ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics	For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum.

ampage archive

Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: Pickup "copies" rant

9/3/2002 3:27 AM
Jason Lollar	Re: Pickup "copies" rant The thing about suppling manufacturers is you should be doing one of two things, either create a pickup specific to the design of the instrument (custom) or your giving them a tonal upgrade of a stock design they were using. If you do anything other than that your asking for trouble. Trying to make a $15 pickup is just bad business and there are places that order strictly by price. Of course some people are going to replace the pickup you supplied because they dont know any better and a very few just arent going to like it but you get alot of people that hear about you from that type of supplying, you would really be suprised. Its not as bad a move as you might think and actually pretty satifying to design something and execute it on a larger scale within timelines and retail price schedules. Of course one would need to be careful not to supply to a company that makes crappy instruments, because what they do gets tied to your rep!

9/3/2002 3:27 AM

Jason Lollar

Re: Pickup "copies" rant

The thing about suppling manufacturers is you should be doing one of two things, either create a pickup specific to the design of the instrument (custom) or your giving them a tonal upgrade of a stock design they were using. If you do anything other than that your asking for trouble. Trying to make a $15 pickup is just bad business and there are places that order strictly by price.
Of course some people are going to replace the pickup you supplied because they dont know any better and a very few just arent going to like it but you get alot of people that hear about you from that type of supplying, you would really be suprised. Its not as bad a move as you might think and actually pretty satifying to design something and execute it on a larger scale within timelines and retail price schedules.
Of course one would need to be careful not to supply to a company that makes crappy instruments, because what they do gets tied to your rep!

9/3/2002 8:42 AM
Regan	This is a very interesting thread, and a very interesting forum. Thank's guys. I have never built pickups, nor am I in the industry so its interesting to get an insight on the industry as it sits. I think part of the whole "selling your vintage stuff" advertising is necessary in the business-face it, the vintage thing has to be done with pickups, because they are related to "vintage style guitars, "vintage style amps" "vintage pedals" etc. I think especially being a startup small builder without the experience this is important, because the guitar industry in whole is propelling the vintage vibe thing. You have to follow suit, to some extent-at least until you have a reputation, then I think its a little more open to interpretation how you build your pickups. Its the same with the boutique pedal makers, there is the guys building high quality copies of classic pedals, then there is the zvex's of the industry, pushing the envelope. I spent several years in the computer industry, and found that in small shops; everybody uses the same parts, gets them at the same costs, and has nearly the same overhead. The difference is made in the service and the hype. In my experience,no matter what the industry, the hype advertising part of it is always the least fun, but the most necessary Regan p.s. I'm looking forward to this forum, wish I had known about the old one!

9/3/2002 8:42 AM

Regan

This is a very interesting thread, and a very interesting forum. Thank's guys.
I have never built pickups, nor am I in the industry so its interesting to get an insight on the industry as it sits.
I think part of the whole "selling your vintage stuff" advertising is necessary in the business-face it, the vintage thing has to be done with pickups, because they are related to "vintage style guitars, "vintage style amps" "vintage pedals" etc.
I think especially being a startup small builder without the experience this is important, because the guitar industry in whole is propelling the vintage vibe thing.
You have to follow suit, to some extent-at least until you have a reputation, then I think its a little more open to interpretation how you build your pickups.
Its the same with the boutique pedal makers, there is the guys building high quality copies of classic pedals, then there is the zvex's of the industry, pushing the envelope.
I spent several years in the computer industry, and found that in small shops; everybody uses the same parts, gets them at the same costs, and has nearly the same overhead.
The difference is made in the service and the hype.
In my experience,no matter what the industry, the hype advertising part of it is always the least fun, but the most necessary

Regan

p.s. I'm looking forward to this forum, wish I had known about the old one!

9/3/2002 1:28 PM
ChrisTheGuitaristFormallyKnownAsTheAdminGuy	Pushing the envelope Pushing the envelope is what it all about, thats how I got to know Tony Snape. I tried EMG 81 and they had some good points, but I really liked a passive pickup. Tony did a lot of R & D for me. That custom pickup turned into the Supa Phat Ass. It pushed the envelope for active pickups, and for 'Genre' type Pickups, in this case Metal.

