So for the last few months I've been working on prototypes for a Neodymium-based pickup. The prototypes so far have all been for 7-string, and I tune to F# (or thereabouts) so it's very much designed with the intention of catering to extended range instruments.
The idea came about while looking at some of the "Humbucker In A Single Coil" designs, like Duncan Hot Rails and the like. I wanted a pickup with a narrow coil spacing on the bass side, for tighter response, and wider coil spacing on the treble side, for a more natural, PAF sound.
Like this:
Here's a video of Prototype 002 in action:
It's crazy high-output, so I didn't bother doing a clean playthrough because the cleans just didn't sound that great. The pickup almost clipped the input of my Helix.
You can see some of the process of the earlier iterations in the build thread I did over at MEF:
http://music-electronics-forum.com/showthread.php?t=46678
But with the latest prototypes I've been taking video of the process and just managed to get the music put together for the first video.
The music uses the pickup (Prototype 005) itself, but I'm hoping to have a new prototype made with better specs. This one was also too high-output and sounded a bit muddy, and I wasn't able to do certain things I wanted with it due to some space constraints on the tester guitar. I was testing backplate materials and didn't account for how much extra output it can add, and I couldn't move it further from the strings, so 005 is actually even higher output than 002.
Here's prototyping 005 from the ground up, Part One:
The idea came about while looking at some of the "Humbucker In A Single Coil" designs, like Duncan Hot Rails and the like. I wanted a pickup with a narrow coil spacing on the bass side, for tighter response, and wider coil spacing on the treble side, for a more natural, PAF sound.
Like this:
![prototype_002_by_khzdonut-dci6e9m.jpg](https://pre00.deviantart.net/4654/th/pre/i/2018/205/0/2/prototype_002_by_khzdonut-dci6e9m.jpg)
Here's a video of Prototype 002 in action:
It's crazy high-output, so I didn't bother doing a clean playthrough because the cleans just didn't sound that great. The pickup almost clipped the input of my Helix.
You can see some of the process of the earlier iterations in the build thread I did over at MEF:
http://music-electronics-forum.com/showthread.php?t=46678
But with the latest prototypes I've been taking video of the process and just managed to get the music put together for the first video.
The music uses the pickup (Prototype 005) itself, but I'm hoping to have a new prototype made with better specs. This one was also too high-output and sounded a bit muddy, and I wasn't able to do certain things I wanted with it due to some space constraints on the tester guitar. I was testing backplate materials and didn't account for how much extra output it can add, and I couldn't move it further from the strings, so 005 is actually even higher output than 002.
Here's prototyping 005 from the ground up, Part One: