Is this extremely weird pickup a hoax?

[zionstrat]

Based on the extremely small amount of information in this short video this seems to show a pickup that's about the size of two humbuckers and includes 50 or more pole pieces.

https://youtu.be/FH9fbo5bjaI

​​​​​​From everything I know about pickups, this extremely wide pickup should be collecting such a broad range of overtones that it should be muddy. Add with all of those magnets, it seems like the strings should essentially be glued in place and I was expecting extremely dull mud.

But in the demo it actually seems bright.. is it possible that this is a hoax and we're simply hearing the bridge pickup instead of this funkadelic thing?

 

[beaubrummels]

I believe all the little magnets in the middle wouldn't do much. It's the magnetic disruption of the strings nearest the coil that matters. It seems like just a 10k pickup with two effective rows of possibly low gauss magnets (he didn't reveal how powerful or weak the magnets are, other than by string pull) and is large in area. He has the pickup pretty sunk down in the body at the neck end, so i suspect we're hearing mainly the 'middle' pickup end of that thing, if it's real. But it doesn't sound like what a Strat sounds like with that much string pull, so I'm suspicious of the whole thing. It just sounds like a plain Strat middle pickup to me. If it's real, he hasn't solved any real problem or innovated anything new - he just reinvented 'the middle pickup.'

 

[zionstrat]

The middle magnets having no effect makes a lot of sense. And yeah it's funny how he thought that the obvious string pull was something good

I thought of another analogy.. in some ways it's like a ridiculously large jazzmaster with a relatively small amount of coil around an extremely large space.

Of course that does nothing to make this a good pickup

 

[GuitarDoc]

I thought it sounded horrible! There was a clean-sounding tone but it had loads of muddy distorted undertones. There's no way in the world I'd buy such a monstrosity and would not even use it if it were given to me.
It was an interesting experiment for him to make that pup, but it was also a huge fail in my book. Back to the drawing board (or back to waffles for breakfast).

 

[Securb]

Agreed, interesting concept but a horrible sounding pickup. I can't bag on the prototype he might eventually get it dialed in.

 

[JamesPaul]

I thought it went off the rails at waffles
...AND BEANS!