I don't know squat about magnetic pickups, so this looks fine to me, but is it a good idea?
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I don't know squat about magnetic pickups, so this looks fine to me, but is it a good idea?
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Why not just move the pup foreward, then a bridge to cover any hole, and the saddle remains in situ
I wonder if this is one of those cases of an excellent craftsman with little musical knowledge making a guitar that looks great but may not sound very good.
The raised brass tacks for fret markers are nice looking but practically questionable as well. Maybe it's a wall hanger!
Whew! Thought it was an "innovation" you were developing. However, it did give me an idea...and another variant: what if your 12th fret was a rail type mag pup, instead of 6 individual pole pieces?
That would be kewl...
Dang that would be stealth!!
I think it could be quite interesting. As Ron said, you do get noise from a pickup if you knock it with your hand.
How does it sound Danny?
Of course everyone is correct about getting it under the strings for volume and tone.
Speaking about nodes and pickup placements, there are a few harmonic spots along a string (the 12th for example on an open string). You can select the opposite of these nodes (anti-node??) for pickup placement to enhance desired frequencies depending on the notes and chords you want to play.
Say you have a signature chord in one of your songs that you need to rip out in an exact frequency, eg The Who - won't get fooled again, you could find the anti-node points for that chord and by placing a pickup or two at these points and by raising or lowering the pole peices depending on the string you want to enhance you 'frequency drive' that particular instrument.
I would be interested to hear the results of a pickup under the bridge, it might sound like a strange piezo. And in guitar building, anything with a unique sound is desirable.
I'm sure this works, but I'm of the opinion that it would be better if the pickup was further away from the bridge.
In the pic, it looks like the strings are in between the poles. This works by microphonics in the pickup picking up the vibrations through the pickup's body and CBG body, but not using the pickups full potential.
So I would recommend moving the pickup forward towards the neck and placing it so the strings go over the poles.
The second problem is related to the first. Strings are "attached," for all practical purposes, at the bridge, and the nut. Those two points are called nodes. Those nodes are zones of almost no vibration on a string; not none,me cause there is some, but almost none. Strings vibrate in a sigmoidal, or S-shaped, pattern, along their length, when plucked or strummed. The harder you strike the string, the larger the vibration (to a point: you can break a string by exceeding the material's willingness to vibrate and deform). Putting this vibration of the string inside a magnetic field is what you want to do with a mag pup. By locating the bridge atop, but just behind, the cylindrical magnetic pole pieces of the pup, you are getting much smaller amplitudes or excursions of string vibration, than locating the pup closer to the halfway point between bridge and nut, wher string vibration is greatest ( and which, by the way. Is at the twelfth fret, by definition. Which also gives me an excellent idea...). This is why, on a Strat for example, you get warmer deeper tones on a neck pickup, and brighter higher tones on a bridge pickup: you've changed the character of the string vibration's amplitude, and thus the sound transmitted by the current generated in the pup, by moving the pup forward or backward between bridge and nut.
So, this setup will work, but will be both low volume and quite trebly.
As for my excellent idea, surely someone has done this already with a standard mag pup, but using an induction pickup, or a Thinbucker / Flat Cat humbucker, at the twelfth fret, could give rise to a different CBG tone altogether. Elmar? Dan Sleep? Wayfinder? Turkeychicken? Any others with the equipment to test my idea?
The new Taylor T5Z guitar has a humbucking pickup buried in the neck joint and it works and sounds awesome.So your idea of a pickup in the 12th fret area is intriguing.
It would need to be a pickup that wouldn't get all muddy sounding that far up. Most likely a ceramic magnet or a neodymium magnet pickup with low output.
it keeps the strings high off the pickups. the higher they are the less the coils willpick up the sound.