9/3/2002 3:47 PM
Mark Hammer	What happens when specs elude you Buy an amp and you will get some specs to base your decision on. There will be information about power, controls, distortion, maybe gain structure, EQ values and control, etc., Same thing goes for guitars. Indeed, there is much you can learn about either of these musical implements from merely looking at the specs and many of us have associations between specs and sound that allow us to imagine what it is might be int he package even without hearing or seeing it. Such associations aren't always accurate, and such specs are often insufficient to fully depict a product, but at least we have them. When it comes to pickups, although in principle these should be just about the most specifiable thing on a guitar short of the pots (xxxx turns of xx gauge wire on a bobbin of dimensions xx by x, inductance of X capacitance of X, magnets of this composition and gauss, etc.), most of us simply lack both the mental associations between building materials and tone, and between specs and tone. That doesn't mean they can't be established, merely that they tend not to exist in the public consciousness at the moment. To my way of thinking, that's likely a direct cause of the kinds of blanket comparisons found in the ads that you find annoying. I can't create an impression of what the pickup would sound like by telling you about it technically, and obviously showing you a picture does little to improve that, so the only thing I've got at my disposal is comparisons against things you know, even if those comparisons are farfetched. At a certain point the vintage or product references tend to disappear. I don't really see any of the myriad of clones out there claiming that their guitar sounds "just like a Strat!" or "just like a Les Paul!" despite the fact that they use the same pickup arrangement, body design, electronics, etc. You see a Strat clone for $119 in a pawn shop of mail-order catalogue and you think "I have a pretty good idea of what that might sound like". The reference points in an ad are unnecessary because you already have a sense from the picture of how it sounds. I don't think pickups are at that point yet. Indeed, because there are so few physical presentations of pickups, relative to the number of variations within those visible designs (just think of how many Fender-style SC designs are currently or have ever been in production, and how different they can sound from each other), just seeing the pickup tells you nothing. In the absence of specs to tell you what the picture doesn't, the manufacturer has to resort to hyperbole and points of reference that don't invite lawsuits from competitors. E.g., You will never see an ad that says this Duncan pickup sounds better than this EMG or DiMarzio one.

9/3/2002 3:47 PM

Mark Hammer

What happens when specs elude you

Buy an amp and you will get some specs to base your decision on. There will be information about power, controls, distortion, maybe gain structure, EQ values and control, etc., Same thing goes for guitars. Indeed, there is much you can learn about either of these musical implements from merely looking at the specs and many of us have associations between specs and sound that allow us to imagine what it is might be int he package even without hearing or seeing it. Such associations aren't always accurate, and such specs are often insufficient to fully depict a product, but at least we have them.

When it comes to pickups, although in principle these should be just about the most specifiable thing on a guitar short of the pots (xxxx turns of xx gauge wire on a bobbin of dimensions xx by x, inductance of X capacitance of X, magnets of this composition and gauss, etc.), most of us simply lack both the mental associations between building materials and tone, and between specs and tone. That doesn't mean they can't be established, merely that they tend not to exist in the public consciousness at the moment.

To my way of thinking, that's likely a direct cause of the kinds of blanket comparisons found in the ads that you find annoying. I can't create an impression of what the pickup would sound like by telling you about it technically, and obviously showing you a picture does little to improve that, so the only thing I've got at my disposal is comparisons against things you know, even if those comparisons are farfetched.

At a certain point the vintage or product references tend to disappear. I don't really see any of the myriad of clones out there claiming that their guitar sounds "just like a Strat!" or "just like a Les Paul!" despite the fact that they use the same pickup arrangement, body design, electronics, etc. You see a Strat clone for $119 in a pawn shop of mail-order catalogue and you think "I have a pretty good idea of what that might sound like". The reference points in an ad are unnecessary because you already have a sense from the picture of how it sounds.

I don't think pickups are at that point yet. Indeed, because there are so few physical presentations of pickups, relative to the number of variations within those visible designs (just think of how many Fender-style SC designs are currently or have ever been in production, and how different they can sound from each other), just seeing the pickup tells you nothing. In the absence of specs to tell you what the picture doesn't, the manufacturer has to resort to hyperbole and points of reference that don't invite lawsuits from competitors. E.g., You will never see an ad that says this Duncan pickup sounds better than this EMG or DiMarzio one.

