[HN Gopher] Designing a guitar with hot-swappable pickups
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Designing a guitar with hot-swappable pickups
Author : frenchie4111
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-05-02 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
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| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| FYI, this idea got implemented a few times in various forms, the
| most known commercial implementation is by Dan Armstrong.
|
| Ampeg Dan Amrstrong guitar and bass are just cool, look them up.
| jackseviltwin wrote:
| Somnium Guitars [0] also makes guitars with easily hot swappable
| pickups. They have a mounting system where you can put most
| pickups into their mounting module and click it into place from
| the back of the body. It's still a bit pricey, but starts at a
| less expensive $2,495 MSRP vs $4,500 from Relish.
|
| Here's a video from Know Your Gear on their product:
| https://youtu.be/Vj2uJBeSHt4
|
| [0] https://somniumguitars.com
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| These are awesome, thanks for sharing
| utopcell wrote:
| One could get a Line 6 Variax and play with endless variations on
| body types, pickups, tunings and recordings of vintage guitars.
| Old ones can be had for very little these days.
| leoh wrote:
| Very nice. It would be awesome if this were standard.
| galkk wrote:
| Without video it isn't clear how convenient/easy it is.
|
| Here's another approach: https://youtu.be/pZaTbCBvcOI?t=39 (it's
| in Russian, but the mechanics is very simple)
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Ooh that one is easier than mine. Would have been outside the
| scope for this project though (likely needs custom connectors).
|
| Takes 30 seconds-ish to swap mine, you pull it out, unplug the
| jack, plug the jack into the next one, slide it in. Not "on
| stage" easy, but definitely "messing around in my garage" easy.
| kjgkjhfkjf wrote:
| It's extremely tempting to try to speed up your progress on the
| guitar using your existing engineering skills (e.g. what we have
| here), mathematics skills (e.g. learning music theory), or other
| resources (e.g. buying loads of gear), but the only way reliably
| to make progress is practice, practice, and more practice playing
| the guitar itself.
| utopcell wrote:
| Jimi went from a $5 acoustic in 1958 to being dead in 1970.
| That's less time than what it takes most of us to go through our
| GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) and just enjoy playing the darned
| thing.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Dan Armstrong guitars had a nifty system for this, which goes
| back years.
|
| https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3130/2319685814_b648ce0118.j...
|
| https://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/Product%20News/Guitar/...
| jolux wrote:
| Nice to see some electric guitar geekery on HN :). I started
| playing last year during the pandemic too, but I had learned a
| bit in elementary school and I played alto saxophone for around a
| decade in various school jazz groups.
|
| Gentle suggestion: try to see how many different tones you can
| get out of one sole pickup by varying your technique (angle and
| strength of attack, angle that your finger is fretting the
| string, the part of your finger you fret with, amount of vibrato,
| type of vibrato, gentle bends, etc). Try practicing with the amp
| cranked so you can play notes at normal volume just by brushing
| the pick against the string and listen to the errors it reveals
| in your technique. The electric guitar is an extremely sensitive
| instrument. Pickups do make a huge difference (particularly
| switching between singles and humbuckers), but I got this advice
| from a teacher and it has totally changed my perspective on tone.
| If you can develop a deep understanding of the relationship your
| technique has to tone, you can find a tone that is yours on any
| guitar, I guarantee it.
| Beldin wrote:
| For those like me who didn't know: a pickup is a thingy that
| generates a tiny electrical field around a string. This allows
| electronics to translate string vibrations to an audio signal.
|
| One thing missing (for me) from the article is a rough idea of
| what the effect could be. Why would you care about easy swapping
| at all? Why not find the right one(s) and stick with that/those?
| Why does changing speed matter - would you change them between
| songs?
|
| (Yes, I didn't know about pickups before this article)
| analog31 wrote:
| Perhaps for a bit of additional explanation, a guitar pickup is
| a variable reluctance sensor. It's a coil wrapped around a
| magnet. The magnet sympathetically magnetizes the string, and
| then the vibrating magnetized string induces a voltage on the
| coil. The strings have to be made of a magnetic material such
| as steel, nickel, or one of the magnetic stainless alloys.
