Inductance w/wo pole pieces

[KT66]

Hello, I'm a newb for one day ... please take advantage of me

so I got these two pressing questions to ask :

(i) has anybody by chance measured their strat style PU's with and without the pole pieces to see what the inductance variation might be ??

I'm very curious about this, I want to wind a dummy coil (w/o pole pieces) that matches the inductance of a stock PU. I would suspect the inductance is slightly less w/o poles - question is by how much ?

(ii) anybody know what technique is used in Lemme's PU Analyser to drive signal into the PU under test ??

http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

cheers, KT-man

[David Schwab]

A coil with no core would have a lower inductance.
Your best bet might be to use uncharged alnico slugs, but using steel slugs would probably be close enough.

[KT66]

thanks, was thinking of using iron but was wondering just the same ... how about that PU analyser, anybody use one ??

[Possum]

analyzer

I emailed Lemme a couple years ago no response. Really, its a cool toy but ultimately of dubious value, have no idea what it costs or if he even makes them anymore. For a drive coil use a bucker bobbin, NO core and wind to about 30-50ohms with heavy gauge wire like 38 or so to get a big coil. If you ever hear from Lemme let me know, maybe he doesn't speak english though most germans do....

[Joe Gwinn]

I emailed Lemme a couple years ago no response. Really, its a cool toy but ultimately of dubious value, have no idea what it costs or if he even makes them anymore. For a drive coil use a bucker bobbin, NO core and wind to about 30-50ohms with heavy gauge wire like 38 or so to get a big coil. If you ever hear from Lemme let me know, maybe he doesn't speak english though most germans do....

I did get a response to my questions about how his pickup analyzer worked, and yes he does speak perfectly good English. He stopped responding when I asked a question he couldn't answer.

He still lists the analyzer on his German-language website at http://www.gitarrenelektronik.de/ele...sstechnik.html, but the pricelist says to call. If I recall, it was quite expensive, 500 or 1000 Euros. I imagine he makes them only to order, and has sold very few.

[gsi]

lemmes analyzer

hi all
i'm new to the forum but have been gleening all the great info from all of ya and yes when i win the lotto all of ya will be reimberst for your wisdom that you have greatly shared. about lemmes analyzer i did e-mail him about it he is back logged on it and its about a 3month wait the price is $1300.oo .that about all he said about it.did't say anything about what it does. i also wanted to ask wolf.about his new gauss meter.how he likes it/and how well it works?thanks alot for all your kind wisdom on pickup making . thanks mark

[Spence]

What on earth do you need a pickup analyzer for? That's just a total waste of money.
On the other hand a gaussmeter can be a useful tool but beware of buying anything over and above what you need it to do. I have been recommending the Carlsen Melton gaussmeter for years now. It's ultra reliable, small, bullet proof and has a couple of features that I couldn't find on other meters. What's more it's cheap.

[David Schwab]

I agree with Spence. (Hey Spence, how about that! ) You would analyze the pickup, look at the graph and say "oh cool... that's what it looks like?" Listening would tell you as much.

I once played around drawing waveforms into a sampler only to find they all sounded pretty much alike! So that shows that looking at the wave or spectrograph doesn't always tell you much, probably because we don't associate the image with the sound.

It would be cool to do, but not for that price. Use that money for a nice gaussmeter and an Extech meter.

I don't own either of those...

[Joe Gwinn]

hi all
i'm new to the forum but have been gleening all the great info from all of ya and yes when i win the lotto all of ya will be reimberst for your wisdom that you have greatly shared. about lemmes analyzer i did e-mail him about it he is back logged on it and its about a 3month wait the price is $1300.oo .that about all he said about it.did't say anything about what it does.

I do know what Lemme's analyzer does. It measures resonant frequency of a pickup with a series of different capacitors in parallel with the pickup. With this information, one can compute the self-inductance and self-capacitance.

For $1,300 you can buy the instruments needed to make this measurement yourself, and these nice new instruments can be used for other things as well, whereas Lemme's instrument only measures pickups, albeit far faster than with individual general-purpose instruments.

But then, what will one do with the information thus gained? Resonant frequency of the pickup plus cable to the amplifier is somewhat useful, and can be measured directly.

I would spend the money on a really nice Fluke digital multimeter ($300) and an Extech LCR meter ($200), and put the change in the bank for now.

[Spence]

I agree with Spence. (Hey Spence, how about that! ) You would analyze the pickup, look at the graph and say "oh cool... that's what it looks like?" Listening would tell you as much.

I once played around drawing waveforms into a sampler only to find they all sounded pretty much alike! So that shows that looking at the wave or spectrograph doesn't always tell you much, probably because we don't associate the image with the sound.

It would be cool to do, but not for that price. Use that money for a nice gaussmeter and an Extech meter.

I don't own either of those...

Had to find common ground eventually Dave.

But seriously, everyone makes pickups now so perhaps we should get into selling pickup analyzers to potential customers so they can understand what the differences are between brands. At last we'll be able to understand how guys using Stew Mac kits can produce the best PAF replicas available on the market for $35.

[Steve Conner]

Lemme's pickup analyser is kind of OK, and I agree with the theory it's based on, but it's kind of clunky. I've done similar work using white noise generator and FFT analyzer programs running on a computer with a soundcard. You feed a power amp driving the drive coil with the white noise, and use the FFT on the guitar output, with plenty of averaging.

This draws the frequency response on screen for you, and you can see it change as you mess around with tone controls etc, rather than having to plot it by hand. All for a lot less than $1300, since I already had a PC with a soundcard, and found the software for free.

I actually used it to test tone stacks and synth filters, but I bet it works just as well on guitar pickups

[Possum]

it works....

It does work, but is ultimately of little value. Most pickups produce pretty much the same plot with minor variations. Its fun for awhile to compare very radically different pickups like very overwound buckers against very underwound strat pickups, but pickups that are similar produce charts that are so similar you get bored real fast. I remember Kinman messed with them for awhile and came to the same conclusion that its pretty much a useless thing to do. If you had the money an LCR meter that reads alot of different test signals would be more valuable as a benchmark tool.....

[mick]

Got the best pickup analyzer available , yep it's called a geetaar........

[Ruel]

Got the best pickup analyzer available , yep it's called a geetaar........

Right on, Mick!! And don't forget your ears!!

[Zhangliqun]

(i) has anybody by chance measured their strat style PU's with and without the pole pieces to see what the inductance variation might be ??

Not on a traditionally constucted Strat pu. Remove the poles and that pickup is deader than dead.

But on the newer Fender one-piece plastic bobbins, you can swap out Alnico rods to your heart's content.