Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

[Gibson 1964]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

I am absolutely NOT interested in trying them.
The entire concept is a waste of time and money.
The electric guitar is a musical instrument, a living thing.
Even EMG pickups are at their core, real pickups developed at a time when venues were so poorly wired, noise was a major hindrance..a solution to a real problem....these are not, they're tone generation is entirely artificially produced.


I stand by my statement that they're a solution looking for a problem.

There is absolutely nothing artificial about them I can tell. They use a different way to get the windings.

It isn't like this is a midi signal or something. These sound to me to be like they could be a way to get almost perfect windings. (Which intrigue me mostly because of a conversation I had with Bill Lawrence.) They are not any more artificially reproduced than any other pickup. The coils are just made a different way.


Your argument at its core seems to be devoid of any merit as there is nothing inherently artificial in using a different method to get windings. Innovative? Yes. It is not any more artificial than the methods of the last 50 years to print a circuit board as opposed to winding copper wire.

I don't use active pickups for my own reasons, but there really is no reason to be irrational about a new way of doing something. And your statement that it is artificial is just peculiar as it is so easily seen to be false.

You act like they are cloners or something. Actually this sounds like an actual innovation in a world where variations and copies are commonplace. I can't quite say the Fishman system sounds like a clone of anything.

 

[DreX]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

The Fluence is basically an extremely underwound coil that produces a very low output with a flat EQ, and it essentialy has a mid and volume boost attached the bottom of the bridge pickup, hence the need for a battery. Anyone who denies that they have any element of artificiality to them doesn't fundementally understand how they work.

 

[LesStrat]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

Listen to DreX. He knows what he's talking about as usual.

Who is that Falbo guy, anyway:?:

 

[Gibson 1964]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

The Fluence is basically an extremely underwound coil that produces a very low output with a flat EQ, and it essentialy has a mid and volume boost attached the bottom of the bridge pickup, hence the need for a battery. Anyone who denies that they have any element of artificiality to them doesn't fundementally understand how they work.

Actually I understand how they work. The concept of saying that is artificial is odd. They work very much like other active pickups except as I understand it, more flexible because the processing of the signal can be adjusted by the knobs.

However, adding an eq pedal to your chain does not make the sound artificial. Having an eq on your amp doesn't either. When I think artificial I think samples like midi, or A/D, D/A conversion.

 

[Lampy H]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

This guy comes along and attempts to artificially copy their work.
I dislike the very concept of them.

I refuse to trade in my horse-drawn carriage for an automobile because someone actually bred my horse, and actually built my carriage. Besides, the carriage was invented first.

Anyone who denies that they have any element of artificiality to them doesn't fundementally understand how they work.

Please define artificiality in this context. The sound they produce is real, no?

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

I am absolutely NOT interested in trying them.
The entire concept is a waste of time and money.
The electric guitar is a musical instrument, a living thing.
Even EMG pickups are at their core, real pickups developed at a time when venues were so poorly wired, noise was a major hindrance..a solution to a real problem....these are not, they're tone generation is entirely artificially produced.


I stand by my statement that they're a solution looking for a problem.

This is about as close as your going to get to " non artificial reproduction and amplification ".

 

[Securb]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

The Fluence is basically an extremely underwound coil that produces a very low output with a flat EQ,

Once again ....YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED THESE PICKUPS! Underwound? These pickups are hot as hell. And I am talking the classic set not the modern set. Ken Susi from Unearth plays the classic set and he is a high gain animal. He is not playing Fishman in this video but you get the picture of the gain he is rocking.

 

[Gibson 1964]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

Once again ....YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED THESE PICKUPS! Underwound? These pickups are hot as hell. And I am talking the classic set not the modern set. Ken Susi from Unearth plays the classic set and he is a high gain animal. He is not playing Fishman in this video but you get the picture of the gain he is rocking.

Almost all active pickups are an underwound coil with a built in preamp.

 

[Securb]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

Almost all active pickups are an underwound coil with a built in preamp.

The Fluence pickups are not active. Have you played them?

 

[LesStrat]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

 

[Gibson 1964]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

The Fluence pickups are not active. Have you played them?

No, however, they require batteries, which to me seems like something in them is utilizing active circuitry. I mean, calling them not active seems a stretch since the specs on fishman's site gives the current draw of 2.5ma and gives a battery life of 200 hours.

http://www.fishman.com/products/view/fluence-modern-humbucker-ceramic

I prefer purely passive pickups as I have had actives fail on me at rather awkward times.

I am interested in them from a technical perspective and if they utilized a fully passive method with the printed coils I would be far more likely to own one.

 

[Securb]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

No, however, they require batteries, which to me seems like something in them is utilizing active circuitry. I mean, calling them not active seems a stretch since the specs on fishman's site gives the current draw of 2.5ma and gives a battery life of 200 hours.

http://www.fishman.com/products/view/fluence-modern-humbucker-ceramic

I prefer purely passive pickups as I have had actives fail on me at rather awkward times.

I am interested in them from a technical perspective and if they utilized a fully passive method with the printed coils I would be far more likely to own one.

HAVE YOU PLAYED THEM!