|
| Beyond what was mentioned about single and dual coil, each
| pickup has a unique resistance and inductance, which at first
| glance might affect the frequency response of the typically
| crude circuit in the guitar. And the magnetic field may also
| produce some damping of the string motion. Those are some
| things that might affect tone quality.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Because we guitarists enjoy the wild goose chase that is the
| never-ending quest for ultimate tone, and thus need to try as
| many pickups as possible.
|
| But on a more serious note - it's because woods sound very
| different, and pickups will sound very different depending on
| what guitar they're in. It's a pain to take the strings off,
| de-solder a pickup, solder in a new pickup, and put on the
| strings - only to discover that the pickup doesn't sound any
| good. Being able to swap them out in mater of seconds is an
| all-around improvement.
| hctaw wrote:
| It's a laborious process that has a significant impact on tone.
| You usually have to restring the guitar when you change them
| out.
|
| The biggest change would be between dual coils ("humbuckers")
| and true single coils. Most modern humbuckers have four leads
| (you only need two to make a sound, you get two leads per coil)
| which allow you to wire a switch on the guitar called a "coil
| tap" which allows you to disengage the secondary coil. This
| allows you to have a dual coil that functions sonically as
| either, and it is very desirable for musicians that need a
| diverse range of tones for their set list (good example is if
| you ever play a wedding and take requests).
|
| You're also never happy with it. I've changed all the pups on
| my three guitars multiple times.
| mattacular wrote:
| Very cool DIY. Was hoping to see what it looks like from the back
| with all the electronics in place? And maybe a video of how the
| swap works in practice would be helpful to illustrate.
| mike_red5hift wrote:
| Might want to look at Somnium Guitars for a more refined (not
| DIY) version of this. They have a really nice system. Not cheap,
| but the build quality is excellent.
| papandada wrote:
| But how about the results of which pickup sounds he preferred?
| [deleted]
| wk_end wrote:
| > On every electric guitar, the pickups have dampening springs.
| From trolling online guitar forums, it sounds like these are
| pretty important for dampening some vibrations from affecting the
| pickup.
|
| This is a strange statement. Many pickup designs have springs as
| part of their mounting mechanism, but it's not for dampening
| vibrations - it's to allow the height of the pickup to be
| adjusted.
|
| Certain pickups (notably, off the top of my head, Fender
| Jazzmaster & Jaguar pickups) don't even use springs for this -
| instead there's a block of foam placed underneath the pickup that
| compresses as the pickup is screwed down.
|
| Of course, it's possible some cork-sniffer guitar nerds will
| claim that they can hear the effects pickup springs have on tone
| (and the effects of different metals in the springs, no doubt),
| but these are the same people who will claim that they can hear
| the difference different glues make on tone, or will swear up-
| and-down that a real $5000 Klon has a richer and fuller sound
| than a $100 clone made from the exact same circuit with the exact
| same components, or that tube amps sound better because
| "electrons can't survive in a crystal lattice" [0] (so buy my
| $100K tube amp!), or...
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVTj08qTwGw
| squarefoot wrote:
| I don't know about dampening screws on pickups as I don't think
| I ever saw them; they use springs on each screw to keep them
| pushed up and reduce screws play, but I'm not sure they're the
| same thing.
|
| Anyway, guitars with a spring vibrato bridge, have this faint
| but audible natural spring reverb inside their body which by
| contact affects the strings too adding more warmth to their
| sound.
|
| It would be worth experimenting with a set of all different
| springs so that the force applied to the bridge is the same,
| but they would resonate on different frequencies therefore
| making the reverb effect bandwidth wider.
