End of the road for passive developement?

[That90'sGuy]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

I think it'd be great to be able to record quality albums at home with thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of equipment. I realize that gives great people like Gomano a job, but for the average guitarist scraping by, $600 for a few hours of recording time just isn't realistic.

 

[Lee]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

In a slight shift to other stuff we use - does anyone see the humble speaker cone being replaced in a hurry?

 

[MattPete]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

http://www.q-tuner.com/index.shtml

In parallel, neural activity concerned with generating (un)pleasant sensations increases, thus bringing Q-tuner technology into association with the mechanics of emotion; this phenomenon is caused by opiate-like substances called endorphins which are released as a side-effect to forcing the brain’s mathematical analysis circuitry

WTF is that nonsense?

 

[WARRENLEELYNCH]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

Have we reached the end of the road re passive pups? Surely every magnet type, number of wire turns has been pretty well tried by now.



Lee

if you ask steve at dimarzio he will tell you NO WAY! they(dimarzio) are getting into making passive models that mimic the tone of a violin,acoustic guitars, reeds, horns,etc

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

if you ask steve at dimarzio he will tell you NO WAY! they(dimarzio) are getting into making passive models that mimic the tone of a violin,acoustic guitars, reeds, horns,etc

That's pretty interesting. I'd love it if Duncan and other companies would design a pickup ring that allows pickups to be snapped in and out.
For the life of me, I don't know why they haven't. How cool would it be
to have one guitar setup that way, with 10 drastically different sounding pickups for any occasion. Pop in a single coil neck, a P-90, a Custom 5,
or even one that sounds like a Sitar. I'd love it. What the hell am I waiting
for....I should start drawing up the design, and become the next Duncan!

 

[Kent S.]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

Rather than redesigning pickups, I think the goal will be to redesign guitar preamps, so direct recording sounds NO different from miced amps. It's about 85% there now, but when it gets to the point where direct recording can sound 100% perfect, and a studio environement, online, is as simple as Emails, it's gonna be a big shift in the perception of the modern guitarist. There's always gonna be a desire to be a live player, but society's effort to simplify our life, will translate into the guitar world.

That would help, but what you're really talking about are built in cab simulators taken to a degree that actually makes the amp sound like itself direct ... a good thing this would be. The best idea that I had seen was not that complicated, Schaller used to make (maybe still does) an active pup that had a flat (supposedly) response, ah ... let's say accurate instead, flat kinda indicates or suggests that direct box thing. It looked like an emg, but had what appeared to be six polepieces, in reality they were trimpots, one was a gain control, and the others where a band on a five band eq, hen idea was so start with a low string pull, highly envelope correct signal, adjust the tonal response as desired, and then adjust it's gain ... now imagine that, but with an internal programmable switching array in the guitar, that would let you program the various settings from the trimpots and put them in memory, along with which pups on-off, and whatever balance between said pups. That to me would represent a very useful and easy to use feature. Maybe say the ability to hold 10 settings, that's more than enough for most people live, plus you'd still have access to normal guitars tone, and volume controls ... hey maybe even have to ability to switch your guitar settings via your midi foot controller ... like your chorus and reverb just so with this pup setting, and like your delay, and overdrive just so with that pup setting, and that third pup setting with the compressor, wah, and another delay. Hey all at the touch of a button, change effects, pups, and amp channels all at once.
I don't think passive pups will ever go out to be honest, may 100,000 years down the line, but not anytime soon. The only real kudo that active has a more accurate frequency response, and lower string pull, as well as having the gain be able to be set independent of other factors (tone), also lower noise (well the ability to match impedance more correctly). So in a sense active does offer the ability for the instrument to speak with a bit truer voice, then be able to manipulate it electronically. I think the beauty of passive pups lies just in that, the compromises made ... have we reached the end ... I don't think so, but I don't think we'll see anything truely groundbreaking for a while, refinements yes ... groundbreaking ... no.

 

[Kent S.]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

if you ask steve at dimarzio he will tell you NO WAY! they(dimarzio) are getting into making passive models that mimic the tone of a violin,acoustic guitars, reeds, horns,etc

Yeah I think I remember reading that somewhere, emphasising a tonal curve, and certain peaks ... I can maybe see that, I could see the string instruments being mimiced a bit better due to their harmonic nature being similar ... I mean if you look at what can be done with a EBow and your volume and tone controls you can see the potential that is within the nature of the instrument itself ... hhmmm, just gimme one that sounds like a grand piano, violin, viola, cello, flute, classical guitar, pipe organ, and of course the John Lord tone ... then i'll be happy.

 

[Kent S.]

Re: End of the road for passive developement?

In a slight shift to other stuff we use - does anyone see the humble speaker cone being replaced in a hurry?

If by that you mean an actual replacement for something that moves air to produce sound waves ... no, better cones maybe ... if you are talking actual direct devices, then yeah, they are getting better everyday ... Joe Satriani one time remarked in an article about how he thought one day concerts could radiate sound within a focused field, so that people inside an area could hear the music, but people say outside that area couldn't. The military has some directional sound based weapons (less then lethal force). Riot control type things, so the technology is at least there in it's infancy, but they still employ some type of compression based piezo drivers in an array, and I don't think the frequency range extends very low at all. So I guess we will have to wait and see ... although, you know it is quite amazing how simple things like a magnetic passive pup, induction driven cone motor speakers, and the lowly simple staged, vaccum tube driven amplifier can sound so complex, and rich that we often forget just how ineffective they are at their jobs sometimes ... curious huh?