Lollar book, time to republish!!!!

[Spence]

Dr. strangelove said:

More acute tools for pickup measurement have become available
to the hobbyist in the last half a century, but if all you want to do
is make replicas of 50 year old designs...

Well, for a start, I'm not a hobbyist. I make pickups for people who appreciate what Fender and Gibson did in the good old days. I'm a boutique custom builder.

I appreciate the views of those who say a CD recording is better than vinyl as an example of improved technology but I don't accept that view in it's entirity. In the same way, I appreciate the pickup desires of modern players. I cater for modern players too but most players haven't any idea of how a pickup works. That's why they go to people who do.

I'm curious to know what sort of testing equiptment you think is necessary other than a DCR, an inductance meter and a Gaussmeter. Do you atually make pickups? What is your experience? What have you developed that's better than my vintage rubbish and where can I hear them in action?

[DrStrangelove]

Well, for a start, I'm not a hobbyist. I make pickups for people who appreciate what Fender and Gibson did in the good old days. I'm a boutique custom builder.

Relax. The point is that inexpensive test tools, diagnostics that far surpass what could be had 50 years ago, are available to hobbyists. Even better stuff is out there for the professional who has a handle on quality control.

I'm curious to know what sort of testing equiptment you think is necessary other than a DCR, an inductance meter and a Gaussmeter.

An audio range signal generator and spectrum analyzer, much like a lot of loudspeaker analyzer applications, only set up for pickups. That sort of thing will compute inductance for free and, from pulse reponse, tell you if the coil is wound too regularly instead of scatterwound. In fact, something called an MLS signal test gives all those things from the same single test.

One such application for loudspeakers, for free, is Speaker Workshop over on the Audua.com site. It's a little hard to use for pickups, though.

Do you atually make pickups?

Hell, no. The money in software engineering is too good.

What is your experience?

The question is irrelevant and so is the following information:
The family racket is physics, my degree was chemistry despite my having been an electronics hobbyist since age 9.

I've built the somewhat finicky Lollar winder, done a wood lathe winder conversion like SK did, designed and built a magnetic revolutions counter for it using my own variable reluctance sensor, built a gaussmeter using the last generation of Allegro's hall effect sensors, wound a bunch of telecaster bridge-style pickups, done magnetic simulations of pickup geometries, researched magnetic materials and magnet wire, grown disillusioned by the extraordinary subjectivism that dominates pickup testing, and here we are.

What have you developed that's better than my vintage rubbish and where can I hear them in action?

I didn't call them rubbish, you did, but I will stipulate that it was sarcasm.

And, no, I don't sell pickups so please take a moment to feel smug.

I'm an interested amateur with some technical expertise to offer.

I've tested a lot of different stuff, enough to know that there are good tests, bad tests, narrow tests, and tests that give genuine insight.

Pickup making needs better tests.

Most pickup makers are perdurately resistant to the idea in public but, since the inception of the old Pickup Makers Forum, I've noticed quite a few people move from compasses to gaussmeters, from nothing to multimeters, from multimeters to inductance meters, and from hand winds to commercial automated winders.

I assert that whatever pickup you build or design, you can build it better and more consistently when you have better tests to inform you.

What a concept, hey?

-drh

[DrStrangelove]

As an example, I am working on some blade pickups, thin blade versus thick blade, two different gauges of wire.

I forgot to add: congratulations on nailing down a new design.
Hope it goes very well very soon.

You have the opportunity to compete directly with Joe Barden on the basis of pure merit. (Joe's a good guy, but while he was a long time getting back on his feet, the hype that built up around his pickups got pretty deep and steamy. Because of his production methods and demand, Joe's pups cost $170.)

Using the Extech LCR meter to guide me and of course my EARS.

Ears are the final judge but they aren't the only one.
While your ears can tell you that something is wrong,
they don't usually tell you why.

We need better tests for why.

-drh
--

[Spence]

The point is.......what's wrong with 50 year old pickup designs? Please don't start off mentioning 60 cycle hum as I've yet to hear a noiseless pickup.

