Re: Hy-Bro 2015 p'up: Form Factor vote
Dear people of the Forum: as I voluntarily took this job, I'm applying the experience I've had of over fifteen years working for a production-based company, working in the supplier part, teaming-up with the sales dept.
As in all walks of life, for everything there's a very vocal minority and a very large silent majority. In most cases, the vocal minority forges the outcome, and the silent majority is not always is happy with those decisions, so they fluctuate towards the competition, although their products really being quite up to par.
Then the sales go suddenly down and the suits have no idea what hit'em, so they just blame the salesmen!
If you look at the views every thread produces, you'll always see the participants as the "tip of the iceberg", and you just don't have any way to know how the content of the thread, including misinformation, will influence the decision of potential buyers of not only p'ups, but a whole lot of music-making paraphernalia that I can't even scratch the surface by imagining!
Anyway, to the ones that are doubting every passage, the ones that think I have a personal agenda of by all means necessary push through my initial idea of the twelve-screw config, then stop talking and vote ME and MY IDEA DOWN by voting screw/slug. Not really rocket science.
For the record, a neck companion for the '59/Custom was and still is, what this is all about. But, a neck "companion" doesn't necessarily means a "neck version" of the said bridge p'up, and I thought it was a plus to give the extra flexibility of the twelve-screw config, so it'll work not only in with the usual 22-fretter, but finally a neck p'up which will also work on 24-fretters, just by reversing the p'up.
You see, I'm under the impression that most posters don't use the neck p'up much, and many, by own admission, not at all. Also, the same posters play always with gain, so they couldn't care less how a p'up will sound clean.
So, to those posters, *I*, an ex-pro with a thirty+ years of making music as a living, traveling in 46 countries and four continents, having playing most commercial music styles including polka and Vienna-waltzes, but the most extreme varieties of Metal, having recorded over 500 songs in the studio in 16 different countries in three continents, with an actual factual experience telling the statistics of playing with gain makes less than 15% of the playing of a lifetime, I'm gotta be your worst nightmare, as I represent exactly the opposite of what you stand for and live for, isn't it?.
Also, addressing those posters that said that the twelve fillister config made mushing-out the notes by using gain... as that was not my experience, I went to check-out again my notes and talked about it to someone involved in p'up design and manufacturing at the highest level, just to find out that elusive WHY:
A what I thought was a small detail that I've been doing for so long to all p'ups I have in my guitars that didn't really matter to me anymore, actually made all the difference: Once I set the screws to compensate the inherent volume difference among the strings, I CUT THE SCREWS FLUSH WITH THE BASEPLATE.
That's the answer I got from him:
I've never liked two rows of long screws in the neck. The best way I can describe it is the magnetic field is longer, so the attack is "lazy" if that makes sense. So yes, it is more likely to get soft and mushy under gain.
However, in your case, by cutting your screws short you did not experience what the others are saying, and that's exactly why you like it."
I've found an image to illustrate what's being said here: note the magnetic field's deflection towards under the baseplate caused by the screws.
There you have it, folks. That's the source of the difference of opinions, due to different results by what it seemed to be the same process, but it actually was not the same.
Let's see what the outcome of the form factor will be, this time knowing that it won't be affecting that much the possibilities of assigning any voicing, although I've been "warned" by the same person that, in his experience, in the end, the conventional screw/slug will most likely be the best of all form factor choices given to design that new killer neck p'up.
In the next few days I'll be instructing myself to be able to discuss the new p'ups "voicing" in the best possible way, also to answer the questions the might arise.
So people, stay tuned, and vote away! Nothing will be possible without voting.
Yours very truly,