 

[Gibson 1964]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

HAVE YOU PLAYED THEM!

No I haven't. Which was unrelated to any point I made.

However, the specs certainly seem to indicate they are active, as would everything I have read/watched from Fishman. I have a strict no active pickup policy. (and no battery powered devices I can avoid.) I have my reasons and they don't apply to anyone else.

My point was it looked to me like they had an actual innovation in the manufacturing of guitar pickups that would not degrade the sound.

There isn't anything intrinsically artificial about it, (like midi or bad d/a,a/d conversion.) That is all I am saying. One does not have to play one to see it is a new method of construction, but not some variax tomfoolery.

 

[Securb]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

No I haven't.

Then what are you basing your opinions on?

I have been to the factory
I saw them being assembled
I played them thru a 5150, JMC 800 and a Fender with a Slash Les Paul.
I got to compare the wave files of the Fluence vs a "traditional pickup" in Fishman's studio

But you read an internet article. Realy?

 

[Demanic]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

All I can say is, once I get the scratch, and another axe to put them into, I'm getting a set.

 

[DreX]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

Please define artificiality in this context. The sound they produce is real, no?

This isn't hard to do at all,

ar·ti·fi·cial
ˌärdəˈfiSHəl/
adjective
1.
made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural.
"her skin glowed in the artificial light"


The peak resonance of a passive coil is a byproduct of it's hotter wind, which is to say, if you want to have a pickup that's hot enough to produce a decent output on it's own, it will naturally exhibit self resistance and capacitance and not allow high frequencies to pass, and hence the sound we know and love from traditional pickups owes to that natural behavior of electricity and electro magnetism. Active pickups, and/or the Fishman Fluence pickups, do not inhibit the passage of high frequencies, they do not have that characteristic "mid hump", and therefor must "shape" the sound to approximate the natural peak resonance of the traditional passive pickup upon which it is based.

Now... a pickup might not sound artificial by your own subjective estimation, like maybe you sip on a strawberry shake from McDonalds and can't tell it apart from fresh produce, but your perception of something doesn't make it any more or less physically artificial.

Once again ....YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED THESE PICKUPS! Underwound? These pickups are hot as hell.

Again, this is talking about how they sound, not how they physically actually are. If they were actually high output, they wouldn't need batteries.

A pickup winder is a true artist, the reason forum members have attributed MJ with an almost mystical aura.
Skilled on so many levels and that's why the market is so full of amazing but different models.
There are mass producers and real artisans practicing a true artform.

This guy comes along and attempts to artificially copy their work.
I dislike the very concept of them.

From an artistic standpoint, there's nothing invalid about Fishman Fluence pickups. They're the creative product of a handful of engineers at Fishman, just as the original Strat pickups were the the result of the designers and winders and Fender each putting their mark on the final product, from the guy who chose the type of wire to the person who operated the coil winding machine.

My critique is more practical. People have said they sound stellar, and they're quiet, but not much more specific. There's a metric fugton of good sounding pickups I have yet to try that also do not require batteries, nor do they have a tron-looking logo on the cover.

that's partiality the point of these. They address manufacturing consistency.

"No two pickups of the same model ever sound alike" said nobody.

I have been to the factory
I saw them being assembled
I played them thru a 5150, JMC 800 and a Fender with a Slash Les Paul.
I got to compare the wave files of the Fluence vs a "traditional pickup" in Fishman's studio

If anything, this makes me doubt your objectivity. It's like a politician saying they know all about the lumber industry because they've had numerous meetings with friendly representatives from the lumber industry.

 

[vinta9e]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

All pickups are man made, or "artificial". They don't just grow on trees, do they?

The point is, they are a different breed. Something new. More to choose from. What's to dislike about that?
Please don't exemplify that "stubborn guitarist mentality", "hatin'em before tryin'em", "won't even consider trying because they aren't orthodox". You are not being force fed, you are given a choice. No need to be negative at all.

 

[frankfalbo]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

OP: if you have a trem on that PRS I would try the Strat trem cover, utilising one or more screw holes, or just start with a 9v battery for awhile until you decide. There's a stand alone battery that can be drilled into an existing cover, but I think that the PRS "boomerang" shape may still not fit it. You'd need to measure. Now to tend to other matters..

I am absolutely NOT interested in trying them.
The entire concept is a waste of time and money.
The electric guitar is a musical instrument, a living thing.
Even EMG pickups are at their core, real pickups developed at a time when venues were so poorly wired, noise was a major hindrance..a solution to a real problem....these are not, they're tone generation is entirely artificially produced.

I stand by my statement that they're a solution looking for a problem.

A pickup winder is a true artist, the reason forum members have attributed MJ with an almost mystical aura.
Skilled on so many levels and that's why the market is so full of amazing but different models.
There are mass producers and real artisans practicing a true artform.

This guy comes along and attempts to artificially copy their work.
I dislike the very concept of them.

This pretty much verifies that somewhere, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what were doing with these pickups. There are some other slightly misinterpreted explanations in this thread too, but yours seem to be on the most basic level. It's almost as though you think these are some sort of "clone" pickups or something? When you say "this guy comes along" are you referring to Larry Fishman? Me?

