Hans Lindauer
Member
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2011
- Messages
- 7
I am of course interested for my own knowledge, but also I believe the user would benefit greatly from a basic understanding of WHY different pickup combinations sound different, in layman's terms.
Every generator is a motor being driven by its shaft, and every speaker is a microphone being driven by a voltage. TRANSducers go both ways. When you have two pickups coils in a circuit, at any given time one may more like a generator and the other may be behaving more like an e-bow. The Moog guitar makes use of this principle of the pickup acting as a driver. Some combinations may have more sustain, some may be more damped, some may have more attack or be be more mellow.
Choosing a pickup wiring can be done "by ear" to a certain extent I'm sure, but this isn't the same as turning the knobs on a synthesizer - it's different, discrete combinations. It's more like patching together a modular. In fact, it's just like that. And until you know how the different modules affect the sound by patching them in different ways, it's very difficult to achieve a certain sound that you may be looking for by trial and error.
Placing more and more pickups in series has x effect on output level, has y effect on frequency response at different parts of the spectrum, has z effect on sustain.
The further apart two pickups in parallel/series are, ...
Two pickups wired out of phase in series will tend to affect the low end...
etc.
Except for physicists, I don't think anybody really cares too much or has a use for how the magnetic flux is changing in response to the string's motion, or what the transfer function looks like. But I think there are plenty of rules of thumb to be had here, otherwise we're looking at the Million Monkeys principle. So now I have to ask: are we men or are we apes?
Every generator is a motor being driven by its shaft, and every speaker is a microphone being driven by a voltage. TRANSducers go both ways. When you have two pickups coils in a circuit, at any given time one may more like a generator and the other may be behaving more like an e-bow. The Moog guitar makes use of this principle of the pickup acting as a driver. Some combinations may have more sustain, some may be more damped, some may have more attack or be be more mellow.
Choosing a pickup wiring can be done "by ear" to a certain extent I'm sure, but this isn't the same as turning the knobs on a synthesizer - it's different, discrete combinations. It's more like patching together a modular. In fact, it's just like that. And until you know how the different modules affect the sound by patching them in different ways, it's very difficult to achieve a certain sound that you may be looking for by trial and error.
Placing more and more pickups in series has x effect on output level, has y effect on frequency response at different parts of the spectrum, has z effect on sustain.
The further apart two pickups in parallel/series are, ...
Two pickups wired out of phase in series will tend to affect the low end...
etc.
Except for physicists, I don't think anybody really cares too much or has a use for how the magnetic flux is changing in response to the string's motion, or what the transfer function looks like. But I think there are plenty of rules of thumb to be had here, otherwise we're looking at the Million Monkeys principle. So now I have to ask: are we men or are we apes?
