Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

[trevorus]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

Permanent magnets are used for their simplicity, reliability, and lack of a power supply. Using an electro-magnet would complicate a lot of things, so in a sense of practicality, it ends up being complicated for the sake of being complicated.

 

[ACH91332]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

The more practical approach would be to make a humbucker with one coil being a hot stacked coil with the poles being magnets so it sounds like a stacked coil when split but I think this was done before and you dont see them floating around much so it must not have sounded great in series.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

And of course, you could do what most guys do, bring two guitars to a gig, and use each one on the appropriate songs. There are a number of good reasons to have a back-up guitar at a gig, this is one of them. Even if you could somehow come up with this magical PU, you should still take a second guitar to a gig.

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

If only we knew of somebody, or perhaps a group of people, that were familiar with developing guitar pickups!

 

[Zhangliqun]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

There are some makers who make one coil with alnico rods and the other with screws. That's probably your best practical solution.

 

[cortmarshall]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

I'd be happier if someone actually tried it, so i will. And yeah it was wrong for me to say he wasnt thinking and missed the point, etc. bcz usually no one understands what im trying to say anyway and i blame them for that when its rlly just me. What i meant was if by putting a voltage to a pickup coil could you get a strong enough magnetic field to pickup the strings and would the magnetized coil still turn those vibrations into something musical. If so what would it sound like and how could it be done. I know its not practical(at all) and would've been used if it wouldve been good cuz yes ik that someone else has always thought of your idea b4 you.

 

[trevorus]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

The electronic situation to remove the DC from the signal side really probably wouldn't be that complicated, maybe just using a blocking capacitor situation, but I think that alone would cause you to be quite far from the realm of regular single coil sounds, or even regular humbucker tones. The electromagnetic situation of the magnet coil will cause a very different magnetic field than a traditional pickup too, which will also take you far from the realm of traditional sound. Not saying it couldn't be a cool experiment, just don't expect a guitar sound revolution. We guitar players are a conservative lot when it comes to these sorts of changes!

 

[cortmarshall]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!! that is what i wanted. May i ask how this blocking capacitor situation would work.

 

[misterwhizzy]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

I'd be happier if someone actually tried it, so i will. And yeah it was wrong for me to say he wasnt thinking and missed the point, etc. bcz usually no one understands what im trying to say anyway and i blame them for that when its rlly just me. What i meant was if by putting a voltage to a pickup coil could you get a strong enough magnetic field to pickup the strings and would the magnetized coil still turn those vibrations into something musical. If so what would it sound like and how could it be done. I know its not practical(at all) and would've been used if it wouldve been good cuz yes ik that someone else has always thought of your idea b4 you.

Thanks for explaining your initial post. Although I had found both points to be crystal clear, I guess not everyone is able to understand well-written English as well as I am. Please continue with your enlightened commentary.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

What i meant was if by putting a voltage to a pickup coil could you get a strong enough magnetic field to pickup the strings and would the magnetized coil still turn those vibrations into something musical.

As it is now, some magnets are known for string pull and reducing sustain. To use voltage to make a stronger magnet would make that worse.

The thing that's worth experimenting with is not jacking up output, but getting richer tone quality. That should be the goal. Quality vs quantity.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

You missed the point. The main part of the thread was about an electromagnetic pickup, the only comments i got from you were criticizing me telling me i was all wrong. I don't need that. I will now go edit my post to accomodate for those that do not think.

You said - before the edit - to tell you if you were wrong. I did so politely - no criticism - and you insult me for it. Very classy.

 

[Natman]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

The blocking capacitor is inherent in the function of a capacitor, which is nothing more than 2 'plates' separated by a dielectric. Charge builds on one plate until it is strong enough to jump across the gap. This means that direct current is literally impossible due to the time involved in building up the charge (which changes with the cap value). As such, caps can pass AC but not DC. In fact, they are often used for the sole purpose of blocking DC.

Once again, the induced magnetic field would work, but it probably would not sound much different than a permanent magnet because it is the string vibrating in said field that gets amplified.

 

[trevorus]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

basically all you would be doing is putting power to a coil without a magnet to it, and feeding the output jack through a capacitor of some sort, and you'll have to mess with the value to get proper frequency response through it.

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

basically all you would be doing is putting power to a coil without a magnet to it, and feeding the output jack through a capacitor of some sort, and you'll have to mess with the value to get proper frequency response through it.

Basically that's it. Due to the level of difficulty on the construction of such a device and the cost associated with it, I'd say it's just an exercise in futility.

The wheel has been discovered... just roll with it!

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

The wheel has been discovered... just roll with it!

i was hoping someone could design a pickup that works better than "if i said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

i was hoping someone could design a pickup that works better than "if i said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

I just don't see the point of inventing a solution for a inexistant problem...

 

[cortmarshall]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

Is there anything you could do to the signal while its trapped in a DC that can't be done to a regular pickup AND might be useful?

 

[Brown Note]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

The actual design of this would be very simple as you would only need a electric magnet, which is just a hunk of iron with wire wrapped around it and probably a resistor to limit the current passing through the wire as it has close to no DC resistance. This would just replace the bar magnet under a regular humbucker.

As the power source is a battery and that can only produce pure DC, there would be no hum problems and a large cap would get rid of the DC offset from the output.

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

The actual design of this would be very simple as you would only need a electric magnet, which is just a hunk of iron with wire wrapped around it and probably a resistor to limit the current passing through the wire as it has close to no DC resistance. This would just replace the bar magnet under a regular humbucker.

As the power source is a battery and that can only produce pure DC, there would be no hum problems and a large cap would get rid of the DC offset from the output.

He wants to do this.

What i meant was if by putting a voltage to a pickup coil could you get a strong enough magnetic field to pickup the strings and would the magnetized coil still turn those vibrations into something musical.

Use the coil as a magnet at the same time. Maybe with some back EMR techniques you could pick off the sound.:dot:

 

[marvar]

Re: Reinventing the pickup. (Great title, eh?)

While most of the posts are telling you that you are trying to invent something that isn't practical, or needed, I do want to applaud you for thinking 'outside the box'
From many ideas may come one really good one!