I Apologize

[Sgt. Pepper]

1 hour ago, ksdaddy said:

Re: Sir Paul's "Simply Having....."

My stepdaughter has been known to sing it around the house at the top of her lungs, followed by her vocalized rendition of the keyboards.

"Simplee... ha-a-a-ving... a wonderful Christmas time... DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN"

I fear I will have to listen to The Beach Boys Xmas Album again this year. My wife loves it. Little St. Nick. The Man With All The Toys. Oh the horror. And the same 10 standards everyone records.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Sgt. Pepper

[kidblast]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:47 PM, ghost_of_fl said:

My least fav. is "Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season" by Andy Williams.   🤮

 

much to my dismay,  walked into the local "packie" to get some beer yesterday...

this friggen tune was playing on the stores muzak system, nauseating.. .. 

Made me think of this post!

!!LOL!!

[Whitefang]

There's a story behind the following clip....

While driving to a local store about six years ago, and having my car's radio on the classical music station, they played the version on the clip.  I thought it was a clever presentation and when I got to the store I stayed in the car to hear the end of the music and find out who it was.  I found it was done by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and iNet research informed me it was on an album called "This Is Christmas"  and further search informed me the LP and CD were out of print.  But lo and behold-------

The following year we were at a local thrift shop and to kill time I flipped through the basket of used CDs they had on a counter.  And THERE IT WAS!  And the correct disc was in the jewel case(often it isn't  in thrift shops).  So I found the recording I was looking for, and it only cost me 80 cents!  

I thought each "day" of Christmas presented in a musical progression of style and construct was inspired. 

Whitefang

Edited December 4, 2022 by Whitefang

[Valeriy]

Hello guys,
I apologize for interfering with your conversation, but I would like to return to the topic that badbluesplayer called here. After some upgrades on different guitars, I've got some experience as regards guitar tone, or in other words, a tone deficiency, how to fix it. Perhaps it will be interesting for badbluesplayer. It seems there are people here who have experience in electrics and also understand physics, it might be interesting for them too.

well..., yes, trying to fix tone after pickups is really a waste of time, I also came to the same conclusion. By the way, Van Halen, together with his fellow inventors (Tim Show and others), probably also closely dealt with this issue, and as a result they created a guitar pickup of an unusual design, quite original. As I think, it is not yet in production, this is their patent, fairly new, for 2018. If anyone is interested, in more detail the design of their pickup is here in this link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10115383B2/en  
well..., the bottom line is that all conventional pickups (magnetic) already have a significant drawback associated with the negative influence of their magnetic field on string vibrations. And therefore, all further attempts to correct the tone (after the pickup), whether in the pre/ amplifier, or in the tone block of the guitar, or with the help of "treble bleed" resistor/cap elements etc., anyway, all of these methods are imperfect in one way or another. Or even they are meaningless since the reason lies in the said magnetic pickups.

I don’t know how good the Van Halen/Show's humbucker is in tone, but their search path, I think, is the right one. I.e., first of all, it is really necessary to change the design of the magnetic system in pickups and reduce the negative magnetic influence. If interested, I can give a link to an article about this on LinkedIn. Generally speaking, I also have my own design of a guitar pickup, in principle it is not a secret, I can give a link to its description. In particular, recently recorded my guitar with this pickup, it's a cover of Pink Floyd's thing, guitar version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16s_p9-jKjcI2_-C841ngW_1sDsFFTw5X/view?usp=sharing   I hope you like it.

[badbluesplayer]

On 12/5/2022 at 11:17 AM, Valeriy said:

Hello guys,
I apologize for interfering with your conversation, but I would like to return to the topic that badbluesplayer called here. After some upgrades on different guitars, I've got some experience as regards guitar tone, or in other words, a tone deficiency, how to fix it. Perhaps it will be interesting for badbluesplayer. It seems there are people here who have experience in electrics and also understand physics, it might be interesting for them too.

well..., yes, trying to fix tone after pickups is really a waste of time, I also came to the same conclusion. By the way, Van Halen, together with his fellow inventors (Tim Show and others), probably also closely dealt with this issue, and as a result they created a guitar pickup of an unusual design, quite original. As I think, it is not yet in production, this is their patent, fairly new, for 2018. If anyone is interested, in more detail the design of their pickup is here in this link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10115383B2/en  
well..., the bottom line is that all conventional pickups (magnetic) already have a significant drawback associated with the negative influence of their magnetic field on string vibrations. And therefore, all further attempts to correct the tone (after the pickup), whether in the pre/ amplifier, or in the tone block of the guitar, or with the help of "treble bleed" resistor/cap elements etc., anyway, all of these methods are imperfect in one way or another. Or even they are meaningless since the reason lies in the said magnetic pickups.

