Daily Run Down, & Round Table-P/Us

[David Schwab]

It's a lazy Saturday Morning!
What is everyone up to today?
Got the Winder Spinning Already?
T

I have a gig this afternoon, and had one yesterday too. No pickup work for me today.

[Ward]

I have a gig this afternoon, and had one yesterday too. No pickup work for me today.

Gigs? what are they.

[big_teee]

Gigs? what are they.

Hi Nic:
What's happening?
T

[Ward]

Hi Nic:
What's happening?
T

Hey T, well I'm sure not doin any gigs brfff. Sunday morning, Mojo is out of stock of the 5lb 42 HF wire, it's too damn miserable to wind anyway. I really need a winding "room" but alas I can only wind on my outside under the awning bench, nice when the weather's not arctic. I discovered that I can use a 3/16'' drill bit to open up the .187 flatwork to accommodate the .195 rods so that's a bonus. My footy team kicked major ass last night so I went to bed in a good mood. That's about it for now. Cheers.

[SonnyW]

Got back to working on pickups today. It was cloudy and a little cooler so it wasn't too bad in my shop. Finished the second single coil sized humbucker. Put it in my beater strat for a test drive. I thought it sounded pretty good. Even though it is hotter that the first one it still has some single coil sound to it. This one has 1000 more turns of 44 wire than the first one. Then I got to looking through my box of comparision pickups, and got off track when I found a stash of stacked single coil humbuckers that I had gotten in trade, but hadn't yet measured and recorded the data on. There were 2 hot noiseless 3 fenders and a set of 3 L280S /L290S Bill Lawrence's. One of the fenders was open, so I spent some time trying to fix it. No luck though. All the others were good and I spent most of the rest of today measuring them and putting the data in my comparison file. Tomorrow I have a very nice J45 Gibson accoustic to make a new compensated bone saddle for. That's about all the news from here.

[big_teee]

Sounds like SonnyW had a productive day.
Mine was spent working off and on with the P/J set.
I have the J built, I plan on winding the Ps tomorrow and potting.
Will try to get some snapshots before I put the P/J set in the headless bass.
T

[Ward]

My day was meaningless and dull.

[big_teee]

My day was meaningless and dull.

How far are you from Melbourne?
I know a guy on another forum that works in a guitar shop in Melbourne.
I was telling him about you.
T

[Ward]

How far are you from Melbourne?
I know a guy on another forum that works in a guitar shop in Melbourne.
I was telling him about you.
T

Melb's a ways away T, probably 9hrs by car.

[big_teee]

Melb's a ways away T, probably 9hrs by car.

I told him you made hand winds.
He wanted to know if you had a website.
T

[Ward]

I long ago gave up the idea that selling pickups would make me any dough, so no, no web site. Over the years I just got sick to death of the attitude of guitar players. I was the fool who came up with fret wave idea to improve tuning, it's just a waste of time trying to break the mould. Fretwave used to have a site but we let the patent lapse and just gave up in the end, it seemed mine and my partners guitars were the only ones that would not tune up properly. That ignorance is rife so I just bailed on the whole caper. I make pickups for my guitar and the rest of them can stick with the two Ds.

[David Schwab]

Gigs? what are they.

Looks something like this.

[David Schwab]

I long ago gave up the idea that selling pickups would make me any dough, so no, no web site. Over the years I just got sick to death of the attitude of guitar players. I was the fool who came up with fret wave idea to improve tuning, it's just a waste of time trying to break the mould. Fretwave used to have a site but we let the patent lapse and just gave up in the end, it seemed mine and my partners guitars were the only ones that would not tune up properly. That ignorance is rife so I just bailed on the whole caper. I make pickups for my guitar and the rest of them can stick with the two Ds.

Oh I remember Fretwave, like Frank Gambale used to use, right?

I thought it was a cool idea, and yeah, guitar players can be a stick in the mud. That's why I mostly make bass pickups.

I currently make my living selling pickups and playing gigs. It took a while for the pickups to take off.

[Ward]

Oh I remember Fretwave, like Frank Gambale used to use, right?
I thought it was a cool idea, and yeah, guitar players can be a stick in the mud. That's why I mostly make bass pickups.
I currently make my living selling pickups and playing gigs. It took a while for the pickups to take off.

Yes Dave, Frank Gambale. Mr Vai had one guitar with it but his sponsor Ibanez was not impressed. If you Google Fretwave you'll come up with a heap of forum threads with just about everyone saying negative things even though they hadn't tried it. Those who have tried it know better. One of the most common attitudes was that you couldn't do string bends on the bent frets ( shaking head furiously )
Then there was a bit of misinformation about what the frets actually did which was attributed to Frank or at least using his name that the two frets fixed the whole guitar, try as I did I could not get those claims reworded. Gimmick was another comment from a few folk, it's amazing how people can come up with unfounded rubbish.
The simple facts about Fretwave are this:::
On any 6 string guitar ( nylon classical's are a bit better with the flat bridge stagger ) you'll find the open A and E chords have the major 3rds sharp, ( of course you'll find plenty of people who say otherwise ) I love to play in the key of E and A, to me there's nothing better than the sound of a strident open E major chord but it would always infuriate me how bad both the A and E chords were, in a fit of despair one day I reefed out the 1st fret and bent it to flatten the G#note making the E chord sing in tune for the first time ever. Buoyed by my new found success I went ahead and did the 2nd fret for the A chord. I worried that the 2nd fret would effect the tuning of other chords, F#, F#m, Bm etc but found that the ear dislikes sharp notes a lot more than flat and so Fretwave was born. The crap about fixing the whole of the guitar's tuning issues is not necessarily crap in so far as with the fretwave you now have the first position ( open chords n such ) pretty much in tune with none of the compromising that usually goes on when tuning to a particular key if you wish to play open chords, because of this the guitar is better in tune all over the board. That is about as simple an explanation that can be given. The rest of the story lies in actually playing the thing.
Now just to give one example of the stupidity of some people:::
Myself and my right handed business partner were at a gig one day, he had his righty fretwaved guitar and was showing it to some players, the gig was an outdoor thing with lots of bands, so one guy asked if he could play it on stage, so off he went with the guitar, he played one tune with it, the tune he played was in the key of C as we know, E or A major are not usually played in the key of C and so he simply had no idea that he should have played in a key that would allow him to play either or both of the fretwaved chords, er, how about the key of E major perhaps. We just shook our heads but were later to find this was just the tip of the ice burg.
These days I have ditched the 1st bent fret for the E chord but retained the 2nd with only a very slight bend for the open A. The nut is moved 2mm closer to the 1st fret ( this is the real secret, moving the nut )
My tuning is better than ever these days. I learned a huge lesson regarding invention, patents and corporate ethos.

[Ward]

Looks something like this.

Good band name, you even look a little lost LOL