Re: Nickel Silver vs. Brass
I can believe you discovered interesting things at Fluence, but you're also unwilling to publish findings, and if you don't have the findings, then the next question becomes, how comprehensive was a process that was not somehow documented?
We've touched on this kind of stuff before. Companies aren't obligated to disclose their research. They
sell products that benefit from their R&D process. I have confidentiality agreements with more than one pickup maker. Just because the information does not belong to you doesn't mean the experiential conclusions I share are invalid.
Adding gain is an extraneous variable. If you want to say "you will hear the difference when a particular gain profile is applied, but not with clean settings", that's perfectly fine, and with that qualifier it may be a true statement. But given that that clipping is non-linear by definition, who is to say you will hear the difference with gain, in general?
Um...Me? I mean I can't predict whether YOU will hear differences under gain, I'm not you. Peavey Bandit? Roland Micro-Cube? Rockman X100? Maybe not. I can only lead you to the playing situations and rigs in which one of these small differences might make your playing experience more enjoyable, or make it easier for you to get certain sounds, harmonics, etc.
Not all DiMarzio's have brass base plates, so that just doesn't seem like a useful premise to begin with. IMO, the perceived difference could owe to marketing alone, but there are other common differences. Many, possibly most, DiMarzio humbuckers make good on two of their patents 1) the inclusion of permeable slugs in the bobbins, increasing inductance while not also increasing capacitance, 2) their "air bucker technology" which mixes the metallurgic properties of AlNiCo 5 with the lower flux density of AlNiCo 2, 3 or 4, and ditches the keeper bar. It's not just the "Air Classic" that is an "air bucker", it's many of their pickups.
Right. I'm very familiar with Dimarzio's line up over the years, and which pickups utilize which patents. Both of the patents you've cited are indeed part of the reason someone may develop an overarching opinion that Dimarzios have a certain sound vs Duncans. But that's not what I'm referring to. There is an element to the pick attack that is associated with the Airbucker technique. It's in the attack and the early envelope, independent of whether the baseplate is brass or nickel silver. And yeah,
today Dimarzio has some non-brass baseplates, but for the better part of 3 decades they were pretty much exclusively brass. So most of those threads I'm talking about that go back over 2 decades of forum geekdom were about a brass-only Dimarzio era, and/or are still referring to a predominantly brass sampling.
You know, certain things about a race car only manifest themselves out on the track at competition speeds. And sometimes test equipment can't get a read on what the driver is telling you out on the track. I've told the Yngwie stories a few times. It's not about brass baseplates, but it does relate to being able to scope something out. There were times during the development process where Yngwie gave us some feedback, and no matter how hard we looked we could not justify what he was saying. Finally, one time I was at his house/studio (sorry not tying to name drop but it is what it is) and lo and behold...His speaker cabinets were tucked away in a cellar, mic'd up, feeding back up to his studio, where the mics went through their own compressors, and he listened to the entire signal chain at quite a reasonable volume. But those speaker cabinets were absolutely SCREAMING. His Marshalls were dimed, his DOD pedal was dimed (gain and level) and the rig was off the rails. At that moment...you could plug in two things that you and I may never perceive as different from one another, and the differences were clear as day. So for that part of the R&D process, I had to come back to the shop and duplicate the setup, albeit with our 50 watt Marshall half stack LOL. But it was only THEN that I could understand what he was getting at. Oh and I also had to pick extremely fast and toggle between hammer-on runs and pick attack, in part to exacerbate what the speaker cone/motor was doing. Thing is, if you were in the room with the 4x12 you would have been deafened. Your ears would go into protection mode and these sonic differences would not be relatable. But this is how he got his sustain, his pick attack, his violin-like early envelopes...Everything was part of the process. So yes part of it was his uncanny ability to hear the smallest little speck of dust, but part of it was the degree of magnification involved.
When you say that "most people can't hear" <insert study results here> you might be leaving out the ear-brain's ability to key in on specific things once they are identified. A mother can hear her own child in a crowded shopping mall. A race car driver can hear that little rattle just before something needs to be replaced. Our kids can hear the slightest scrape of an ice cream tub being opened clear on the other side of the house. All these things can be less than a 1dB change, and many times they are way below the noise floor of the situation. This 1dB thing you're so hung up on...You gotta let it go man.
And the crowd... they know nothing! 
But changing strings from 6 month old ones, to new ones, will have a bigger influence on tone!
