A DIY Tunable Pickup: Any sound, one pickup

[@gregorymartzevitch222]

It's so freaking weird!! When I was 16-17 age old , I was building the same coil pickups for guitars! I am 65 years old now and like that stuff! We didn't have neodymium magnets back there in USSR. Everything was bulky, and huge , and it didn't look fancy but it was working and we were happy. Today, I am leaving in USA and I can see on youtube people are doing the same things I was doing 50 years ago! Isn't it weird?

[@JIMISTONED]

Its the spirit I guess

[@lukejohnston5566]

One of the greatest parts of humanity's musical heritage is the ingenuity of improvised musical instruments. Cool to hear you were tinkering and inventing despite having limited materials.

[@timointrouble]

I think you got it backwards. We were inventing and tinkering BECAUSE we had limited materials/access to knowledge

[@threepe0]

Neodymium isn’t common at all in pickups.

[@ronaldelliott4373]

You’re an Analog kid in a digital world Gregory. Welcome to the club! 🤫

[@arknowledge7525]

Superb analysis! At Cal Poly, we had to deliver a technical presentation to our EE peers. I opted to reverse engineer MXR’s graphic EQ pedal. That’s when I discovered the gyrator circuit synthesizing an inductor with an active circuit. These days I’m toying with a USB stereo codec inside my Strat, so some of your tone & cable elements disappear into the codec’s high input impedance. I get massive voice changes by transmitting MIDI commands to laptop software. My processor has enough DSP resources to create biquads, FIR & other filter topologies before the signal even leaves the instrument.

[@TylrVncnt]

Hey your USB system sounds very intriguing! I looked up your channel but since it was published on “KZbin for kids” it does not allow comments to be made. You should make some more in depth videos! Also maybe invest in a cheap audio interface and mic up the amp instead of using the camera mic, it will show off your guitar system much much better Cheers

[@bruisedpodcast]

What degree/ courses are you taking to learn that? Im interested in taking some classes myself

[@larrysteinke1839]

it's good to see a scientific analysis of guitar pickup sound as opposed to magical mythical mojo marketing mumbo jumbo. besides noise rejection and output levels, I'm sure most of the perceived differences in pickups are due to it's frequency response and how it's impedance affects downstream electronics. i'm sure descriptions like warmth, brightness, muddy, clarity, note definition etc., are all just down to frequency response. Also, I suspect the perceived compression of active pickups is not actually due to the signal being compressed in the pickup but rather in downstream circuits due to the higher signal levels and lower impedance of the pickup.

[@martinkrauser4029]

"warmth" and "brightness" are used by audio technicians to mean frequency response and nothing else. The players, on the other hand ...

[@farkasgabor3491]

Many pickups have mid scoop effect also ( coming from an internal low pass with lower cut off fr. point than the resonant freq.) caused by the eddy current effect of the conductive metals inside. Your spectral shaping approach ignores it.

[@awetisimgaming7473]

I just bought my first guitar, and I was about to buy fishman fluence pickups, and I'm glad you saved me the money if I manage to figure this out. Thanks a crapton my man!

[@RedHeadGuitar]

That's in the direction what FIshman is doing with their Fluence pickups. The stacked-pcb-style coils have FAR less windings than traditional humbuckers, so the response curve is flatter and needs a preamp to sound decent. But that allows all the benefits you are describing here. Brilliant video, thank you!

[@Patrick-857]

DSP based preamps with super low impedance pickups are coming I think. Basically an IR loader, but for pickups built into your guitar. Using the same technology as IRs, you could theoretically capture all of the nuances of a particular pickup, as well as possibly simulate different positions along the string. It would account for everything that effects pickup tone, as well as volume and tone pots and caps.

[@soundknight]

Wow, that sounds quite accurate, the single coils sound the most accurate. Thank you for sharing

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!

[@lqr824]

My Alembic bass has a similar setup: the pickups have super-low windings and resistance so probably clean up past 10kHz or something. But the active preamp, instead of the treble/middle/bass controls of a Musicman Stingray or most other basses, instead has a cutoff knob (-12dB/oct as you say is typical) and a resonant peak switch, I believe wired for 0, +4 and +8dB. I see your tests show peaks of 3, 6, and 9dB. so it's pretty ball-park. Now, intellectually, I know this should be able to about simulate any bass pickup, with any tone settings, and any length cable. But it's been pretty hard to get used to and in the past I've always preferred the tone of the Stingray and the passive Fenders. But I finally discovered after ten years that I've been changing only the battery for the fret marker lights, and the preamp battery is under the knob electronics access panel! Replaced that--only 10 years past its expiration date--and the thing's a real spunky monkey now.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Gotta love those little gotcha's! I've had things like that happen more than I care to admit :)

[@0richbike]

Stupid bass AND stupid battery;-)

[@lqr824]

@@0richbike more like stupid player and stupid battery. The actual bass is very very good.

[@electronicaudioexperiments]

Very nicely done! Great entry point not just for people experimenting with pickups, but also for people learning about how active filters work.

[@1TyredFunGuy]

Nice background setup. thats gotta be one of the most visually eclectic collections of guitars around.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Save for the PRS, all the guitars on the wall are my own designs that I build myself. I'm glad you like them!

[@Talisk3r]

Great Job! the audio demo was good enough to convince me that you have actual good ears and that your circuit works.

[@Tboyhoot777]

Any serious guitar player would want this after hearing it!! FANTASTIC and something I never even thought of as a muscian. Each one should sell for several hundered dollars each from the audio.

[@Arfonfree]

Thank you for your work. I'd figured out about the first 5 minutes of the video on my own, but what a shortcut to get somewhere useful! Not only am I a new subscriber, but this video is getting bookmarked.

[@jackwickman2403]

I would like to commend you on the excellence of your channel and the really impressive chat community that you have brought together in your comments section. So many chats are a bunch of simpletons with strong opinions jabbering about things they don't begin to understand. This chat page has more people with real technical comprehension of the subject being discussed than any other group that I have found. I am learning a lot here and I thank you and your commenters for that. Very impressive. Please continue. I'll be back.

[@DavidRavenMoon]

So this is basically like the Alembic system. They figured you make a flat response low impedance coil, and pair it with a variable low pass filter with adjustable Q. Then you can simulate the response of high Z pickups. And I’ve made bass pickups like this back in 2010. Some people think EMG are low Z coils, but they are regular high Z pickups with a differential buffer preamp. The Fishman pickups are actual low Z pickups.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

You are correct on all fronts. This is not a new concept, as Les Paul experimented with stuff like this on his recording guitar back in the 50's. What I am doing is providing files, schematics, and education for other DIY'ers to make their own. Thanks for watching!

[@CeresKLee]

Does it resemble the one in the Epiphone Jack Casady bass?

[@terryenglish7132]

Just a note for any unfamiliar w EMGs. Their unique sound is mainly due to the 2 coils having different resonances , as well as not interacting w each other since each goes thru its own opamp. They are also wound the same direction and both connected w coil start grounded. A normal HB is wound the same direction for both coils, but connected backwards, one start to finish, one finish to start. Connecting a coil finish to start makes it very slightly muddier.

[@DavidRavenMoon]

@@terryenglish7132 EMGs are regular high impedance pickups connected to one op amp acting as a differential amp. One end of both coils is connected to ground. The other ends go to the + and - inputs on the op amp. This helps cancel common mode noise. Humbuckers must have the two coils electrically out of phase. Because humbuckers are wound in the same direction, you wire them reverse polarity (start to start or finish to finish). If you wire them electrically in phase, i.e.m start to finish, they will sound out off phase and very thin. Not muddy. The reason the two coils are out of phase is the reverse magnetic polarity.

[@zapp442]

This is brilliant and exactly what I needed for me to understand how I could make en tone controle like the already mentioned Alembic.

[@giulioluzzardi7632]

Like the "can do" spirit and thanks for sharing. It would be great to hear how a ge7 (graphic eq pedal) compares in scope with your pickup. Years ago I ripped a variable capacitor from a portable radio and wired it in to the tone pot of a Strat( the tuning part of the radio) to see how the frequencies reacted , it sounded like a really bad wah wah pedal! Try it though, it's a lauugh. Your pickup sounds great!!

[@transcendkira]

I think i now understand the one portion of a circuit Crimson Guitars showed off in a recent video on a custom they made. I dont think they used the same model as you but explaining the tuning functions at the start of the video made it click. Theres likely a number of ways to achieve this, even just utilising pedal eqs after active electronics being the most accessible (though often not accurate to voicings.)

[@delusionwalker8852]

Wow simply mind blown !!!!! Thank you for making this video and in general your channel.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Thanks for watching!

[@AxesXplained]

Yup nailed it: decades of proprietary hoodoo from EMG and the like debunked. Also, the sound shaping actually really works! I would suggest not having the magnetic flux too high to avoid damping the actual guitar strings, or getting wolf tones.

[@dubhdavidblack2094]

Great stuff man! Thanks for being so generous with your time and energy 🤘🤘🤘

[@deanallen927]

I have a bunch of guitars with a lot of different pickups, and I play a lot of gigs. Lately I've been using one kind of pickup in two different guitars for Country, Rock, Americana and Folk. A MIM Tele and a '78 neck-thru Ibanez Musician. The DiMarzio Super Distortion in both. Of course I use Strats for Hendrix, but the SD is simply a pickup for all occasions. No coil splitting of any kind, and I don't use channel switching amps. This is an excellent video, and I will be trying my hand at making some pickups with this as a resource. Thanks!

[@PeterGaspar-vm4cb]

Just something I'd like to mention that Strats and Teles almost always have 250k pots for volume and tone and the tone capacitor most of the time is a 47n cap. Longer and cheaper cables can have higher capacitances too which also changes things in your simulation. Other than that it's a cool video.

[@CyberChrist]

You should talk with Glenn Fricker from SpectreSoundStudios, as this is the sort of thing which would interest him ;)

[@artysanmobile]

You’ve done a great job quantifying the parts of the network making our playing tone.

[@FuriousMess]

Very interesting and extremely cool video. Bill Lawrence is smiling down upon you. Keep at it you are onto something very significant 🎉

[@gergemall]

Very cool stuff

[@konradkoeppe2840]

Bill was so far ahead most still don't understand.........

[@sesa2984]

Thanks for playing clean sounds, I dislike when people only use overdrive to example tone. But now, I'm curious about the overdrive tone

[@MrNamePerson]

Agree!

[@artysanmobile]

The clean tone tells the story of what is possible with enhancement. If I can hear only one sound to choose a guitar or amp, it is the clean sound.

[@firebald2915]

​@artysanmobile It's refreshing to hear the guitars voice on clean instead of choking it out with distortion pedals. Enriching the clean tone will enhance your OD and Distortion, Fuzz, etc.. Your Best Pedal to own is an EQ. Want more push into an amp... use a DI. Inexpensive pedal from Behringer Acoustic ADI 21. That's my rig for my Tele and the clean sound is so Rich. Plus, lower your pickups and free those strings.

[@artysanmobile]

@@firebald2915 Maybe so. I can learn so much about something by hearing its clean tone, whether speaker, amp, guitar, etc, just from experience.

[@jjcale2288]

With this you opened for me a fresh can of worms, now I go fishing. Yeah, in my junk boxes, for some thick magnet wire, neodymium magnets and some old school low noise transistors. I think I will make a common base input stage followed by common collector buffer. I love to work on low impedance as much as I hate high impedance. It all boils down to noise susceptibility. Nevertheless I'll probably try a small audio transformer. Thank you for these new horizons, very well done!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Thanks for watching!

[@ke4uyp]

Question, have you done a frequency response chart on the step up transformer? Does it have any attenuations either? On the low frequency or high frequency end. ​@@thescientificguitarist4228

[@stickman393]

Similar to the low-impedance pickups in the Les Paul Recording guitar, if I recall correctly. Interesting stuff, thanks!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Yep, same idea, I'm just proliferating the idea so that others can build their own.

[@8nexus8]

Im definitely gonna try this circuit and build a universal pickup nyself using your video, awesome stuff! Much appreciated 👍

[@squidcaps4308]

The best sound i got out of my guitar, basic humbucker and single coil was with straight wires to a buffer in the guitar. Too bad it is a bit too cumbersome, and i got tired of batteries running out and not having volume pot, but the dynamic range it got.. and the way the high end frequencies came out. Definitely recommend to try it.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Use a 5V power bank with 5V to 9V step up cable and you can run a buffer for almost forever...Expose the charging port to the outside of the guitar and you just recharge it like any other electronic device.

[@squidcaps4308]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 I came to similar conclusion except using 9V power supply since it gives better Vpp ,but charging that power supply with 5V usb, and then step up. 5V power supply is not that great from circuit design point of view, things are SO much easier when you got at least 7.5V Vpp. That is +-3.25V. With 9V, after all the drop off from battery voltage dropping is accounted for, that is +-4V, enough to run 5532s, which i just fucking love. 5V dropping pushes things way too close to +-1.5, and now you are in trouble, since i wanted this to feed into line inputs directly, to further optimize the signal path. With line inputs, you are looking at one capacitor and a unity gain high impedance buffers.. .Get the signal level as high as you need as close to the source as you can, is my mantra.

[@roadtonever]

​@@thescientificguitarist4228That power solution sounds fabulous.

[@michaelkonings1781]

this is fantastic! In order to "convince" the non-believers, please prepare a demo where the output of the different variants is compensated for, so it matches the "real" pickup loudness. Our brain can easily be tricked , louder seems always better. So a loud overwound HB (in comparison) sounds more impressive, although it is actually taking away so much tonal information. Your demo shows all sounds at the same loudness, which is fair and correct. I guess that's the reason why cheap guitars have loud , mostly ceramic magnet pickups, with a actually very dull sound. They sound great with distortion at first glance, but dont have the clarity of classic pickups. Thank you!

[@lqr824]

8:00 NOTE: the blue line is invisible to me even at maximum screen throughput. Personally I check out how my video was compressed by KZbin as soon as I upload it to catch things like this, and if it's not clear, I fix it and upload it again.

[@RachelsSweetie]

What blue line? :)

[@roadtonever]

My favorite pickups to base on for tuning with a selection of capacitors is Wilde Microcoil.

[@WayKAMM]

Tx for this treasure trove man! You're awesome! 👌

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@jeffro.]

I love the way you've taken a scientific approach to this, a man after my own heart! This looks very tempting to try. I may be interested in learning more and trying it myself, maybe down the road a bit. For now, i know i like P90 pups. I want to get a Strat type guitar with P90s at the bridge & neck, with a standard strat type pup in the middle (maybe, maybe not... If there's space for it!). Those P90s will give me the tones I crave for now! But, i have 'scribed to your channel, and i will certainly follow your adventure! I'm also interested in watching the videos where you talk about uControllers, cuz I'm into them, for sure. I like to use them for all kinds of things, and as soon as i can get to it, I'm gonna use a Pi Pico to make a MIDI pedal. I'll see what other things your guys do. I thought of using DSP chips to make harnonizing voices and things like that. Tone doublers, you name it! 🤪 👍👍👍

[@hannuhanhi183]

Nice work !. When I first saw the impedance of the pickup and the schematic of the filter, I thought that would not work. The signal from the pickup is way too small to be amplified by a unity gain buffer and using higher gain would introduce too much noise to be useful. Then you showed the transformer. That would solve the problem. Thank you for showing the mini transformer. I wish there would be even smaller ones to be fitted in the backside of the pickup. Your pickups look cool on the guitar too.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

My humbucker sized driver/pickup actually has the transformer under the pickup cover. You can even put the active electronics there, but that makes tuning the response more of a pain.

