Single string pickups - 6 of 'em

[mjmiller]

Has anyone ever tried making a set of pickups, 1 per string, and preamplifying them seperately to eliminate (drastically reduce) intermodulation distortion? You could get the 2 guitar lead sound or strike complex chords with loads of gain without producing mush, it would seem...

I would've done this a long time ago, but I'm way too lazy

And you'd either look like bootsy but with 6 cables instead of 4 , or have to find / make a fancy freakin cable...

Michael Miller

[Steve Conner]

Roland guitar synths use a pickup exactly like what you describe, and I believe some of them have a "Hexa Distortion" patch that does just what you said: 6 high-gain amp models, one per pickup.

[madialex]

I believe it has been done by Jason Lollar as well......

[jason lollar]

I have made many of those and without giving away many hours of R+D on it I can tell you you are up against a few problems if you are trying for a passive system one is having one pole screws the inductance of the coil up and there is a tendancy for bleed through from adjacent strings that you have to work around.

[mjmiller]

Right - I was thinking about using mu-metal to confine the magnetic field and installing the system near-ish to the bridge, where excursion is smallest.

[David Schwab]

Hex fuzz sounds amazing. I remember trying it on an ARP Avatar.

[Sock Puppet]

This is from the void somewhere, don't know where or how it was wired; maybe posted by D.S. - he's got loads of pictures:



S.

[mjmiller]

another possible way would be to design it like a dual rail humbucker with a single magnet... a la DiMarzio Fast track 2, rotated 90 degrees and shrunk - the magnetic field on those pickups is focused almost totally inwards and would drastically reduce crosstalk without mag. shielding

[David Schwab]

This is from the void somewhere, don't know where or how it was wired; maybe posted by D.S. - he's got loads of pictures:

That's weird! Wasn't from me though. I am a packrat... I agree!

[Satamax]

There's a french company who has made some pickups like this, i think it was MC-2, and they even done a 12 coil humbucker IIRC! Yes MC2 http://www.mc2musique.com/index.php?op=edito

Pickup was called PLO.

[Zhangliqun]

I remember some guy named Steve Ripley was doing it back in the 80's.

[GlennW]

The neck pickup on Ovation Magnum basses has a separate coil and volume adjustment for each string.

[jason lollar]

there are several historical examples of this- I recall a vega but cant think of anything really old where it was intended to be descreetly hexaphonic.
It can be done but there are a few hoops to jump through- its not something youll just knock off and have it work in every way you imagined if you are just designing blind.
About 5 or 6 years ago there was a place in the US called linear pickups- anyone recall them?
They only hung around for a year or two.

[mjmiller]

The complexities you're talking about are largely the reason I've never even started trying to build a pickup per string system. But I've been thinking about it for years, ever since I heard about the quadra fuzz many years ago.
It would open up so many possibilities... but it would also require a 6 channel preamp to be useful. I think I'm going to attempt this someday... I was hoping I could take the easy route and learn from other people's mistakes, avoiding the price of my own

Laser pickups would be another way to go, eliminating crosstalk... laser rangefinding equipment... how about laser LEDs and phototransistors? Optical isolation would be a cinch to eliminate scatter crosstalk

[Satamax]

MJ, sorry to say but KISS

Realy, have you gone through all other possibilities before trying something new. I mean, someone like Pat Metheny has a nice ferrington ha^rp guitar with something like 40 strings, but how many people can handle this Just ask yourself, is it worth the effort?