I'm not sure where you're going here. I mean, 40 years ago this guy, Seymour Duncan came along and, by being a student of all that came before him, made magic partly by painstakingly chasing Gibson and Fender's former glory of the 50's and 60's, while interjecting his own innovations to bridge the gap between vintage and what was modern at that time (what we'd now call classic I suppose)

Personal feelings aside, your use of the term artificial seems misapplied. The first thing you need to understand is the fundamental difference in these coils. They inherently contain qualities that (in my opinion) many boutique, expert, artisan winders painstakingly attempt to impart into their coils. And they have those qualities all the time, no matter what. In addition, there are zero trade-offs. This artistry you mention (which I'm highly familiar) is a matter of balancing several of the players' requests in such a way that you get as close to the sound in their head possible. But if I say to an artisan winder, "start with a PAF voice, but I want a lower resonant peak and power like an overwound PAF, but I want more clarity and high treble like an underwound PAF" the harsh reality is that you physically can not have those two characteristics together in the same pickup with vintage correct materials, no matter how much of an artist you are. And you SURE as heck can't make it where I can throw a switch and have an entirely different, non-dependent 2nd voice.

You say you haven't played and don't want to try them. I can't help you there. Its like refusing to watch a HiDef television while being certain it will look blurrier than your old tube tv. These are 100% analog, they're like the "retina display" version of any sound you've had in your head. They're not an attempt to clone anything, no more than a Seth Lover is an attempt to clone a Pearly Gates.

Then of course there's all the boring stuff like phase linearity, (lack of) group delay, transient speed, etc.

 

[DreX]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

All pickups are man made, or "artificial". They don't just grow on trees, do they?

What you're choosing not to acknowledge is context. You could say that pickups very broadly facilitate the artificial amplification of otherwise very quiet strings, but so do amplifiers and speakers and everything else along the way, so in such a broad context, the word becomes watered down to the point of being potable. Fishman Fluences, OTOH, very specifically attempt to recreate the tonal profile of vintage style passive pickups. There's really no other word besides "artificial" to describe the means by which Fluences come to resemble the tone of vintage pickups. It's exactly the same as when someone uses a filter in a studio to make it sound like they're speaking through an old land line telephone, it's new emulating old by way of technical artifice.

The point is, they are a different breed. Something new. More to choose from. What's to dislike about that?
Please don't exemplify that "stubborn guitarist mentality", "hatin'em before tryin'em", "won't even consider trying because they aren't orthodox". You are not being force fed, you are given a choice. No need to be negative at all.

You guys keep saying "trying 'em" as if that's the easiest thing to do. Why don't we try everything while we're at it? Are they set up in some guitars at Guitar Center? If not, we have to buy them at full price, and install them, time out of the day, and maybe uninstall them, carefully repackage and return them before the 30 day limit is up. The review guys who write for the publications get free demo models. Even they are unwilling to pay for things just to try them out. With most things in life you research before you buy, and yet here we have guys saying, 'buy first and research later'. It's not too much to ask that a thing, at a bare minimum, look good on paper.

~~~

Also, I agree with what Frank said above, but it mostly servers to counter wolf5150's points and doesn't really say much for the Fluence, which can be summed up as "sound good and are noiseless", and in the case of the humbucker model, just "sound good".

This is sort of a straw man "start with a PAF voice, but I want a lower resonant peak and power like an overwound PAF, but I want more clarity and high treble like an underwound PAF" because it's creating a fictitious want and saying it's representative of all wants, when the reality is that people who wanted this found it in EMGs and other active pickups, and that most guitarists are happy to have pickups that lean one way or the other, and aren't looking for pickups that kiss and punch at the same time.

If anyone is interested in a passive pickup that play both sides of the field, be sure to read up on the Lace Alumitones.

 

[SJ318]

Re: Couple Fluence questions for Falbo

From a layman's point of view,
I hated the old Active EMG pickups because to me, they sounded flat, dull, no dynamics, no cool harmonics. Since then, anything that has the label Active on it puts me off my feed.
What if the new Fluence had the dynamics, the harmonics, the rich earthly sound of a passive? Hey, I wouldn't care if they ran on ketchup.
The fact that the word "active" attached to the name "Fluence" is a mental bummer. But I am going to play the first one I can get my hands on, and I will be able to tell in three notes whether these things have the same "feel" as a passive.
I get that earthly sound/idea of magnets- metal-from the earth! Hand or machine winding but very human attention to how many winds, loose or tight , balanced or unbalanced coils, very very human hands on. Nickel cover, no cover, you could almost kiss a good passive pickup.
Imagine if Fluence could get all those sounds anyway, a printed board is no more "artificial" than pouring hot plastic for a pickup bobbin. But I feel myself the scary word "Active" and I don't like that word.
This pickup is NOT AN ANSWER LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM. The whole idea is an IMPROVEMENT ON A GOOD IDEA. Why not? I would sure love a cranked single coil sound without a dead stack to ruin it's bell like quality. If Fluence can give me a clean Strat 1962 eu de Bell/twang-sign me up!
SJ