[@larryjeffryes6168]

Great stuff!!! Now how to make the nearest thing to a FRFR pickup?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Without the shaping circuit, the pickup is an FRFR.

[@jjr0987]

I think a cool project would be to do both this and the sustainer in a single humbucker sized pickup since they're both single coil sized. Been thinking about trying this out for a 7 string.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

You can actually use the same coils for both duty. That is actually how this all originated. It's a pickup when the sustainer is off and it's the sustainer driver when on.

[@mrsaizo0000]

Ok, this is great! But I already got my Fishman Fluence pickups. However, since I'm interested in electronics, even guitar electronics - I would like to test this out..

[@brjplummer9415]

Funtastic ! Thanks for all that.

[@willhaylock3769]

Good to see some objective and quantitative understanding - well done, there is so much BS in the guitar world. My only comment is that the pick-up model is a 'lumped' LCR model, I wonder what difference a distributeded model would make, I suspect not a lot but it would not be easy to model.

[@dougsmith6793]

Excellent. Great job!

[@1000BrokenKeys]

fantastic video

[@Eugensson]

Important to note that humber due to having to coils picking up different vibrations from the same string will inheritely have different sound due to phase cancellation of some string harmonics (that depends on the coil width, distance between coils, pickup position and the place you fret the string).

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Yep, this is true. Other constructions can be done as well, such as a single coil with a dummy coil for hum rejection, or many other kinds. I went with this construction because it was the construction I was already using for sustainer drivers.

[@markosad667]

So, a Humbucker has a phase cancellation of some harmonics, but with the high freq roll off of the active filter don't you get the same result?

[@lqr824]

My understanding is that 90% of the humbucker "feel" is just due to the cutoff and resonant peak moving. Only a tiny bit is due to the two coils getting slightly different harmonics. The two coils are right next to each other, and there usually won't be much audible cancellation of given frequencies. I think the biggest thing is that if, on a given note, one coil is right where a given harmonic wouldn't move the string at all, the other coil will "hear" that harmonic a bit, giving less noticeable gaps. That said I don't think this is detectible in real-world music. Just as an example, say the string is 24" long, and the pickup is 6" from the bridge. At that point, the pickup cannot hear the 4th harmonic at all. If it's a humbucker with a second coil 5.5" from the bridge, that would pick up the the 4th harmonic a bit. Picture the first harmonic (fundamental) as the string's shape, if you froze it in a strobe light, forming the first half of a sine wave at maximum swing. It then snaps back and reverses. The second harmonic then is shaped like a full sine wave, with half the string swinging one way, the center at 12" exactly still, then the other half swinging the other way. Third harmonic has two points it's still (at 8" and 16" on this example note) while the fourth is still at 6" 12" 18". And since it doesn't move the string at 6" we don't hear it. But it's moving a bit at 5.5" so a second coil of a humbucker WOULD hear it. Back to your question: if you turn on bridge and neck pickups, then it is much more likely they'll get some of the higher harmonics out of phase and cancel, since they're a lot farther apart.

[@lqr824]

I think VERY little of such phase cancelling as even the higher harmonics won't typically be reversing phase over such a short distance. Some yes of course.

[@terryenglish7132]

​@@lqr824The 17th harmonic is completely cancelled using a HB on a Fender scale. Thats only 5,000 hz on a high E. I have a swimming pool routed Strat for testing p ups. Even moving a p up 1/4 inch can be slightly to very noticeable in how it changes the tone. So, yeah, you do hear the phase/harmonics cancelation, its just not as noticable as, say 2 Strat p ups out of phase.

[@monstrok]

Curious why you didn't test the industry standard of 250k ohm pots for R6 and R14 on the single coil pickup diagrams/simulations? The 250k is what Fender, probably the most prolific single-coil user, installs in their S and T type guitars. It looks like you wanted to maintain consistency in the guitar's circuits but this is an atypical setup for the single coil circuits because of the severe treble response in the audible tone (ex. coil splitting on a Les Paul thru their 500k pots yields a trebly and brittle signal that doesn't sound much like a Strat).

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

After doing the simulation, I realized the difference in values. I then looked at what would happen with the 250k value instead and, for the purposes of this simulation, made a negligible impact due to the the fact that the volume and tone are all the way up.

[@monstrok]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 Thanks for the reply!