9/3/2002 7:51 PM

Dr. Strangelove

Mark wrote:

quote:
"In the absence of specs to tell you what the picture doesn't, the manufacturer has to resort to hyperbole and points of reference that don't invite lawsuits from competitors."

Without specs or an incentive to publish them, the big pickup makers can resort to whatever hyperbole they want.

Buyers are partly to blame, too. Advertising directors discovered that they had to punch the "vintage" hot button if they wanted to sell anything to guitarists. Try and sell a pickup on its own merits? To a guitarist? Specs and artistic natures tend to exclude each other.

A pickup's frequency response curve would help. Since you can induce a signal in a pickup, you can test them for impulse response and assorted distortion modes as well. This would let you _completely_ characterize a pickup's spectral & dynamic behavior.

Would this information sell pickups? Heh. Not without a lot of interpretation from the guitar magazines. Few people are interested in viewing pickups from an audiophile vantage.

Given reasonable interpretations of pickup specs, would consumers buy smarter? Some would. Would guitar builders buy smarter? I hope so. They'd know ahead of time not to put a bright, dynamic, slightly microphonic pickup in a maple neck-through guitar.

-drh
--

9/4/2002 4:18 PM
Mark Hammer	I'll tell you what WOULD help is the opportunity to have soundfiles and descriptors/specs alongside each other. A couple years back, GP had a SC pickup shootout and the writer extolled the virtues of Fralin pickups saying they had "nuts, ring, shimmer". O.....kay.......what the hell IS that? I like to describe SC pickups in terms of "sheen" and "sparkle". That may mean something to me personally but finding an adjective in the dictionary doesn't help others very much. I think you're quite right that most folks don't want to approach it from the audiophile vantage point, but they DO want comparison information that is meaningful and allows them to make sensible and satisfying choices. Something like this gets done with effects at Tone Frenzy and Larry Spence's modezero.com site. What would be great would be a standardized guitar body you could slide pickups into and out of without changing strings. The player plays similar kinds of music with identical knob settings into a sound card or direct in some other manner, and the end-user gets to hear that in conjunction with a freq-resp curve PLUS the kinds of descriptors that a variety of folks with a broad and informed enough ear use.

9/4/2002 4:18 PM

Mark Hammer

I'll tell you what WOULD help is the opportunity to have soundfiles and descriptors/specs alongside each other. A couple years back, GP had a SC pickup shootout and the writer extolled the virtues of Fralin pickups saying they had "nuts, ring, shimmer". O.....kay.......what the hell IS that? I like to describe SC pickups in terms of "sheen" and "sparkle". That may mean something to me personally but finding an adjective in the dictionary doesn't help others very much.

I think you're quite right that most folks don't want to approach it from the audiophile vantage point, but they DO want comparison information that is meaningful and allows them to make sensible and satisfying choices.

Something like this gets done with effects at Tone Frenzy and Larry Spence's modezero.com site.

What would be great would be a standardized guitar body you could slide pickups into and out of without changing strings. The player plays similar kinds of music with identical knob settings into a sound card or direct in some other manner, and the end-user gets to hear that in conjunction with a freq-resp curve PLUS the kinds of descriptors that a variety of folks with a broad and informed enough ear use.

9/4/2002 6:35 PM
SK	That doesn't work either. Sound files transmitted across the web and played thru computer speakers (even very good ones) aren't going to sound "true". Hell, ever mess with speaker changes in an amp? Makes a huge difference...A recorded (processed) compressed, transmitted, reproduced sound will not sound the same as it will thru your amp played in your guitar. Might give you a ballpark idea if you have a similar guitar thru a similar amp/system.

9/4/2002 6:35 PM

That doesn't work either. Sound files transmitted across the web and played thru computer speakers (even very good ones) aren't going to sound "true". Hell, ever mess with speaker changes in an amp? Makes a huge difference...A recorded (processed) compressed, transmitted, reproduced sound will not sound the same as it will thru your amp played in your guitar. Might give you a ballpark idea if you have a similar guitar thru a similar amp/system.

Page 2 of 3