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Vintage threads from the first ten years
| previous: SK Why all the secrecy? This is the on... -- 9/10/2002 12:35 PM |  |
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Re: Pickup makers annoy me!
 9/10/2002 3:09 PM |
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Dr Strangelove | Re: Pickup makers annoy me! SK wrote:
The emperor has no clothes except for a Speedo thong. When you strip away the marketing hype, a great deal of electric guitar parts and accessories are simple things that you can often make yourself (although it takes time to perfect your skills). That's the secret: it's simple stuff. If you are a one man business and build simple things, but if it's your ONLY business, you might want to protect it very jealously since it puts the food on your table. Sometimes, if your business is successful and becomes larger, but still under 50 or so employees, you hang on to the small business mindset of secrecy. You need look no farther than the boutique effects pedal business for examples - there are endless trivial variations on the Ibanez Tube Screamer, yet they are closely guarded secrets. Sometimes information is free if you know where to look. The US Patent Office and Delphion web sites have lots of guitar pickup designs under "musical instrument transducer" or "variable reluctance transducer" or some mixture. Exploded diagrams are the norm on patents, so they make for accessible reading. Dimarzio has aggressively patented almost everything they ever made; Dimarzio and his head engineer Blucher turn up a lot in pickup patent searches. Parts are a different matter. Except for the magnets and wire, TV Jones builds every part of the pickup himself. He has to. Anybody know where I can get bobbins for blade pickups? No way am I calling AGI-Lace or Bill Lawrence. The former would just laugh at me and clam up while the latter would talk my ear off and never get around to the subject of bobbins. The established bigger pickup makers kind of annoy me too, but I see where they are coming from. -drh -- | |
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| Frank DeSalvo Bill Lawrence annoys me! -- 9/11/2002 5:00 PM |