[@mickkithanu355]

some tiny oversights in your simulations - pots values change from HB to SC (500k, vs 250k, and active is a low 25k), as does the tone capacitor value .22 or .01 for some, .47 for others, depending on maker/objective. Discovered this issue when i got an active pickup guitar but it had fender style tone cap, which really "deadened" its sound, until i swapped it for the active orientated capacitor

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The simulations show only with tone and volume all the way up, in which case the loading of a 250k vs a 500k on a single coil is negligible in the output response.

[@terrylast7034]

All good work and well presented but I was hoping for a passive circuit design. Not your fault. Cheers T

[@quaxBK]

Very cool project! Curious what the output impedance of this circuit would be - the frequency response is the same as the pickup you're trying to emulate, but how will it behave when driving a fuzzface, where the pickup loads the circuit? It won't have the same output impedance as the equivalent passive pickup, right? It'd also be cool to experiment with putting a codec and a microcontroller in there and do all the filters digitally - could probably even record impulse responses from real pickups and then load them into a convolution engine running on the microcontroller. Something like a RPi Zero should be powerful enough for that!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The output impedance is quite low, so vintage fuzzes won't play nicely with it. Doing the filtering digitally is very doable, but digital is not always better. I've done real time audio filtering professionally for over 10 years and while it can do amazing things, there are other things that analog is preferable for. I like an analog shaping circuit because 1) it is lower barrier to entry for DIY'ers (which is a core motivator for me), 2) it's very low power, so for onboard applications it's ideal, and 3) the circuit actually takes up less space than a microcontroller and CODEC (not to mention cheaper). I love microcontrollers and use them a lot, but this is one application where I don't think it's strictly necessary.

[@ricobass0253]

Have you considered making a variable capacitance multiplier opamp stage to put in parallel with the a regular pickup to vary the cut off frequency and Q?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

I haven't. The parametric equalization of a flat signal is rather straightforward and worked conveniently in a quad opamp package for this application.

[@myhapylife]

Transformer part is interesting to me. I can use it for passive boost with regular pickups? Or to even out levels of single coil and humbuckers in HSS. Interesting. 🤔

[@martin13rm]

Yamaha new revstar models got exactly that, named "Focus switch", i've tried one and absolutely loved it, it boosted and high filtered the output, all passive

[@myhapylife]

@@martin13rm This is interesting. If I use transformer between pickup and volume pot, can values of the pot can stay the same, or if you would use transformed maybe it needs different value? Is there some kind of disadvantage od using transformer for boost voltage?

[@martin13rm]

@@myhapylife oh idk it exceeds my knowledge on the matter for sure i'm sorry 😅

[@jimthebossdubs2398]

You can. I've built several passive boost pedals.

[@princewarior2554]

Thanx for sharing your knowledge man..😊👍🏼

[@Jononor]

Sounds good, and very nicely explained! Thank you especially for providing all the schematics, files, and instructions. I sent a little donation your way as a token of appreciation. Btw, are you planning a ready-to-build kit for this? It seems that at least in humbucker form, the transformer could be integrated on the pickup PCB, then it would be a bit easier to build.

[@Andreas_Straub]

Good project! Unfortunately I was missing a demo of the sound shaping circuit. Could this be added, please?

[@ShawnCothran]

so could you just install the flat response pickup and buffer in the guitar and manage the eq in a pedal with a parametric top end eq AND/OR impulse responses of popular pickups?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Absolutely! Your imagination is really the only limit. I ran one of these through an acoustic simulator pedal and it worked well with the filters on it.

[@KyleCastroTheDrummerBoy090613]

Great sharing my dear friend!! Love and respect Kyle!! 😊🥁🇵🇭

[@Markleford]

Oh, wow, never thought of it like this before. Though honestly, given the analogy to parametric EQ, I wonder if it might be more flexible to build a two-pickup guitar with a stereo output for the flat/raw signals, and then do the EQ curves in DSP. and mix to mono before FX. 🤔

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

This is essentially what the variax did/does

[@Markleford]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 Hey, nice! I never knew! 👍

[@Geertje1965]

Just great content. Subscribed

[@jcugnoni]

Great video (as always). Doing the same but replacing analog filters by FIR digital filters would give an even wider set of options (acoustic cavity / semi hollow resonance, early reflections) which is (it seams) similar to what the Line 6 Variax does to emulate different guitar pickups and bodies...

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

You are correct, but most DIY'ers are hesitant regarding most anything that requires digital programming. I'm hoping to help there, as well.

[@Tuathband]

It's this BS that is holding the pedal community back. They are digital averse. It's lame as hell. They're also averse to Ibanez for some reason

[@davidiwaoka4146]

You might be interested in the Lace Alumitone pickup - a flat response, low-impedance, high output, pickup. I've tried them in an archtop but the response of the pickups were too flat and extended for me. A PASSIVE resonant peak circuit might make them more acceptable for the modern guitarist.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

I've been aware of them for many years. What I am sharing with everyone is a DIY construction. I tried to DIY some Alumitone-style pickups before, but it's far from easy, as the aluminum forms one side of the "transformer" used in the voltage step-up process.

[@vikingsofvintageaudio7470]

Wow! Good job!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Thanks, I appreciate it!