You can design a near perfect transducer and I promise you it will be souless.

Now, may I just mention that I have an instrumentation engineering degree and I had to do some fairly heavy physics and chemistry to get on that programme so I know the value of test equiptment.

I do agree that people on the the old forum graduate from a compass to a gaussmeter etc as you say. But that's more because of finance than anything else. Everyone would have those tools if they could afford them straight off. I'm certain you don't need them other than a DCR and a compass. They are aids to a product type as far as I'm concerned, not an essential.

[David Schwab]

(For anyone interested, magnetic permeability and recoil permeability are the profoundly neglected topics of pickup design.)

I'm interested! I'm actually learning as much as I can regarding the underlying science of it all... (magnets are really weird!) I have an avid interest in quantum mechanics, and I read as much as I can on the subject.

Miraculously, some actually do quality control by testing pickups' DC resistance and inductance. More power to them.

I can only do DC resistance at the moment, but I check every coil I wind to see how close it is to spec. I'm always interested in being able to repeat what I make.

Reading this and the other pickup makers forum, I sadly feel that TESTING is where pickup makers are, on average, 50 years behind the times. The pickup is a transducer and not only a passive component. Since, historically, NOBODY wants to listen about tests using a magnetic field with swept frequency and pseudo random noise, I won't belabor it.

I'm quite interested in testing... I would like to know what my magnetic field looks like and the pickup's frequency response, inductance, etc. I'm unable to do those tests at this time however...

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Jason and folks like him have commercial automated winding systems and have learned how to simulate their hand winding technique on them. It's the man, not the machine.

Well we know Wolfe has a really nice winder!

I would just love to have an automated setup to wind coils. To me, it's all in the design of the pickup.. at least for what I do. I think my hand winding is more of a detriment than a magic ingredient! At least at this point in time.

[DrStrangelove]

The point is.......what's wrong with 50 year old pickup designs?

That is abstracting a singular piece from the entire discourse and is just a tad tendentious and argumentative. My point is about testing.

There's nothing wrong with 50 year old designs if that's what you want to build and
that's what your customers like.

If you want to make them like Leo and Seth did (BTW, they're dead),
they had better be artisanal pickups because there's no justifying
an expensive handwind when the technology and craft is producing
good commodity pickups more cheaply.

How consistently would you like to make them?
How large a demand do you plan to meet?
What if you could determine from purely instrumentational
means why two seeming identical pickups sounded different?

That's where a well-designed test is important.

You can design a near perfect transducer and I promise you it will be souless.

Straw man argument.

Everyone would have those tools if they could afford them straight off. I'm certain you don't need them other than a DCR and a compass. They are aids to a product type as far as I'm concerned, not an essential.

Take care that your knuckles don't get scuffed.

-drh

[David Schwab]

The point is.......what's wrong with 50 year old pickup designs? Please don't start off mentioning 60 cycle hum as I've yet to hear a noiseless pickup.

Nothing... if you are just copying Fender (or Gibson) style pickups. I think it's quite restricting that we are stuck with those form factors for the most part. We have to make a pickup fit into existing shapes and sizes. I'm glad soapbar shapes are popular with bass players now, because trying to do something new with a Jazz or P-bass pickup shape is very restricting.

As far as noiseless pickups... EMG pickups are pretty damn quiet. And they sound good too... if you like that sound.

Also a single coil pickup does not have to sound like a Strat or Tele... but that's what we get. I'd rather have DeArmond gold foil pickups. It's clean and bright, and does what a pickup should do, yet doesn't sound like a Strat. I'd rather have a clean bright humbucker personally. Sounds like the guitar, doesn't hum... that's it.

I'm trying to get away from pickups that have a certain sound... but that's me.

You can design a near perfect transducer and I promise you it will be souless.

"Soul" is very subjective, isn't it? To one person it's a vintage Tele, to another it's a Les Paul. To someone else it might be a Teisco Mayqueen!