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Good thing it's easy to swap the pickups in my guitar, so I
| can test things like that easily :)
| YZF wrote:
| "Tone" is the sum of many little things (and then some bigger
| things). There can certainly be differences between guitars
| that seem quite similar. Since part (most?) of "tone" comes
| from the player there can be subtle "UX" things that have an
| influence or even the mental state of the player and what they
| believe to be true.
|
| I can believe that spring mounted vs solidly mounting to the
| body can make some difference (physics says there should be)
| but I can also believe the difference can be so small as to be
| negligible.
|
| People gravitate towards combos that are known to be
| successful. Since they don't understand the exact mechanisms at
| work it's safe to say let's have a mahogany body, a certain
| pickup, mounted a certain way, a bone nut, certain fingerboard
| material etc. and expect certain results.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't think you'll see much criticism of people's personal
| preferences or habits for their own guitar playing, even for
| things that are pretty eccentric or obviously superstitious.
| What _is_ legit criticism in my view is when people are
| trying to convince other people of these things (and
| especially selling these things at exorbitant prices by
| making dubious claims).
| jolux wrote:
| In rough order of significance, electric guitar tone is
| influenced by:
|
| - technique (absolutely the most important)
|
| - amplifier
|
| - pickups + strings
|
| - everything else (debatable whether you can even notice it)
|
| I don't know if there's hard evidence but I think folks who
| think wood and nut types and whatever make a difference are
| nuts. The relative difference in stiffness between the
| strings and the body is so huge that believing that the neck
| and body effect tone seems to me like believing that asphalt
| vs concrete effects how a tennis net vibrates.
| disantlor wrote:
| Tried to second your comment about playing quietly on a
| very loud amp but looks like it was deleted. So I'll say it
| here: at some point I tried playing out of a very high
| headroom amp, fingerstyle, and it _completely_ changed my
| playing and understanding of the guitar. I "wasted" so
| many years on small tube amps that break up right away.
| jolux wrote:
| Sorry about that, reposted ;)
| skj wrote:
| You can definitely hear the difference between many guitar
| models. Are you suggesting that pickups are the only
| difference?
| jolux wrote:
| Pickups and amps are by far the biggest difference. In an
| acoustic guitar, sound is produced by the whole body of
| the guitar resonating. In an electric, sound is produced
| by the string vibrating in an electromagnetic field above
| the pickup poles. The ideal guitar string contacts the
| body at three points along the body (nut, fret, saddle),
| on ideally as narrow a surface as possible at each of
| those points.
| the_local_host wrote:
| If you ever get the chance, try putting together a strat
| with one of those cheap paulownia bodies and compare it
| to.. well, anything else that is exactly the same except
| for the body material. To me, the difference is glaring;
| the paulownia is so treble-heavy it's intolerable.
| jolux wrote:
| By what principle does it make it more treble-heavy? This
| is the part that I haven't had explained to me and I
| don't understand it. I have a basswood Mustang and it
| sounds fine with decent humbuckers in it.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Is it as simple as that though?
|
| Ideally you'd have the same care put into making the
| "cheap" body. So that we can isolate the difference to
| just the material.
| TylerE wrote:
| Strings can make a tremendous difference. Just throw on a
| set of flatwounds if you don't believe me.
| jolux wrote:
| Yes, strings are one of the most important. Also dirty
| and old strings vs new and clean strings.
| [deleted]
| lostlogin wrote:
| > trolling
|
| Does the author mean 'trawling'?
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Yep, you're right, I do mean that
| fnord77 wrote:
| you were right
|
| > The basic difference between these two similar terms is
| that trawling involves a net and is typically done for
| commercial fishing purposes, while trolling involves a rod,
| reel, and a bait or lure," and is typically done by
| recreational fishermen.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The definition misses a common usage - to antagonize
| (others) online by deliberately posting inflammatory,
| irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive
| content.
|
| I wonder though, based on the professional/enthusiast
| fishing definition, could you call someone who is paid
| for (digital) trolling, a trawler?