[@tacrom]

Great stuff!!!. Be aware that the spec on that Triad SP-48 is "+ or - 2.0 DB, at 300 Hz to 100K Hz", so compensation may be needed for the low end?. Just a thought.

[@GahMehGrrrr]

I like these for my 98 parker fly deluxe. Height might just be doable or a slightly smaller bobbin

[@CyberChrist]

I'd be curious to see experiments regarding the effects of the width of poles, or bar which acts like a pole. I suspect thinner ones could bring a clearer sound, which could probably be evaluated through frequency response to a particular note, which should probably be more focused, while wider ones would probably sound fatter and on a wider spectrum, by being affected by a larger part of the string. But that's just a hypothesis, of course.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Smaller coil and pole cross sections would reduce the sensing aperture, which could, in theory, result in more high frequency content, but that would be at very high frequencies; far higher than what we use in guitar.

[@CyberChrist]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 It could be argued it would add presence ;) But I'd be curious to see the differences in practice ^^

[@hotchow8766]

Did I miss the part where the pickups were tunable on the fly? Is that a separate portion from the pickup construction that is not being shown due to your good work and your intellectual property rights? I was hoping to see a selector for the pickup, itself, so that it could move through the different profiles while you played. Perhaps that is OP AMP 3 and 4 and I missed seeing them?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The filtering of the last 3 opamps of the circuit are what are changeable. My circuit currently uses 5 potentiometers that are tuned. I'm working on a circuit that will have multiple switchable profiles and will share that once I get it to a form that I feel is optimized.

[@DenariusHaveNarius]

Great video. How responsive are the pickups? The nuances make all the difference.

[@skidogbill]

Nice work!

[@oldadajbych8123]

I hope my comment on Glenn Fricker's channel has brought some viewers. You definitely deserve them!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

I certainly appreciate it!

[@veitheld167]

Very, very interesting! Looks like you're the right person to discuss a specific problem: Have you ever developed filters for a specific sound? Many years ago I bought the IBANEZ JP-20 archtop guitar because I wanted that warm jazz sound. However, the sound was always thin and I could never make it sound like Philip Catherine or Pat Metheny, for example. So my idea was to analyse the spectra of my heroes, measure the spectra of my guitar and then develop a filter with a transfer function that would adapt my spectrum to the target sound. That didn't work. It seems that the physical difference in the spectra is very subtle and my analyses were not fine enough. It could also be that the pickup is not well placed, if it is exactly below the node of the first harmonic, then an overtone is missing and can no longer be amplified by any filter. Have you ever tried to systematically shape the spectra yourself?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Adding back information that isn't there in the first place is a recipe for disaster. A thin guitar can't have bass "added", really. Sure, you can boost with active filters, but what is it boosting? Usually plenty of noise along with what you are interested in. However, tonal shaping can be done in many ways, I'm just presenting an easy-to-DIY version here. More complex filters, convolutions with IR's, etc. can totally be done, they are just not as accessible to most DIY'ers.

[@veitheld167]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 Thank you very much for your reply! I am quite familiar with the theory of filters and the problems of missing harmonics etc. What I'm interested in is a systematic approach to reversing the design process. So instead of designing circuits, building them and then figuring out how they sound, I'd like to do it the other way round. The question is whether we can find an appropriate mathematical model of a particular target sound and then derive a filter for that particular case. I've gone the other way round a few times and built my own amplifiers for jazz or replaced the inadequate Fender tone stack with Baxandall filters. But I only found out the result when the thing was finished and I plugged my guitar in for the first time. So the main problem is to find a mathematical description for a sound. In jazz that might work because you normally play without distortion and stick to the "linear" range. But while the difference between the sound of a Gibson 175 and a Telecaster with flat wound strings is really remarkable, you don't see much difference when you compare the spectra. If you ever work in this field, I'd love to hear more about your results. It looks like your technical background is absolutely up to the task!

[@gabrieltrevisan3624]

Amazing content, thank you.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Thanks for watching!

[@montygibbon1905]

😮 ******* ****. That is ******* awesome!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Thanks!

[@1980JPA]

Thanks so much. Just learned a bunch of stuff, and also got some questions answered that I've had for a while. This makes me wonder if the Chase Bliss Condor pedal has similar topology, considering that you can do similar things with it , such as changing resonant frequency and the woods of the band affected etc. If I remember correctly I don't believe they used an op-amp.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

If it's Chase Bliss, I would expect it to be digital, but I really don't know.

[@AlanW]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 My understanding is Chase Bliss is all analog signal path, it's the control that digital.

[@diegopadovani4942]

That's my dream pickup. I really like the idea of low z pickups and the tone shape abilities. With the flat response isn't possible go full passive with the tone shaper eq? Since you only need take off the unwanted freqs to match a certain pickup. And how this compare in performance to the single primary loop ultra low z pickups discussed by Joseph Rogowski in the music electronics forum?!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

You could do all passive, but the effects of any component on loading it down is a distinct possibility, not to mention that you will need something active to boost it at some point.

