Trademarks or Patents on Pole Piece Placement?

[jvin248]

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Reverend Rail-hammer
Lace

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[rjb]

Reverend Rail-hammer
Lace

Roy Butts, 1957.
See post 11.

[John Kolbeck]

But remember that the second harmonic is a doubling of the fundamental, and so on. Presumably there is some intermod as well, but I do not think that that has been analyzed. You are right that it is a small effect, but because it does involve a nonlinearity it might be audible in some cases. Increasing the width of the pole piece in the dimension across the string would tend to decrease the effect somewhat. The extreme case of this is a blade pickup.

It seems that, in addition to the effect being small, the only way to really change the effect is to have a pole piece that is wider or narrower. A very thin pole piece would maximize the effect, but that would make string bending problematic. It might be OK for a bass guitar, where string bending isn't a thing. A very wide pole piece, like those of a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound, or an Ernie Ball Bass, would just be a bit more like a rail type, further suppressing those already negligible 2nd harmonics.

There might also be some interesting effects with split pole pieces, such as with a Fender Jazz Bass pickup or staple pole pieces, but I think the effect would just become all that much smaller than what you get with a discrete pole piece. The patented pickup mentioned about appeared to have two poles like a Fender Jazz Bass, but they were merely offset. From what I read in the McDonald PDF, it doesn't seem like the slight offset would make much difference by itself.

[LtKojak]

In my experimenting, I always liked 1 larger pole, instead of 2

That's what SHE said...

[David King]

I suspect the real sonic difference comes from the coil being effectively further away from the poles, i.e. an air gap that will dull down the tone significantly. Basically the opposite of a Wal's single tight bobbin per string.

[David Schwab]

Reading Bartolini's copy it seems like Bartolini are implying that Bill was playing around with this design back in the 1970s. I know that Mørch tried out the angled pole pieces and someone posted a photo of those here too .
I'd say feel free to experiment with the design but if you bring it to market be prepared to cover it up or face the wrath of the TalkBass crazies. They are a lot like the Breitbart crazies.

Bill had those parallelogram shaped, flat topped pole pieces. I don't think he ever did anything like this, because he didn't use round pole pieces. That was part of his patents.



But Bill doesn't own the company anymore, so I suppose the new owner decided to do this. It's clearly copying Nordstrand. But I'd also imagine they are much better pickups. And Nordstrand copies other pickup makers too...

And yeah, lots of people at TB have mental issues.. lol

[David Schwab]

In my bass experimenting, I always liked 1 larger pole, instead of 2.

I guess Leo didn't agree, but he later went on to use one big pole on the Musicman pickups. Do you understand why he did that? It softens the attack which helped with the early bass amps at the time.

I dislike the MM pickups... I prefer blades over poles every time.

[rjb]

Do you understand why he did that?

Because Fender's electric mandolins didn't meet sales expectations, and he had a bunch of short 4-pole pickups?

[David Schwab]

Because Fender's electric mandolins didn't meet sales expectations, and he had a bunch of short 4-pole pickups?

He patented a pickup design (2968204) with the poles between the strings. He shows a guitar pickup in the patent, but he went on to use it on the split coil P bass and Jazz bass pickups.

In his patent he claims that normal pickups have a "strong, and relatively harsh, twang or percussive sound followed by a very rapid decay..." He also talks about the warbling you get with string rod magnets under the strings.

I'd guess it also helped to prevent distortion from the bassman amp on the attacks.