Any guitarists/bassist or other musicians out there?

[Zerimas]

Hey y'all. I haven't been on these forums lately. I've been busy practicing guitar and generally messing about with them.

I actually put together this part-o-caster just the other day. Im calling the Kuzu (屑—means "trash", "scrap" "refuse", et cetera) Custom for the time being

Anyways, I am just curious as to whether there are any other musicians (or just people who play instruments—I play guitar but I wouldn't call myself a "musician") on this site. To me it seems like guitarists are extremely concerned with orthodoxy and generally have a hostile attitude in general. On reddit the other day I inquired as to why aren't there any SSS (traditional strat pickup layout) guitars with things like double-locking bridges and flat fingerboard radii. Well apparently that makes me stupid. Apparently you can't "shred" on a traditional strat, et cetera, blah blah blah. OK, so maybe single coil sized pickups aren't good for high-gain (which is a subjective thing to begin with), but I don't see why that precludes a SSS guitar from having double-locking bridge and a flat radius. Those features are what I prefer and I find make a guitar more comfortable and enjoyable to play. You don't need to be playing "shred" to reap the benefits of a vibrato system that stays in tune. Classical guitars have always generally had no radius to fretboard whatsoever.

The whole thing makes me grumpy because guitarists are always like "yeah there is no such thing as correct technique—play however you want", but when I look for a guitar which has features I find useful I am apparently doing everything wrong.

With respect to "Audio Science" part of this site, boy guitar companies are bad at that stuff. DiMarzio is the only company I can think of that has a standardized way of measuring the output of their pickups (the have a specific testing procedure and then they rate the output of the pickup in mV). Everyone else who makes pickups just lists the DC resistance as the output. Well DC resistance isn't output. The only way you could use it to compare the relative output of the pickups is if every pickup made by that company used the same magnets and gauge of wire for every pickup. If that were the case then, yes, the pickups with higher DC resistance would have more output.

I emailed DiMarzio and asked about their test and this what they told me:

Our published output specifications show RMS mV into a 20 Kohm resistive impedance measuring the envelope of all frequencies at 333 milliseconds after initial pick attack on the A string of a dedicated test guitar with all other strings muted, the string picked medium hard with a mechanical picker that gives repeatable results. As such, it cannot be exactly replicated outside of our facilities.

I know that guitar pickups are mostly a subjective thing, but I find that having some kind of consistent measurement of the actual output, pretty useful. Once again though it seems like my way of thinking is "wrong" considering everyone wants inconsistently wound pickups (where two of the exact same model could potentially perform differently).

Also, is there anyone who decent with CAD and has nothing better to do that could help me make a mock-up of something? I've got an idea for a locking nut with individually adjustable string heights (no one actually makes this even though people make guitars that use locking nuts in a variety of fretboard radii and the nuts they use don't always match the fingerboard), but I don't have any skills. I guess I could teach myself how to use some kind of CAD, but I feel like my prospects are not good.

 

[DonH56]

Aside from building effects boxes in high-school and college to make some extra money I don't know much about guitars. My main and only instrument is in my avatar. Well, I have a number of them in different flavors, but the trumpet family is all I know. I am not playing much now thogh did play in church last week. Work and life issues made it too hard to keep up.

 

[Zerimas]

Aside from building effects boxes in high-school and college to make some extra money I don't know much about guitars. My main and only instrument is in my avatar. Well, I have a number of them in different flavors, but the trumpet family is all I know. I am not playing much now thogh did play in church last week. Work and life issues made it too hard to keep up.

My sister played trumpet in high school. I know nothing about that general class of instruments. What I think are super cool are accordions. I'd love to get my hands on a chromatic one with a whole bunch of buttons, but they aren't cheap.

 

[audimus]

It used to be that fussing over pickups used to be a thing in the past to get that right “tone”. But with progress in the DSP based amp and speaker modelers, it has become much less of a concern/need except for orthodoxy as you put it. I fuss a lot more over my Digitech setting now than on pickup tuning and how hot or cold or humming or not.

The strings, string height and the frets (to fit your style of playing) make the most difference now to controlling the sound. And also the shape of the fretboard as you get older and your bones start to protest.

Reaction to fretboard curvature from the “shredders” depends on how low they want to hang the guitar for that “cool look”

 

[PaulD]

With respect to "Audio Science" part of this site, boy guitar companies are bad at that stuff. DiMarzio is the only company I can think of that has a standardized way of measuring the output of their pickups (the have a specific testing procedure and then they rate the output of the pickup in mV). Everyone else who makes pickups just lists the DC resistance as the output. Well DC resistance isn't output. The only way you could use it to compare the relative output of the pickups is if every pickup made by that company used the same magnets and gauge of wire for every pickup. If that were the case then, yes, the pickups with higher DC resistance would have more output.

I emailed DiMarzio and asked about their test and this what they told me:

I know that guitar pickups are mostly a subjective thing, but I find that having some kind of consistent measurement of the actual output, pretty useful. Once again though it seems like my way of thinking is "wrong" considering everyone wants inconsistently wound pickups (where two of the exact same model could potentially perform differently).

I find the DiMarzio story very interesting, at least they are attempting something repeatable! I never played electric guitar very much, but I have several good friends who do and they say the pickup variations are enormous...

I graduated on classical guitar and composition, ended up a composer for many years, now I teach mostly.

There is a difference between an instrument and a reproduction system. Instruments and the players may like distortion and any number of nonlinearities, it is only about the sound being created, there is no technical objectivity required. A reproduction system has different requirements, it needs to be transparent and faithful to the original signal (mostly, some like to add effects).

 

[Zerimas]

I find the DiMarzio story very interesting, at least they are attempting something repeatable! I never played electric guitar very much, but I have several good friends who do and they say the pickup variations are enormous...

I graduated on classical guitar and composition, ended up a composer for many years, now I teach mostly.

There is a difference between an instrument and a reproduction system. Instruments and the players may like distortion and any number of nonlinearities, it is only about the sound being created, there is no technical objectivity required. A reproduction system has different requirements, it needs to be transparent and faithful to the original signal (mostly, some like to add effects).

I used to play classical, but not really anymore. I agree with you about there being no objective requirements with respect to guitar, but that also doesn't mean that empirical evidence is totally useless (not I believe you think that, but some people probably do). The output measurements in the case of Dimarzio are an example. You can't really generalize them to other brands (apparently Dimarzio was hoping other companies would adopt it as standard), but if you are trying to select some Dimarzio pickups it is very useful. For instance the vibrations of the string at the neck are stronger than at the bridge. You therefore you (generally) want a pickup that has lower output than your bridge pickup so you don't get a huge mismatch in volume/signal strength (unless you want that). If you try and buy pickups from some other company, you have no idea how much more output one pickup they make has compared to another. Very frustrating.

Buying pickups is kind of crapshoot to begin with, but without some standard to measure output it is even more of a gamble.

And pickups do seem to vary quite a bit in terms of output and frequency response. It drives me crazy when companies like Bare Knuckle pickups go on about how their products are "scatterwound" (meaning not consistently) by hand (meaning more inconsistencies). The Bare Knuckle pickups my friend buys could measurably (and perhaps) audibly different from the ones I buy—even when they are supposed to be same model.