I dislike the Lace Sensors... I think they are bland sounding. I don't think it's because they are perfect transducers either... just that they are lacking something somewhere. I think it's harmonic content. But some people like them, and make good music with them. On the other hand, Bartolini make very clean pickups have have a lot of tone. Listen to Tuck Andress. Immaculately clean tone... and very soulful.

Soul is in the players hands, not the pickups. I have heard what I consider toneless pickups, but even those in the right hands (and with enough gain) can be magical.

I think the big issue is everyone wanting to get familiar sounds. If they can cop that tone from some old record that has meaning to them, then they think they have a soulful tone. Actually they have a familiar tone, but it's comforting because it makes them feel like they can play well... since it matches the recording.

An example that I find amusing is the latest fad amongst bass players... the trend now is toward using a tube amp, such as an Ampeg, that pretty much masks the tone of the bass, and then using a big pile of over drive. You can be assured that getting a "good" tone from your bass is unnecessary, because no one is going to hear the bass anyway... just the amp. It also covers up sloppy playing. The irony in it is back when many of the recordings were made in the 60's and 70's there weren't really any good bass amps. Everyone I knew, including me, wanted a clean sound, with a nice tight bottom. This is why so many recordings are done with the bass direct.

But what we had were crappy amps that distorted far too easily... but now that's considered a "vintage" tone!

I'm certain you don't need them other than a DCR and a compass. They are aids to a product type as far as I'm concerned, not an essential.

I guess it depends on what you are trying to make. I think for anyone working on new pickup designs, it's real handy to make tests.

[Spence]

Logging out for the last time

Proof is in the sales figures.

Why are you posting here Dr.Strangelove ?

So far, we've established that you hide behind a pseudonym, talk others down and don't actually make pickups yet you think you're something special and a benefit to us all.

I'm interested in advances in technology and a gadget freak like a lot of others here but I'm losing interest in your rambling pretty rapidly. It's not like you've invented something new now is it!

I've got nothing to prove here because I'm already doing just fine thanks.

It's a shame that things can't be a little less patronizing 'round here.
I'm starting to think these forums are a total loss.

[David Schwab]

If you want to make them like Leo and Seth did (BTW, they're dead), they had better be artisanal pickups because there's no justifying an expensive handwind when the technology and craft is producing good commodity pickups more cheaply.

Interestingly, in an interview with Seth Lover (by Seymour Duncan), Lover said:

SWD: Where the coils wound by hand or was the magnet wire guided by machine?

Seth Lover: Only the experimental ones were wound by hand. Once we decided to make a bobbin and got our coil forms molded, then we set it up on the machine and I’m trying to think just how many; there was one machine that wound just four coils. I know there was one little machine and then we had a larger machine where we would wind more.

SWD: Was the wire guided on by hand or did it have an automatic traverse.

Seth Lover: It had an automatic traverse. (the machine automatically layers the magnet wire on the bobbin)

SWD: I read an article that someone said earlier humbuckers sounded the way they do because they were wound by hand and the newer ones were different because they were wound by machine.

Seth Lover: I can’t recall that anybody wound any by hand except people who were repairing. I wound sometimes, and if an old pickup was sent back in and they didn’t have a machine for winding it then it would be rewound by hand.

So... who was hand winding old Gibson pickups we keep hearing about?

I love this one too:

SWD: How did you figure out the number of turns for the type of frequency--if you put too many turns on, when do you start loosing your high end?

Seth Lover: Well, I was just simply using # 42 plain enamel magnet wire. I put as many turns as I could satisfactorily fill the space available. And that’s where we stopped right there.

Wasn't much of a magic formula! I guess after a few trial and errors, they settled on a design.

[Possum]

frequency sweeps...