I don’t know how good the Van Halen/Show's humbucker is in tone, but their search path, I think, is the right one. I.e., first of all, it is really necessary to change the design of the magnetic system in pickups and reduce the negative magnetic influence. If interested, I can give a link to an article about this on LinkedIn. Generally speaking, I also have my own design of a guitar pickup, in principle it is not a secret, I can give a link to its description. In particular, recently recorded my guitar with this pickup, it's a cover of Pink Floyd's thing, guitar version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16s_p9-jKjcI2_-C841ngW_1sDsFFTw5X/view?usp=sharing   I hope you like it.

Hey man.  It's been awhile since you've been on here.  Welcome back.

[Valeriy]

5 hours ago, badbluesplayer said:

Hey man.  It's been awhile since you've been on here.  Welcome back.

Thank you, badbluesplayer.

I've looked in here sometimes. But everything changed this year, I read a topic where Tman spoke about his relatives who ended up in Ukraine near Odessa and he did not know anything about them and the situation with them. And it was not very convenient for me to come here at this time. I am not a supporter of this war that is now in Ukraine, of course. One Slavic people attacks another, the same Slavic. All this is some kind of medieval savagery. Hope all is well with Tman's relatives there.

ghost_of_fl, tomorrow I will answer your both questions, I think right away in the morning.

[fortyearspickn]

16 hours ago, Valeriy said:

Thank you, badbluesplayer.

I've looked in here sometimes. But everything changed this year, I read a topic where Tman spoke about his relatives who ended up in Ukraine near Odessa and he did not know anything about them and the situation with them. And it was not very convenient for me to come here at this time. I am not a supporter of this war that is now in Ukraine, of course. One Slavic people attacks another, the same Slavic. All this is some kind of medieval savagery. Hope all is well with Tman's relatives there.

ghost_of_fl, tomorrow I will answer your both questions, I think right away in the morning.

Well said.  Welcome Back.  

[Valeriy]

23 hours ago, ghost_of_fl said:

Interesting take - a few questions about that:

1.  What are the specific drawbacks you are hoping to overcome? 

 

The main drawback, as I said, is the negative magnetic effect on the string vibrations inhibiting these vibrations and thereby distorting the electric guitar sound. Of course, it is impossible to completely get rid of this magnetic influence, since a useful electrical signal (from the vibrating strings) is generated using the magnetic field of the pickups. But it is necessary to reduce this negative magnetic influence on a certain minimum (some criterion for electric sound). What should be this minimum of that negative influence?
  As you know, the sound of single-coil pickups (or stacked humbuckers in single-coil size) is brighter, more natural and more similar to the sound of an acoustic guitar than the sound of usual humbuckers. I.e., we can say that the magnetic (negative) influence of the single-coil pickup to some extent approaches the above necessary minimum. But this is still not enough, since the sound of the single-coilpickup is still inferior to the sound of the acoustic guitar in brightness, naturalness etc. So, the ideal case is when the sound of an electric guitar will be so natural, throughout the acoustic guitar's range (from 80Hz to 12...14 kHz), that the electric guitar can completely replace the acoustic one.

  And as is known, the magnetic field of a single-coil pickup (applied to the strings) is about 2 times narrower than that from a usual humbucker. It is also known that the undistorted range of single-coil pickups is up to about 6 kHz (noticeably worse than in an acoustic guitar with 12 kHz). So, for the said ideal case, a magnetic pickup must provide its magnetic field even narrower than that from the single-coil pickup, about 2 times narrower, if it is required to get up to 12 kHz in the undistorted electric guitar range. In this sense, the design of Van Halen/Show's pickup is interesting, since it can be seen that the magnetic field of this pickup can be easily narrowed if the length of the pole pieces in the coils is reduced.

