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Lace Sensor pickups....

10/3/2002 6:29 AM
Ben	Lace Sensor pickups.... Curious about what you guys might think of them. I just got a Red Tele bridge and I think it's a great way to get a "humbucking" sound out of a singel sized pickup. I know a lot of people don't like Lace sensor with a passion for strat... but can't seem to find any good or bad info on a bridge tele red lace sensor.

10/3/2002 8:21 AM
Dick	If you got it, and you like it... great. But, as far as my taste is concerned, I though they were OK, but a little 'flat'. Tone is a very subjective thing, however... Dick

10/5/2002 1:24 AM
Ben	How do they differ from "old fashioned" pickups? I mean my red lace sensor tele bridge pickup isn't active but it gives out something that "old fashioned" pickups don't. I'd liek to know what's happening here.. Ive done searches to try and find more on the subject but not much is coming back from it. Anyone has links or infos to share on the matter? Thanks

10/5/2002 3:58 PM
Jason Lollar	Re: How do they differ from "old fashioned" pickups? They are made by Actodyne which you can find in the Thomas Register or perhaps an online search engine or the online thomas register. Get their address and have them send you a brochure, it has good photos and diagrams of the insides. Maybe they have a website, I dont know. The pickup has several reflectors and a tiny coil.

10/6/2002 7:30 PM
Mark Hammer	In some respects, LACE pickups share a little bit with Jaguar pickups, and lots of other single-coil pickups that don't have a strictly up-down magnetic orientation. Remember the pickup senses the string in the area between the poles. Humbuckers link the bottom of two sets of polepieces with a bar magnet, creating what is effectively a U-channel shaped magnet. The HB senses the area primarily between the two sets of polepieces. Consider, for a moment, what would happen if you did the same thing with a SC pickup, by magnetically coupling a component that "lifted" the bottom end of the sensing area and hoisted it up top. That's part (though certainly not all) of what LACE pickups do. Ignore the "sensors" hype for a moment. These are mag pickups, plain and simple. The major differences between them and other pickups are how and where the magnetic field is focussed. Differences between LACE models likely relate to coil differences. If you look at some of the older Epiphone hollowbodies, you'll see a model of pickup (called a New Yorker, I think) with an ivory end-piece for the height adjusting screw to go through. It looks, for all the world like a mini-humbucker. I used to have one and took it apart to see how it ticked. Surprise, surprise, the "polepieces" were adjustable screws that were simply part of a structure that redirected the bottom end of the magnet in the single coil back upwards. In other words, this was a single coil pickup with the sensing area between the middle of the coil and a row of metal screws along one side of it. I've seen the same thing on some of those small flat Silvertone or Harmony pickups with a little sheet of gold foil under the perforated chrome cover. The Fender Jaguar pickup has a plate that runs up the front and back sides of the pickup cover to do a similar kind of thing. Re-arranging the sensing area this way does a few things. First, it changes the aperture of the sensing area. For the signal, it means more of the string energy will be productive, so one gets more signal. For the noise, it's a bit like what a baseball helmet does: it won't keep ALL the sun out of your eyes, but it will keep MORE of the sun away from you. Narrowing the sensing aperture seems to reduce the coil's tendency to act as an antenna, and detect hum. It is NOT hum-rejecting, but it IS hum-reducing. The LACE package goes beyond what the older "bent-field" type PU's could achieve in that regard.

10/6/2002 7:30 PM

Mark Hammer

In some respects, LACE pickups share a little bit with Jaguar pickups, and lots of other single-coil pickups that don't have a strictly up-down magnetic orientation.

Remember the pickup senses the string in the area between the poles. Humbuckers link the bottom of two sets of polepieces with a bar magnet, creating what is effectively a U-channel shaped magnet. The HB senses the area primarily between the two sets of polepieces.

Consider, for a moment, what would happen if you did the same thing with a SC pickup, by magnetically coupling a component that "lifted" the bottom end of the sensing area and hoisted it up top. That's part (though certainly not all) of what LACE pickups do. Ignore the "sensors" hype for a moment. These are mag pickups, plain and simple. The major differences between them and other pickups are how and where the magnetic field is focussed. Differences between LACE models likely relate to coil differences.

If you look at some of the older Epiphone hollowbodies, you'll see a model of pickup (called a New Yorker, I think) with an ivory end-piece for the height adjusting screw to go through. It *looks*, for all the world like a mini-humbucker. I used to have one and took it apart to see how it ticked. Surprise, surprise, the "polepieces" were adjustable screws that were simply part of a structure that redirected the bottom end of the magnet in the single coil back upwards. In other words, this was a single coil pickup with the sensing area between the middle of the coil and a row of metal screws along one side of it. I've seen the same thing on some of those small flat Silvertone or Harmony pickups with a little sheet of gold foil under the perforated chrome cover. The Fender Jaguar pickup has a plate that runs up the front and back sides of the pickup cover to do a similar kind of thing.

Re-arranging the sensing area this way does a few things. First, it changes the aperture of the sensing area. For the signal, it means more of the string energy will be productive, so one gets more signal. For the noise, it's a bit like what a baseball helmet does: it won't keep ALL the sun out of your eyes, but it will keep MORE of the sun away from you. Narrowing the sensing aperture seems to reduce the coil's tendency to act as an antenna, and detect hum. It is NOT hum-rejecting, but it IS hum-reducing. The LACE package goes beyond what the older "bent-field" type PU's could achieve in that regard.

10/7/2002 8:32 PM
Ben	Thanks to both on that, Mark that is some interesting notions... it' s making a lot more sense to me now.

10/8/2002 1:09 AM
Ben	I got a response from the Lace forum straight from them makes a lot of sense with what Mark wrote. For those interested here it is; http://boardserver.superstats.com/read.html?collapse=0&uid=2134813&u=lacemusic&id=1304&thread=1302&f=1&u=lacemusic

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