Very interesting articles about pickups

LtKojak

LtKojak

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https://lawingmusicalproducts.com/dr-lawings-blog/

From the website: "Dr. A. Scott Lawing is the inventor of Zexcoil pickup technology and the technical driving force behind LMP. Scott has been a guitar player for over 30 years. He is also an engineer with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and numerous technical papers, patents and presentations to his credit."

To curious and knowledge-hungry people only. Nerds and Geeks are more than welcome! ;)

Good read, everybody!
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

UMMMMMMM do ya thing the regular pickup on the guitar was magnetizing the pole pieces and strings of the non magnet pickup sitting right on top????!?!??!? You betcha!!!! Funny how companies will throw a bunch of so called science to justify the product. The strings were magnetized buy the standard pickup in the guitar so of course the pickup without magnets worked. When I first saw the video of him putting that pickup over the magnetized one, I said SCAM.

What is strange, what he says is true but words it if it was a new concept. Where is the video and sound samples of his non mag pickups in guitars.
 
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Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

This is a great article, and I'm grateful that he took the time to make it. He probably should have also left out the pole pieces of the magnetless coil, but it's still an effective demonstration.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

thanaton said:
This is a great article, and I'm grateful that he took the time to make it. He probably should have also left out the pole pieces of the magnetless coil, but it's still an effective demonstration.
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He should have had no magnetized pickup near the other one at all. The pickup in the guitar is providing the magnetic field for the non magnetic pickup. The video proves nothing. You can definitely here a level difference, yet it doesn't show up on his chart.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

baron55 said:
UMMMMMMM do ya thing the regular pickup on the guitar was magnetizing the pole pieces of the non magnet pickup sitting right on top????!?!??!? You betcha!!!! Funny how companies will throw a bunch of so called science to justify the product.
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point #1, he shows that the output is identical for both pickups, magnet and no magnet. If what you're suggesting were true, the magnetless coil would be a lot quieter, because being some distance away, it would receive a fraction of the flux that is had by the pickup that has a magnet directly attached. The fact that both pickups showed the same amplitude proves that both derive an amplitude related to the magnetic field of the string, and not the attached magnet.

point #2, none of this is about justifying his product.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

baron55 said:
He should have had no magnetized pickup near the other one at all. The pickup in the guitar is providing the magnetic field for the non magnetic pickup. The video proves nothing. You can definitely here a level difference, yet it doesn't show up on his chart.
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You have to magnetize the string somehow. You can't entirely omit a magnet. Again, if what you're thinking is true, were true, the second pickup would be much quieter, not just a little, because magnetic strength drops off dramatically. Hold a pickup one inch away from the strings and you will see that it is not powerful enough at such a distance to produce those levels out output.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

There was actually a product on the market a long time ago, where you would magnetize the string with a magnet that came with the pickup. The pickup had no magnet in it, but just the residual magnetism in the string alone was enough to get sound. That pickup would not have worked at all if the magentic interaction was not string centric. https://books.google.com/books?id=h...onepage&q="String Vision" guitar wand&f=false
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

thanaton said:
point #1, he shows that the output is identical for both pickups, magnet and no magnet. If what you're suggesting were true, the magnetless coil would be a lot quieter, because being some distance away, it would receive a fraction of the flux that is had by the pickup that has a magnet directly attached. The fact that both pickups showed the same amplitude proves that both derive an amplitude related to the magnetic field of the string, and not the attached magnet.

point #2, none of this is about justifying his product.
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Wong! the pickup without the magnets was MAGNETIZED BY THE OTHER PICKUP
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

thanaton said:
You have to magnetize the string somehow. You can't entirely omit a magnet. Again, if what you're thinking is true, were true, the second pickup would be much quieter, not just a little, because magnetic strength drops off dramatically. Hold a pickup one inch away from the strings and you will see that it is not powerful enough at such a distance to produce those levels out output.
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The non magnet pickup had much larger pole pieces and larger coil winds on each individual pole to make up for the weaker interacting magnetic field from the other pickup. That is why they sounded the same. A real comparison would be to drop the non magnetic pickup in the guitar by it self then do the comparison, but then it wouldn't work the same......
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

baron55 said:
Wong! the pickup without the magnets was MAGNETIZED BY THE OTHER PICKUP
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Like I said, the permanent magnet is extremely close to the pickup it's in, and far away from the pickup it is not in. The difference in output would not even be close this were true.