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll
| lostlogin wrote:
| Hello! Neat articles on the rest of your site too. As a
| Home Assistant addict, you have given me plenty to read.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| Are you sure that tube amps don't sound better than solid state
| amps? This is such a common knowledge in the "guitar world"
| that I can't believe that it's not true. And I swear that I've
| heard the difference myself...
|
| Edit to further elaborate I've heard that solid state amps are
| used in metal more commonly because they have a different tone
| then tube amps which would be more common in a bluesy type
| sound.
| vcxy wrote:
| I think this used to be true, but these days tube amps can be
| very faithfully modeled. E.g., the fender tone master amps
| sound great.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Even when it used to be true, I feel like what was true was
| that tube amps sound more like tube amps than solid state
| amps.
| robbiex88 wrote:
| "...I've heard that solid state amps are used in metal more
| commonly because they have a different tone"
|
| Partially false. The general trend in metal has gravitated
| towards tube amp distortion (and digital modeling of it)
| precisely because of the different tone and responses vs
| solid state amps.
|
| As a guitarist there's a certain response you get with a tube
| amp vs digital and solid state.
|
| As an HN reader, I struggle to describe and quantify this
| quality besides the generic descriptors of 'response' and
| 'feel'.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| You're only able to hear these differences if you use silver
| cables made by elves under the moonlight!
| stirfish wrote:
| Some cheap (or expensive but old) pickups rattle when you shake
| them. Here's a tutorial on "repotting" some pickups in wax to
| fix this.
|
| https://www.projectguitar.com/tutorials/electronics/repottin...
|
| You don't have to be a cork sniffer to hear small things affect
| your tone. You just have to play very loudly on half-broken
| instruments - which isn't everyone's cup of tea.
| jollybean wrote:
| Small point - 'tube amps' unconditionally sound better than
| solid state. It's a marked difference that doesn't really
| require a trained ear or anything, if you played a few chords
| on a 'warmed up tube amp' vs. 'solid state' to someone who's
| never seen an electric guitar in real life, they'd be able to
| hear the difference.
| somebodythere wrote:
| They sound "different", but not "unconditionally better", and
| it's not something you can't replicate in the signal path...
| jollybean wrote:
| The difference is unambiguous and players overwhelmingly
| chose tubes, all other things being equal (i.e. cost,
| hassle). Unless you're playing maybe a very clean sound
| (jazz?) without the most remote hint of warmth or
| distortion, tubes are it.
|
| It's ridiculous that someone would call out 'tubes' as
| somehow being a kind of nerdy/fake/poseur guitarist
| connoisseur melodrama. It's literally the most important
| point differentiation of amps, to the point that almost all
| tube amps sound better than almost all solid state (at
| least in the same class).
|
| While someone might possibly take umbrage that 'tubes are
| not _always_ better ' - there's basically no room for
| someone to say it's a 'petty concern'.
| dr_hooo wrote:
| A trained guitarist's ear might notice the difference, but I
| highly doubt a crow would care. Also you are overstating the
| difference, and by no means is your opinion uncontested (just
| putting this out for the non-guitarists in the HN crowd).
| Even for those who can identify and prefer the tube sounds,
| digital modellers like Kemper do exist and do exist and seem
| to do a fine job in blind tests (see for example Anderton's
| on youtube).
| tohnjitor wrote:
| Are crows known for their hearing?
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Yeah, maybe they aren't that important. Using guitar forums as
| my source of truth maybe isn't the best. In any case, I have
| them on my guitar :)
| [deleted]
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm an electric bassist, and springy pickups unnerve me. For
| one thing, I sometimes rest my thumb on the pickup. So I've
| replaced the springs with hard spacers, cut to the desired
| length. As a result, my pickups are solid, and not adjustable.
|
| For another thing, the foam turns into goo after 40 years,
| which is how long it's been since I set up the instrument.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Lately I've been learning to play guitar. I wanted to be able
| to try out a bunch of different pickups on my guitar, to get a
| feel for what sound I prefer.
|
| I've been playing for over 10 years, and I still don't really
| care. I have a strat with the standard three single-coil pickups
| and a Gibson with two humbuckers. I'm sure it makes some
| difference, but where I'm at, I can't hear enough of a difference
| beyond the big things that it just doesn't matter.