My answer is somewhat long, but it is quite complete with specific values. How far my pickup reached the indicated parameters, the desired 12 kHz etc., I did not measure, but indirectly it can be judged from the above recording (the Pink Floyd cover), i.e. how this record sounds like an acoustic guitar. My electric guitar was with solid body in that recording. For comparison, a similar sound, acoustic-like, can be heard from an Acoustasonic Stratocaster here:

 

[Whitefang]

Is that Fender's answer to----  ?

Whitefang

[Valeriy]

2 hours ago, ghost_of_fl said:

So you are looking to have an electric guitar pickup that can sound like an acoustic.  I have seen that done many times before and some with good results.   I don't know the name of any of those products because I personally want my electric guitars to sound like electric guitars, but I know there are solutions out there.   Possibly involving piezo pickups? 

No, not piezo. I have a different search direction. As a matter of fact, I already found something in my search. By the way, I also want my electric guitars to sound like electric guitars, as well as you. Perhaps I didn't say it well above. In general, I have a standard electric guitar with magnetic pickups, humbuckers (Stratocaster model in form).
 But my humbuckers have a non-standard magnet system (a US patent of 2018) giving a narrower magnetic field, narrower than that in a single coil pickup, as I think. I.e., my electric guitar, thanks to these pickups, simply has a slightly larger frequency range (undistorted) than that in conventional electric guitars, allowing it to sound in clean similar to an acoustic guitar as well. Plus, my humbuckers are active pickups, with a built-in preamp from OAs located in the tone-section of the guitar. This makes it much easier to record in my home studio computer-based.
 

[Valeriy]

2 hours ago, Whitefang said:

Is that Fender's answer to----  ?

 

I don't think so, quite the contrary, that Yamaha's answer to Fender because the Acoustasonic Stratocaster (and Telecaster) were made before, in 2018 it seems. But both developments are interesting of course. The only thing is that they are too complicated, in my opinion, and the Acoustasonic is also expensive.
 

[Tman]

21 hours ago, Valeriy said:

Thank you, badbluesplayer.

I've looked in here sometimes. But everything changed this year, I read a topic where Tman spoke about his relatives who ended up in Ukraine near Odessa and he did not know anything about them and the situation with them. And it was not very convenient for me to come here at this time. I am not a supporter of this war that is now in Ukraine, of course. One Slavic people attacks another, the same Slavic. All this is some kind of medieval savagery. Hope all is well with Tman's relatives there.

ghost_of_fl, tomorrow I will answer your both questions, I think right away in the morning.

Wow great to hear from you Valeriy, it's been a long time. Thank you for asking about my in-laws. They are safe and returned back here to LA 3-4 months ago. It was quite the experience. They showed up one day and called my wife and said, "we're back, let's have dinner."

I hope you are doing well. Best regards, Phillip "Tman"

[Valeriy]

fortyearspickn and Tman, thank you! Tman, I'm glad to see you. Yes, I'm fine. The only thing is, this stupid (bad) war, it is not known how it will all end.
 

[Valeriy]

20 hours ago, Valeriy said:

I don't think so, quite the contrary, that Yamaha's answer to Fender because the Acoustasonic Stratocaster (and Telecaster) were made before, in 2018 it seems. But both developments are interesting of course. The only thing is that they are too complicated, in my opinion, and the Acoustasonic is also expensive.
 

 Whitefang, sorry, I was wrong. Indeed, Yamaha came out before Acoustasonic Strat. But anyway, these are 2 different directions, I think.  Fender has had experience with similar guitars before Acoustasonic guitars, these are Stratacoustic & Telecoustic ones. It seems, that experience was unsuccessful. Now with Acoustasonic guitars Fender have probably taken into account that past experience and made them better. But still, as I said, they are too complicated and expensive.
 

[Valeriy]

On 12/8/2022 at 6:52 PM, ghost_of_fl said:

2.  If you were able to remove all of those imperfections and ended up with the perfect pickup - what would that be like?  How would it perform when compared to your average high-end humbucker? 

Well..., the perfect pickup, in answer to your first question, in fact, I already told you what I think this ideal pickup should be. I.e., this is just a pickup (magnetic) with a wider operating frequency range, undistorted up to 12 or at least up to 10 kHz. So that any electric guitar with this pickup can also replace an acoustic one. These 10...12 kHz, this is just an addition to its range that in 6 or 5 kHz is too limited. So, besides usual guitar combo-amp-cabinets with the same range 5...6 kHz, this electric guitar will be able to good sound in any other cabinets and amps, let even in Hi-Fi home systems. By the way, that will be convenient for home studios.