Why are you arguing this point so passionately anyway? Do you want Zexcoil to be wrong?
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

baron55 said:
The non magnet pickup had much larger pole pieces and larger coil winds on each individual pole to make up for the weaker interacting magnetic field from the other pickup. That is why they sounded the same. A real comparison would be to drop the non magnetic pickup in the guitar by it self then do the comparison, but then it wouldn't work the same......
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Another way to conduct this experiment which I've tried, and is super easy if you have an uncovered humbucker; plug in and see how loud it is. Then take the pickup out, slide out the AlNiCo bar, put the pickup back in the guitar with no magnet. Now strum the strings, holding the magnet over the strings and above the pickup. It will be just as loud if not louder as you bring the magnet over the strings.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

thanaton said:
Another way to conduct this experiment which I've tried, and is super easy if you have an uncovered humbucker; plug in and see how loud it is. Then take the pickup out, slide out the AlNiCo bar, put the pickup back in the guitar with no magnet. Now strum the strings, holding the magnet over the strings and above the pickup. It will be just as loud if not louder as you bring the magnet over the strings.
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That is true, but isn't the claim they are making is that you don't need magnets for pickups, that is what I am disagreeing about.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

baron55 said:
That is true, but isn't the claim they are making is that you don't need magnets for pickups, that is what I am disagreeing about.
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In other way of looking at is that if the string could be a magnet all by itself, like if you somehow had AlNiCo 5 strings, it would work fine without the magnet.

The reason any of this is important is because a lot of people think of this whole magnetic field as moving:

HB%20mixed%20mag.gif


which can give you the impression that the bottom of the coil matters as much, if not more so, than the top of the coil with respect to induction, but the truth that Zexcoil is touching on that this magnetic circuit as depicted is largely irrelevant, that all that matters is how much magnetism ultimately is seen by the guitar string.

In order for that magnetic field depicted above to move, the steel parts and the magnet must move. Since they hold extremely still, so too does that field, and when it does move due to loose fitting, you often get microphonic feedback, hence wax potting.

That being said, all the steel and magnetic parts still alter the inductance of the pickup, but that's sort of a separate issue from what Zexcoil is talking about.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

This is my point, yes the strings act as magnets because they are magnetized. The reason his pickup without magnets sounds the same or similar is because it has over sized pole pieces and more coil winds to compensate for the weaker magnetic field away from the magnetized pickup.

If he took a copy of the pickup in the guitar and pulled the magnet, and put it over the top like he did with his, the output would be much lower.

My point is that what he is saying is nothing new but is trying to put it in a way to show that he "discovered" something for marketing purposes. There have been many examples of pickups made like his over the years, nothing new just seems new.

There can also be an argument that the non magnetic pickup also has a induced magnetic field because the pole pieces are ferromagnetic.

When you do tests in engineering and science, you have to remove any interfering variables that could effect results. His own pickups have magnets, and doing the test without magnets in one of the pickups is pure marketing to show you he is a genius.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

I think what might clear things up a little is if he'd used non-magnetic stainless for the pole pieces in the non-magnetized pickup. I mean, leaving them as air coils with no pole pieces at all would not have tracked with most common viewers' perception. The output would be different, and they wouldn't know what to make of it. I'm also assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that his magnetized coil is done so in his alternating polarity orientation, rather than six north or six south.
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

I guess what is funny about all this is this. His pickups use pole pieces as magnets, with coils wrapped around them. Other pickups uses coil pieces that are not magnets (but become magnets when a magnet is placed under them) and then wire is wrapped around them. Kind of the same concept. The only difference, is that his video makes is seem like something new, when it is not. I guess you could have different magnetic types for the pole pieces in his design, but it would be prohibitively expensive on the large scale.

His point was that he assumes that we all believe that the mag field of the pickup being disturbed drives the signal, and may some do, but I knew about the strings being magnetized.

I guess the video go me annoyed as it reminded me about the other video out there about the scientist/Engineer who proved that guitar wood type, etc made no difference on tone on electric guitars. (I guess if the strings went attached;) Kind of like a scientists showing us that rain is exactly the same as water:)
 
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Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

baron55 said:
I guess what is funny about all this is this. His pickups use pole pieces as magnets, with coils wrapped around them. Other pickups uses coil pieces that are not magnets (but become magnets when a magnet is placed under them) and then wire is wrapped around them. Kind of the same concept. The only difference, is that his video makes is seem like something new, when it is not. I guess you could have different magnetic types for the pole pieces in his design, but it would be prohibitively expensive on the large scale.
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He's only using his pickup as a demonstration, I don't think the point of this articles was to say there is something special about Zexcoils. He could have used any pickup that undermounts the magnet.

I don't really know what makes a Zecoil so much different/better than a Fender Split Coil, you just have six little coils instead of two big ones.

He said he was working on these articles a year or two ago, and I wasn't sure if it would happen. I'm glad to see he came through. I think this is the first video I've seen someone make demonstrating a magnetless pickup.
 
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Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

Couple of questions I don't understand in that Zexcoil concept:

1) "He's pickups use pole pieces as magnets". Isn't this how all strat-type single coils work (aside some cheap ones), what's the new thing here? That there's separate coil for each magnetic pole?

2) How these are supposed to be "magnetless" if there's magnetized pole pieces on his pickups? If there is, what was the whole point of demonstrating that fluctuation comes from magnetized strings? And if there isn't, where the magnetic field for the strings come from?
 
Re: Very interesting articles about pickups

Someone must have misspoke. The poles are not magnets, they are metal pieces. Two magnets are mounted below, you can see them here. It also appears that they are neo's.

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