Horseshoe magnet pickups

[jason lollar]

Been busy this month - got the first batch of horseshoe pickups complete- real magnetic shoes of course, chrome plated, aluminum baseplates, there is plastic tape over the shoes to protect the chrome of course.
Check it out
I havent made these for several years and these are superior to what I use to make.

[JGundry]

Cool! If you don't mind me asking what model of Universal Laser engraver is that and what wattage head do you use to cut the Forbon?

[Rick Turner]

Jason, can I assume that you are no longer worried about "the letter"...as in "cease and desist"?

You'll notice, of course, that the "R" company simply does not make double horseshoe pickups these days, and even if they did, "trade dress" should not cover either the reproduction of early '30s designs using horseshoe magnets nor the use of horseshoes as pole pieces in a magnetic circuit as the utility patent that the "R" company got was well over with by the early 1950s.

As you know, I never got "the letter", and frankly, I don't know why, but I've been in continuous production of my version since the early 1990s. My Model T with the "Rick" double horseshoe pickup was prominently featured (with and editors' choice award) in Guitar Player in 1995, so that's well over 15 years of being in production, in the media, and no "the letter".

I have never claimed to make a full reproduction of the Barth/Beauchamps pickup. I make my take on it, and all I claim is that it sounds good and that the strings-through-pickup thing does yield a unique sound that you simply don't get with a totally under-the-strings pickup.

I just made a couple of these wound with Teflon insulated wire, and all I can say is that I'm keeping one for myself...

[Rick Turner]

One other thing...

If you can draw it, Gurian can cut it. Laser, vulcanized fiber, whatever you want. Relatively reasonable small quantity prices.

[Possum]

Curious about that as well, how did you get past the lawyer stuff?

[Bruce Johnson]

The best way to avoid lawyers is to be poor and look like you're never going to be a threat.

[jason lollar]

I have two lasers both universals one is 12 X 24 and 30 watts- well I think its a 25 watt but its running closer to 30 and that was the first one I bought then I got a 18 X 24 60 watter
The 25 watter cuts fine and will cut up to 1/2" acrylic but the 60 watter cuts three times faster. I got along with the 25 watter for several years and it paid for itself within the first year but eventually we wound up running it 6 to 8 hours a day 3 to 4 times a week just making flatwork for pickups- I think it took an hour 1/2 to cut out 100 strat bottoms now I can do that in 20 minutes plus or -
Gurian has forbon and will do short runs gurianintruments.com
he knows what we want done for making pickups and he already has drawings for several items. He use to cut all my stuff but I wound up doing so much custom one of a kind items I had to get my own and then volume became an issue and it was just cheaper to bite the bullet and i like having flexibility to go in and change things like if we get a run of strat covers with a slightly different pole spacing bla bla...

Rick I have heard your version and it sounds right, its very good.
You all know they got a trademark on the looks of the horseshoe- someone didnt do thier homework at the trademark office so I am just going to go ahead with it and they can take me to court and hopefully they are going to get in deep shit for trademarking something they had a patent on but at the least it will just get thrown out once they look at the patent drawings and see it is a functional piece of the once patented design.
The reason i stopped making them was never about that it was about getting someone to make me a quality horseshoe i was happy with.
It is funny that you- Rick -never got pestered about it, Rick was the first person I called after getting that letter
I missed you at the last few tradeshows hopefully see you again next winter namm.

[Rick Turner]

Jason, we deserve to buy each other a beer or two!

It's funny, I've been involved as an expert witness in a couple of patent lawsuits, and the stuff that gets missed by either patent examiners working for the patent lawyers or by the examiners at the USPTO is pretty mind boggling. The examiners are not necessarily experts in the fields they're searching, and they do not go very deep into public domain intellectual property.

[David Schwab]

Some of the stuff that gets granted patents these days is ridiculous, like some company that tried to sue RIM and Apple and a few other companies because they had a patent for receiving email over a wireless network! And it was just a vague reference to doing so, not an exact method! Anyone can have an idea, but if you don't have an actual working version and a product, how can you get a patent on something? Wait for someone else to figure out how to do it?

If that's the case, then I invented the Amazon Kindle like 35 years ago.

[Rick Turner]

David, many years ago you did have to submit a working model to the USPTO in order to get a patent. There's an incredible wealth of amazing patent models, many of which are on display at the Smithsonian and I suspect many of which are in the bowels of the USPTO. Then it went to paper and a wonderfully obscure style of drawing that is used nowhere else.

Ultimately a patent is merely a license to go to war in court; that's where it all gets decided...or negotiated before it even gets there. Going to court is not a good thing in this field; you're going to be out well over a hundred grand before walking through the door. It's mostly a pissing contest and posturing for licensing deals, assignment deals, etc.

I realized that there's no point in getting a patent unless you have a real marketing plan, too. Once the clock starts ticking, that patent is worth less and less if you're not selling product. I'm working (maybe) with a guy who has a fantastic design for a guitar trem (I hate that term...it's a vibrato...), but the patent was issued over ten years ago, and the protection is only for another seven years, and he's still not gotten his business off the ground. Not good...for him. Great for anybody who wants to copy the thing in a few years.

Floyd Rose really had it together; we'll be lucky to see another thing like that.

[Joe Gwinn]

The reason i stopped making them was never about that it was about getting someone to make me a quality horseshoe i was happy with.

Those old horseshoes were nothing special. If I recall, they were hardened cobalt steel or tungsten steel. If you can get the metal stock, you can easily make your own horseshoes.

Or, make the horseshoes of hardened W-1 or O-1 alloy, perhaps energized with a small ceramic magnet. There are many modern alloys that make OK permanent magnets. We don't typically use them as such because we now have far better permanent magnet materials, but almost any physically hard steel alloy can be made into a permanent magnet.

[Rick Turner]

I just put Alnico 5 magnets in the bobbin as per Strat or Tele pickup and wrap the horseshoes around them. The net effect seems pretty similar to the originals which I swear had cut off 16 penny nails as polepieces. They were pretty funky pickups! I'm going to try slipping some fairly hot flat ceramic or rare earth magnets between the horseshoes and the base plate in addition to the Alnico magnets to see what happens. And yes, I know which way to polarize it all! I think it is possible to make the magnetic circuit too hot and thus damp string vibration with these...or any other magnetic pickups, for that matter. Strat-itis...

[Possum]

My wife and I got sued over intellectual rights once and it was an education. It basically boils down to who has the most money and can outlast the other guy. We won because the company changed hands and they paid us off because they had no legal foot to stand on and our case was dragging them down, we had a pitbull lawyer who speicalized in intellectual property. Hopefully they will leave you alone Jason, you could really get sucked for a lot of bucks. If you get another letter you probably ought to call them direct and lay it out that they don't have a leg to stand on and point out that its going to cost both parties a ton of lost sleep and flush thousands of dollars down the toilet. Its not like horshoe pickups are a big market share to fight over anyway, and those guys don't even make them the right way if they're still making them at all.

[Kelvee]

Very interesting this R patent stuff we have a local Guitar builder here in Melbourne Australia, Cole Clarke who have been building some great Lap Steels with Horseshoes for a number of years now,in fact their Lap Dog model is a dead copy of a R model 59,except in wood rather than stamped metal.Check out their Web page.So how have the got away with it. Cheers

[David Schwab]

If you get another letter you probably ought to call them direct and lay it out that they don't have a leg to stand on...

Better yet, have a lawyer call. Same deal if you have to go to court for any reason... judges prefer to deal with attorneys and not laypeople.

Also, did "the letter" come from JH or an attorney?