| hctaw wrote:
| It makes a big difference if you have a good amp that doesn't
| have a dull preamp stage. Some of the newer tube designs are
| extremely responsive to a change in how they're loaded (same
| goes for all the shitty unbuffered drive pedals that
| inexplicably sound good).
|
| In my rig I have an SSH guitar with a higher output neck and
| bridge with a coil tap and run it straight into a blackstar
| HT40. The pickup selection and volume knob give me all my
| clean/dirty/overdriven tones without pedals, so there's less
| noise and less that can fail. It would be really hard to
| achieve that without the time I spent to find a set of pickups
| that works.
| inetsee wrote:
| I'm 70 years old. My ability to hear subtle differences in
| sound is probably at least 20 or more years in my past. This is
| why I have no intention of buying a PonoPlayer, or any of the
| other outrageously expensive high resolution music players.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > This is why I have no intention of buying a PonoPlayer
|
| Also Nyquist-Shannon.
| jolux wrote:
| I think Stratocaster single-coils and Gibson humbuckers cover
| almost all of the sounds you can get out of an electric guitar.
| The bridge pickup on a Telecaster is overwound and a bit louder
| than the bridge on a Strat, but the difference is pretty subtle
| if the Strat is setup correctly. The only other really distinct
| sound is the P-90, but it's not nearly as common as the other
| two, and it's also a variation on single-coil tone.
| TylerE wrote:
| You're really selling it short.
|
| Even amongst fairly traditional humbuckers, there is a huge
| range...compare an Alnico 2 humbucker wound to say 5kohm with
| a 20k ceramic...
| jolux wrote:
| That's true, overall resistance makes a huge difference.
| dehrmann wrote:
| How do P-90's compare to a humbucker with a coil tap?
| wk_end wrote:
| You usually split a humbucker rather than tap it. Either
| way, that'll give you a lot less grunt than a P-90, which
| are just as hot or hotter than the average PAF-style
| humbucker with both coils going.
| YZF wrote:
| Often the cheap necks can be made quite nicer with a bit of extra
| fret work. If the edges feel sharp then it's a matter of
| filing/sanding them to get them smoother. If there's buzzing then
| re-level and re-crown. There is a wealth of information on guitar
| building. If you want a bigger challenge, build your own neck. It
| is doable with hand tools though the right power tools certainly
| make it easier.
|
| If you want to drill straight holes without a drill press there's
| this little guide doohickey you can buy that you hold against the
| piece and put your drill bit through the guide.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| Another trick for straight holes is to put something on the bit
| (like a washer or something that moves freely) and it should
| stay in the same spot. If it slides forward/backward the bit
| isn't level. This probably isn't a good technique for drilling
| pilot holes for a neck but it works well for things where a
| Good Enough(tm) tolerance is acceptable.
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Thanks for the tips! I actually tried the guide doohickey but I
| still failed to get good straight holes. The hard part was that
| the guitar is not a really level surface to rest the guide on,
| so I had some complication getting it to sit well.
| YZF wrote:
| That's where the hand plane comes into play ;) I've also
| started building guitars during the pandemic. Lots of fun!
| I'm on my third.
| vr46 wrote:
| An interesting idea, but not convinced, as they don't look very
| adjustable for height, for example, my Tele pickups are higher on
| the treble side, compensating somewhat for the higher output of
| the bigger strings. You could cut this into the mount, but that
| defeats the purpose of being able to test things quickly, the
| moment one variable is fixed, you have an instant constraint.
| This experiment is a trade-off, I get that. He's not an
| experienced guitar player and wants to fiddle with pickups. Fine,
| enjoy, EVH was all about getting the sound to match what's in his
| head anyway, whatever it took.
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| They have the same height adjustment options that most guitar
| pickups do, the pickups are held on to the mount with two
| screws and you can screw in/out to adjust the height
| accordingly. It works in reverse of the normal system since the
| screws are backwards, but it works
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