[@mre456]

Thank you so much for the explanation and sharing of files and schematic for this. It is greatly appreciated. I've put a Vero version together on DIY layout calculator. Would you be able to have a quick look at it to see if it makes sense please? While I've built a lot of guitar pedals and a few guitars, I've very much just been following layouts to make those.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

To be honest, I have never used vero, so I'm not sure how much help I would be with the layout. It seems like most people, when they start out, choose either vero or perf and I chose perf for whatever reason, and now vero just looks alien to me :D

[@larrysteinke1839]

great stuff. I was thinking to get a Fishman Fluence P90 but i'll try this out first.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The only downside with the construction I show is the magnetic gap in the middle. You can do just a single coil or do humbucker style coils as well, I was simply using what I already had on hand from sustainer-related activities.

[@larrysteinke1839]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 i have a couple of old pickups like a regular humbucker and a mini humbucker with dual blades. could i just re-wind those with the heavier gauge wire and use it with your shaper circuit?

[@larrysteinke1839]

@@thescientificguitarist4228I would like to try your pickup shaper circuit. Are the CAM files ready to just give to a PCB manufacturer like PCBWay? I haven't tried it but they have a service where shared projects can be created and anyone can order the PCB or even assembly and a percentage of cost can be donated to author.

[@DaveViner]

Really cool, great stuff 👍

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Thanks for watching!

[@Tankerbell21]

Any thoughts on a kit I can purchase. Not so sure how to source these parts. Thank you for the work this is exciting. I use high gain equipment and have wanted a low output pickup for a long time. Metal and doom primarily. You have my attention.

[@bitodin]

This is amazing - finally a good amount of info on how such pickups are built. Are there pickups Hi-Z on the output? Also, how do different pickups affect the sound at different playing dynamics? Are we loosing any of that complexity by only focusing on the filter parameters?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The pickups are low output impedance, so going straight into a vintage fuzz probably wouldn't work. As for dynamics, that's a good question. I haven't done a deep dive into it because I am working out some other items with this and need to build the guitar that will be the permanent home for these pickups.

[@schematica]

Excellent video thank you!

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Glad you liked it!

[@EvilDragon666]

So, basically very similar to Wal pickups: start with a super linear response then push it through a state variable filter.

[@Cluless02]

Sound and Feel. The feel and response is a huge part of bringing expression into it. What variables are avail for the dynamics, ADSR?

[@awertyuiop8711]

I've got three questions: 1) What's the thickest wire gauge you can still wind up a coil with? 2) Can you "boost" the neodymium magnets' strength with electromagnets? (Or just use the electromagnets instead) 3) What would happen if you keep increasing the pickup voltage? Would it be enough to shock you?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

1. I'm not sure. Theoretically you would be space limited. 2. Any stronger of a magnet and string pull becomes a very real concern. 3. There wouldn't be enough current to really do much of anything.

[@Meshuggah333]

Hey, Why did you use a 500k load on the single coils in your simulations? Wouldn't 250k be more accurate? Or does it not matter? Thx

[@Arwndr]

Wow!... Thanks a lot! That is very exact I was looking for! 👍🏻🙌🏻✨☀️🍀🌿🌾

[@seanhayes2998]

Could you compare your circuit to the state variable filter circuit described by Helmuth Lemme in his book “Electric Guitar Sound Secrets and Technology”. Thx

[@jackwickman2403]

When building state variable filters for audio there is a trap to be avoided. Opamp cookbooks show design shortcuts that simplify the calculation of component values. These can result in different signal levels at different amp stages in the filter circuit. For constant level signals this can be usable, but the widely varying levels of an audio signal can cause clipping in the stage with the highest level while all the other stages are OK. It is important to match the levels in the various stages so they all clip at the same signal voltage. This will give maximum dynamic range and signal to noise ratio. It will also make calculating the values of the frequency and Q determining components more difficult. Look at the Alembic Superfilter.

[@ericzenk4404]

Really neat idea. Small question: typically strat tone and volume controls are 250k pots rather than 500k. Did you take a look at the SC simulations with those R values for the tone and volume control resistors?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Yes, I did. With the "controls" all the way up, the difference between 500k and 250k is negligible. The real difference occurs when rolling the controls down.

[@Cpt_Adama]

How is the magnet type and gauss level represented in the circuit? Is it just how much inductance?

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Magnet type and Gauss are not represented, as they don't impact the resonant behavior of the RLC circuit. They do impact the magnetic saturation and output voltage level, which are important factors, but not the resonance.

[@Cpt_Adama]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 So your saying they don’t affect the tone? Just saying that there are lots of custom pickup makers that say the gauss level and even the type of magnet (i.e. alnico ii vs. iv) do affect tone.

[@carlos_castanaut]

@skoneal007 the point of this PU with the EQ HW is to emulate the cleanest SC to the most overwound HB. When it can do that, it sure can handle a subtle magnet change would have in a normal PU.

[@T0tenkampf]

nice video, even a mechanical controls guy like me could understand it

[@leor.t5766]

daaaaaam this is epic, could you show how to make a midi guitar ? i mean to transfer the signal from the coils to a midi signal that would make the perfect guitar combined with this awesome video 🤩

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The signal processing involved in a midi guitar is very tricky, as it requires careful design of low latency pitch identification and tracking, which is quite difficult.