Here I will only add that with such advanced properties, this pickup, with the range up to 10 kHz, can easily be made active, like EMG humbuckers, but it will sound much more natural, including recording in the same home studios, without requiring standard (and uncomfortable) combo-amp cabinets and microphones. How different will it be from my humbucker with which I made the above recording, well..., I can't say for sure, but that recording was made with only my computer and my preamp (3-way) and with a little reverb effect, without any combo-amp-cabinets. And for now, of course, that suits me just fine.
 

[Sgt. Pepper]

19 minutes ago, Valeriy said:

Well..., the perfect pickup, in answer to your first question, in fact, I already told you what I think this ideal pickup should be. I.e., this is just a pickup (magnetic) with a wider operating frequency range, undistorted up to 12 or at least up to 10 kHz. So that any electric guitar with this pickup can also replace an acoustic one. These 10...12 kHz, this is just an addition to its range that in 6 or 5 kHz is too limited. So, besides usual guitar combo-amp-cabinets with the same range 5...6 kHz, this electric guitar will be able to good sound in any other cabinets and amps, let even in Hi-Fi home systems. By the way, that will be convenient for home studios.

Here I will only add that with such advanced properties, this pickup, with the range up to 10 kHz, can easily be made active, like EMG humbuckers, but it will sound much more natural, including recording in the same home studios, without requiring standard (and uncomfortable) combo-amp cabinets and microphones. How different will it be from my humbucker with which I made the above recording, well..., I can't say for sure, but that recording was made with only my computer and my preamp (3-way) and with a little reverb effect, without any combo-amp-cabinets. And for now, of course, that suits me just fine.
 

Okay here is my question to you. If you have the ways and means to do it why haven't you, and also if the big aftermarket boys out there (Seymore, Lindy, Lollar, ect,) haven't done it yet, can what you describe be done with a what a pickup is?  Which is a magnet and coil of wire around a bobbin with some screws and slugs? Sometimes with a cover and sometimes without. The more wraps the muddier the pup gets, the less wraps the more bright. If it hasn't been done yet maybe it can't with those few simple things that make up a pickup. All a pickup is a transducer. When a string is vibrating it changes the magnetic lines of flux and is induced in the coil and makes a small and I mean small voltage, hence we now need another thing, the amps to project the noise we are making. I'm no sound engineer, just a guy who has been en electrician for the last 30+ years. I've worked with all facets of electricity from generating it, to fixing the stuff that uses electricity that sometimes breaks.

Edited December 10, 2022 by Sgt. Pepper

[Whitefang]

21 hours ago, Valeriy said:

I don't think so, quite the contrary, that Yamaha's answer to Fender because the Acoustasonic Stratocaster (and Telecaster) were made before, in 2018 it seems. But both developments are interesting of course. The only thing is that they are too complicated, in my opinion, and the Acoustasonic is also expensive.
 

But Yamaha introduced their "silent" guitar around 2000-2001.  And it was around that time I saw someone play one in a trio performing at a Canadian casino.

Whitefang

[Valeriy]

59 minutes ago, Sgt. Pepper said:

Okay here is my question to you. If you have the ways and means to do it why haven't you, and also if the big aftermarket boys out there (Seymore, Lindy, Lollar, ect,) haven't done it yet, can what you describe be done with a what a pickup is?  Which is a magnet and coil of wire around a bobbin with some screws and slugs? Sometimes with a cover and sometimes without. The more wraps the muddier the pup gets, the less wraps the more bright. If it hasn't been done yet maybe it can't with those few simple things that make up a pickup. All a pickup is a transducer. When a string is vibrating it changes the magnetic lines of flux and is induced in the coil and makes a small and I mean small voltage, hence we now need another thing, the amps to project the noise we are making. I'm no sound engineer, just a guy who has been en electrician for the last 30+ years. I've worked with all facets of electricity from generating it, to fixing the stuff that uses electricity that sometimes breaks.

