I got worked a couple times on "endorsement deals" with up and coming "stars" etc. and basically its all bullshit posturing to get free pickups etc. If this guy had just told me he want me to INVENT a special pickup for him I would have sent him to the Ebay winder guys, and they wouldn't have a clue what to do :-) since StewMac doesn't have a pickup invention kit ready made (ouch, mean possum, snarl snarl.....).

[Spence]

Sorry David, if this guy wants the Bartolini tone he should have bought a Bartolini. How can anyone defend him? Why didn't he get Tom Holmes to make it? Because he wouldn't entertain the idea.

Why would I want to open a Bartolini? Because they break down with time like any other pickup and yes actually I could rewind them.

I must remember to ask Billy Gibbons about David Schwab sometime.......