[@tg_2137]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 Not the way I’m sure you envisioned, but I’ve seen a solution that uses microcontroller, each fret is tied to a digital input, as well as the strings. From there you configure it as a matrix, similar to keyboards. While it’s been done before, would be cool to see your take on it

[@willhaylock3769]

The input impedance of your first stage buffer is approx 100k because of the VRef supply resistor in parallel with the input 1M resistor. This will load the pick up too much?

[@GavinBridwell]

I would love to do this with a 7 string guitar. Howdo I do this same thing with a seven string setup? do you have a kit for that?

[@normbarrows2]

My problem is I want a pickup with a different frequency response curve from those you get with humbuckers and single coils. I've used just about every type of pickup in my guitar builds. In the end, everything falls somewhere between a humbucker and a single coil in tone. For a while I put 7 band active EQ's on my guitar builds in lieu of tone controls. I even built a guitar with interchangeable pickups. Now I tend to use high output passive quadrails, and a decent EQ at the front of the pedal chain. A decent EQ can make any pickup sound like just about any other pickup - maybe not in an A/B test, but good enough to fool an audience. I'm especially disappointed in Fluence - great technology - and they use it to reproduce "been there - done that" tones. Is it possible to design a pickup circuit with a flat curve - or better yet a scooped (cut) midrange?

[@ssm445]

Outstanding work! Is string pull a problem? Those neodymium magnets can be quite strong.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Not that I have found

[@lqr824]

15:50 I see, you've made an 2-pole LPF and a totally separate para eq. That gives you lots of options that won't sound like a guitar at all, where the resonant peak is always at the cutoff. Instead shouldn't we consider simply an LPF with resonance? All analog synths are like this, as is again my Alembic bass.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The one thing about resonant LPF's is that you don't get quite the same level of independent parameter control like you do with the LPF/Parametric setup. I actually have a circuit board that uses only resonant LPF's, you just have to choose the values very carefully so that you get the behavior you want without crazy amounts of gain relative to other settings.

[@lqr824]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 maybe you could look at synth filter circuits? I THINK they maintain a fairly even resonance regardless of cutoff, and surer yet that cutoff doesn't rely on resonance...

[@DougMen1]

You can easily achieve the same effect with a lot less trouble and expense by using something called a graphic EQ pedal, and you can get any number of affordable Chinese made ones for about $30, from all the major Chinese pedal companies. And, those don't require your dedicated preamp that's required for your pickups to work with any normal guitar amp.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

The problem with a graphic eq on a regular pickup is that you are limited in the frequencies and amounts you can boost. You can't boost something that isn't there due to the physical construction of the pickup (e.g., high frequencies). If a graphical eq works for what you want, that's awesome, but what I show here is really just scratching the surface of the shaping possibilities of a low inductance, high-resonant-frequency coil.

[@JohnDoe-u3b]

IS there an example of you hooking up the driver tot the electronics, cause I'm a bit lost in that area?

[@lqr824]

I'm glad you threw in the cable. Are these values what we'd expect with 5'? 10'? 20'? It's an audible difference. I'm also curious how much the resonant frequency moves when the pickup capacitance is modeled at 100pf vs. 130pf. I'm just a software guy but my intuition is that double capacitance might move the frequency an octave, so this "little" difference might actually move the frequency significantly, maybe as much as 4.5 semitones? ln(130/100)/ln(2) * 12 = 4.5 or so... I may be totally off base with that assumption and obviously there's a lot of other things happening here...

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

I actually did the simulations with both 100 and 130 pf and it actually doesn't make nearly as much of an impact as one might expect. The inductance of the pickup greatly dominates the resonant behavior. The differences in the end caused by the capacitances were negligible.

[@lqr824]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 thx, no surprise you're a step ahead of me there. What cable length are you modelling? Still curious about that...

[@HUGEHARDTHICKANDVEINY]

@@lqr824About a week ago I measured a 17 foot cable I put together at about 460 pF with a cheap Chinese LCR meter. The 10 foot cables I have measured around 310 pF or something.

[@BKRMON]

Curious as to why you used a 500K ohm volume value for the single coils. Most use 250K vol. pots for Strats. Would that not lower the resonant frequency a bit?

[@valueofnothing2487]

Why did you use a 500K for the single coil? Usually vintage single coil uses 250k pots.

[@GahMehGrrrr]

Fantastic. Did you pot the coils? Is it unnecessary ?

[@jimhoward1655]

Would be nice to see internal circuitry and how you accomplished the different sounds. I'm guessing the pickup selector switch changed the resistance values on the internal active parametric equalizer you built and have installed inside the guitar but never showed in the video?? It all made sense, but baffled me on never seeing the active shaping circuit board being put together or installed in guitar had me scratching my head wondering how your getting all the different sounds and why thats not shown as its the heart and soul of everything.

[@thescientificguitarist4228]

Each pickup was connected to its own circuit board that was made exactly from the circuit I showed. The pickup selector is a normal 3 way selector and the voicings were changed by adjusting the potentiometers on the circuit board.

[@jimhoward1655]

@@thescientificguitarist4228 Thank You