Sgt. Pepper, I wanted to take a break from English and watch a movie, but you are very quick and asked a question on the merits. In general, I think I can assure you that it is possible. I.e., it is possible to create this new pickup with improved properties and with the same simple elements that are already in the usual magnetic pickup. It's just that this pickup already exists, I think. I mentioned that my humbucker has a non-standard magnet system patented in 2018. It can be read here http://www.google.com/patents/US9997150   Here you will find all the information that interests you. In short, coils can be any, with any and better with a large number of turns. The main thing is that these coils should be approximately the same as required by the humbucker. Magnets can also be any and strong, but also the same. 
Here the secret is in the design of the magnetic system consisting of 2 magnets. The secret is of course simple, but effective, plus built-in preamp as described in the patent.  I am of course trying to implement this and have already attacked Fender and earlier Gibson with the old GEO. The pandemic and the Gibson bankruptcy in 2018 had a slightly negative effect on my attempts. But I will certainly continue my attempts to introduce this humbucker to start producing new electric guitars.

[Valeriy]

31 minutes ago, Whitefang said:

But Yamaha introduced their "silent" guitar around 2000-2001.  And it was around that time I saw someone play one in a trio performing at a Canadian casino.

Whitefang

Whitefang, I already apologized above.  🙂 Guys, with your permission, I would like to watch a movie.

[fortyearspickn]

36 minutes ago, Valeriy said:

Whitefang, I already apologized above.  🙂 Guys, with your permission, I would like to watch a movie.

Enjoy your movie.   Tell WhiteFang what it is  at your own risk. 

[Sgt. Pepper]

40 minutes ago, Valeriy said:

Sgt. Pepper, I wanted to take a break from English and watch a movie, but you are very quick and asked a question on the merits. In general, I think I can assure you that it is possible. I.e., it is possible to create this new pickup with improved properties and with the same simple elements that are already in the usual magnetic pickup. It's just that this pickup already exists, I think. I mentioned that my humbucker has a non-standard magnet system patented in 2018. It can be read here http://www.google.com/patents/US9997150   Here you will find all the information that interests you. In short, coils can be any, with any and better with a large number of turns. The main thing is that these coils should be approximately the same as required by the humbucker. Magnets can also be any and strong, but also the same. 
Here the secret is in the design of the magnetic system consisting of 2 magnets. The secret is of course simple, but effective, plus built-in preamp as described in the patent.  I am of course trying to implement this and have already attacked Fender and earlier Gibson with the old GEO. The pandemic and the Gibson bankruptcy in 2018 had a slightly negative effect on my attempts. But I will certainly continue my attempts to introduce this humbucker to start producing new electric guitars.

Pups have different Alnico magnets, ceramic ones, Lace Sensor ones, Active pups, single coil, hums, no cover, covered ect. All just different favors of ice cream depending on your personal taste. Or like the Bigsby vs Fenders whammy bars on the Strat or Jazzmaster. Its just a different design, but it does the same thing. 

[Sgt. Pepper]

38 minutes ago, Valeriy said:

Whitefang, I already apologized above.  🙂 Guys, with your permission, I would like to watch a movie.

You do not need our permission to watch a movie, we are not your mom or dad.

[Valeriy]

16 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:

Pups have different Alnico magnets, ceramic ones, Lace Sensor ones, Active pups, single coil, hums, no cover, covered ect. All just different favors of ice cream depending on your personal taste. 

This is not entirely true, we usually eat only one ice cream with a certain flavor at a time, in rare cases two different ice creams, while Steve Howe (Yes) had to change 15 electric guitars at one concert, probably their songs required different flavors of guitars. Thank God that these were not 15 ice creams , a person cannot stand from such an amount.

With the right pickup, the above perfect pickup with 10...12 kHz in range, the number of guitars may be needed much less, maybe 3 or 4, and for some guitar players two will be enough. Let's say one guitar has a standard neck typical of an electric guitar and with a favorite shape, and a second one, a similar electric one is with a wider neck like an acoustic guitar. For songwriters on tour, this might be ideal. And for most cases in recording, this may also be sufficient. I may have been somewhat careless in expressing similar thoughts when I offered my pickup to guitar giants.

[fortyearspickn]

20 hours ago, Sgt. Pepper said:

You do not need our permission to watch a movie, we are not your mom or dad.

It was sarcasm, of course.   A less coarse form of humor.   Well played Val ! 

[Murph]

When comparing the sharpest knife in the drawer, some will stand out, others not so much...