OK, I did a quick example to show you that at least this one type of measurement is kind of pointless in alot of ways. Here's the chart I did: well I tried to attach a jpeg if it doesn't work go here:
http://ur.pair.com/shrapnel/chart/chart.jpg

The blue graph is a 74 strat pickup about 5.4K 3/16" magnets, the red sweep is a stagger strat pickup 5.9K 5mm magnets. So what can you infer from this comparison? the old strat pickup has more output probably because less inductance, and a very slightly higher peak resonance. But generally the shape of the curves are almost identical. So it doesn't give you much useful information, its cool to mess with for awhile but then it gets boring. I'd be more interested in something that shows harmonics in detail. For me the LCR meter is more useful with detailed numbers when fine tuning a pickup design...Dave

[David Schwab]

Proof is in the sales figures.

I'm not arguing with you Spence, and I know you were talking to Dr. S... but think about this statement.

Popular doesn't always equate to good. I'm not talking about your pickups now.. just making a point.

DiM sells more pickups than we can make in our lifetime.. and so does EMG.

And Britney Spears sells more albums than Allan Holdsworth.

Personally I appreciate the more technical posts by people like Dr. S, Joe G, and the others.

And saying they don't matter because they don't make and sell pickups is like saying Leo Fender didn't matter because he couldn't play guitar!

I think we can agree to have different views.

[DrStrangelove]

OK, I did a quick example to show you that at least this one type of measurement is kind of pointless in alot of ways. Here's the chart I did: well I tried to attach a jpeg if it doesn't work go here:
http://ur.pair.com/shrapnel/chart/chart.jpg

Dave, thanks for going to all the trouble.

That's a passive component test, not a transducer output test. It demonstrates how much signal gets lost through the pickup and not how much signal it produces when you jiggle its magnetic circuit with a guitar string or a drive coil.

Get my drift?

You can drive the pickup magnetically with a small speaker coil cut from a media speaker. (That way, you know it will handle a sound card output.)

If you drive pickup that way, you'd get a constantly decreasing output up to the resonance point. Above the resonance point is mainly where all the harmonic details happen, the stuff that makes a pickup distinctive (and good or bad).

The slope of the output would be proportional to the inductance and can give you confirmation on what the LCR meter says.

-drh
--

[DrStrangelove]

Why are you posting here Dr.Strangelove ?

So far, we've established that you hide behind a pseudonym,

Kid, you can contact me any time through the private mail mechanism on this forum or by getting my email address from the old pickup makers forum. I don't guarantee that I'll answer.

On the old pickup makers forum, the Dr.Strangelove moniker fell out of a humorous exchange with Wolf after he said I was being too much of a german scientist about it, as you would know if you looked a little closer or were there from the beginning.

-drh
--

[Spence]

Tara

You've clearly set out to annoy me Dr. S. The thing is, you'll never succeed because you've achieved nothing in the World of pickups. It really doesn't make any difference what you think, comments about dragging Knuckles, calling me 'Kid', or if you're pally with Wolfe. I couldn't care less.
I don't need to be on this forum as I'm not here to learn, especially from fantacists like you so I'll just let you get on with it.

[Possum]

frequency sweeps...

Uhm, actually that frequency chart was done with a drive coil, using a log sweep, the program also does MLS, the program was designed to test coils and audio frequencies for speakers and cab in rooms. Its a Mac OSX program called FuzzMeasure. Drive coil is low impedance very low. I've used a PC program also and they all generate the same kinds of charts. They are a bit useful sometimes as you get used to comparing two different charts on top of eachother like the example I did.

You mentioned that we don't have good enough tools to tell us when things go wrong, and I disagree with that in part. The Extech LCR meter is real good at spotting a coil with shorts in it once you've been exposed to what those readings look like. The recoil thing isn't something that we're all unconscious about, I still view it as being paralell to the inductance AC readings thing. High inductance, high ACR and the recoil dynamics are slow, they just seem to work together even if they're not the same thing. Joe went into this in detail last year. I don't know how you would even measure that kind of thing anyway. What would you do, pulse a white noise signal for a milisecond or what? You just get used to how the different alnicos sound in general, they have "sag" just like tubes do....measure it, sure I'm up for that but no one has explained how to do that, especially with a budget of zero :-)