"Remembering EVH" & Creation of the Axis Pickups

[jmh151]

yeah i guess there's 2 ways to look at it...like, he went from Music Man guitars/Peavey amps, to Peavey all around, to starting the EVH line of guitars and 5150 line of amps through Fender. Was it a tireless pursuit of the perfect tone, or was he just looking for whoever was willing to make him the best deal, as he could make the gear work for him because he was Eddie?

i could see it both ways, as i think the amps got better as he went on, but the guitars were never as good as the EBMM EVH models.

I have a 2000 EBMM Axis, bought new in 2000. An improvement Peavey and Fender made on the guitars was graphite reinforced necks. My EBMM, with the oil finished, birdseye maple neck, is very susceptible to environmental changes, it needed a refret years ago as the neck "fishtailed" according to my repairman.

Aside from the graphite reinforcement, the EBMM is every bit as good as my PRS and better than the Peavey and Fender reiterations.

 

[Joey Voltage]

Hello,

In the pic above, an ultra low impedance air coil has been used to excite the pickup with a sweeping signal. Its response has been captured through a classic wiring harness + cable + 1M input.

it's a well known method, popularized by Helmuth Lemme, and that various people use around the World, with variables testing rigs.

That's all I can say on a public forum.

Ah okay, I know the method you are referring to. Part of me is always wondering if there is a better way of expressing this and capturing this on a spectrum since the harmonic complexity of the instrument/strings itself is an important factor, but it seems like there would also be too many factors influencing this as well. Although maybe thinking too hard about it, as far as what the pickup itself is doing I'm sure its more than enough.

 

[freefrog]

Ah okay, I know the method you are referring to. Part of me is always wondering if there is a better way of expressing this and capturing this on a spectrum since the harmonic complexity of the instrument/strings itself is an important factor, but it seems like there would also be too many factors influencing this as well. Although maybe thinking too hard about it, as far as what the pickup itself is doing I'm sure its more than enough.

FWIW, I agree with your perspective. Reason why my archives also contain experimental results involving vibrating strings, THD measurements, impulse response captures or... harmonic spectra, precisely (from H1 to H12 or H16 for the richest results).

Resonant peaks measured with a sweeping signal are just the simplest way to "picture" the basic character of pickups: in one single screenshot, they give an idea of inductance, stray capacitance, eddy currents, coil coupling etc. They are also quick and easy to do, and stable precisely because they don't reflect nuances. IOW, their interest is somehow in their limitations.

Now, they still show important things - like the essential EQing effect of a damaged coil above.

 

[StvnMikel]

I just watched this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAWi1nfuVWc&t=1021s about the EBMM Axis pickups and read some threads on other forums about this . Maybe the Axis bridge pup is 2 of one of the coils of the Tone Zone possibly partially aired . The Tone Zone has mismatched coils and the Axis has matched coils. As stated in the article Eddie had a hard time choosing between the final 2 pups and, the one he didn't pick became the Tone Zone

 

[allstarrme]

From what I can tell the axis pickups are just 2 of the 8.65k coils from a tone zone. Probably with out the extra slugs between the poles. The neck looks to be 2 of same 7.35k coils from the air Norton.

I don’t think these were unique pickups in terms of design, dimarzio just built them as oem for several brands. I suspect the hamer guitars and the Parker fly got versions of the axis pickups as well, though I’m not sure which versions were which.

I’d be interested in trying to build a set by matching the coils, but I don’t have an axis set to compare to. I do have some of the Parker pickups though, if I could figure out which were which.

It’s to bad they aren’t more widely used, the pickups Ernie ball is using that are built in house are terrible.