Odd Guitars and pups

[GoldenVulture]

- http://www.tedcrocker.com/ =

Tom: Why did you decide to go with three, two-string pickups for the Honeydripper guitars?
Ted: I wanted it to be a little bit different. It's almost as if Sonny had pulled out some inductive coils from a two-way radio or something that he had been working with - it's conceivable that he found something with small coils and hooked them up like that. Again, I was just trying to put myself into his mindset. I also thought that if I made just one six-string pickup it would have looked too much like a Telecaster bridge pickup. I wanted to stay away from what people recognize as a pickup today, while retaining good functional properties.
Everybody seems to love them. I'm getting orders from people who want pickups split just like that. I just shipped a guitar to a blues artist called Microwave Dave [Dave Gallaher] based in Alabama. He's an old timer, been all around the world, knows everybody and has played with everybody. He plays with a band called Microwave Dave and the Nukes. He also does a solo show where he accompanies himself as a one-man-band with a drum kit and a looping machine. He came up with an idea for me that had two output jacks - one for a regular six-string pickup with regular volume and tone controls and the other output jack for three, one-string pickups covering the three low strings, with each pickup having its own volume control. That second jack will go to an octave pedal then out through a separate bass amp.

High Freq - a guitar built by Ted Crocker for Microwave Dave. Photo by Ted Crocker.​

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This idea of pickup/string splitting seems to be catching on. I'm building another guitar along this line for Ben Prestage, a bass for Mike [Mike "Monotone" Taylor] of Big Red and the Soul Benders and another strange kind of guitar for Kirk Withrow of Buckeye.
Tom: How did you come up with the Stonehenge pickup design?
Ted: I didn't have a lot of time to order parts for the Honeydripper guitars. I could have ordered the basic single-coil pickup parts and then somehow tried to modify them so they looked sort of homemade, but with the time constraints I just started building the parts that I would need.
People seem to like them and they've become sort of my signature design. The name came from a picture I took of three of these pickups arranged in a semi-circle. It looked like Stonehenge and the name stuck.

The photo that inspired Ted Crocker to name this pickup design Stonehenge. Photo by Ted Crocker.

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[CTN]

Re: Odd Guitars and pups

cool stuff, reminds me of the Wal bass pickups design, individual coil per polepiece per string.

http://www.sgd-lutherie.com/images/WAL_pickup_inside.jpg

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Odd Guitars and pups

cool stuff, reminds me of the Wal bass pickups design, individual coil per polepiece per string.

http://www.sgd-lutherie.com/images/WAL_pickup_inside.jpg

I used to wonder about doing that [individual coils] 30 years ago.

I backtracked that link and thought these were interesting, probably because I fool around with Neodymium Pole Magnets in six string coils.

- http://www.sgd-lutherie.com/pages/ND3-35.html -

Neodymium Magnets.

The pickup feature blade pole pieces for any string spacing up to 2.75" (69.85mm). All pickups are fully shielded for noise free operation, and cast in epoxy resin for durability and to prevent feedback.

 

[DLT]

Re: Odd Guitars and pups

Cool looking guitar for someone like Bo Diddley. I wonder what Seymour would think of the pups?

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Odd Guitars and pups

Cool looking guitar for someone like Bo Diddley. I wonder what Seymour would think of the pups?

I wonder if he's experimented with similar things or other things.

I jestingly made a crack in some thread in the past about inventing the first "rotating head pickup" a modified VCR head to be used ! Hahaha!!!