Why is pickup technology so slow to evolve?

[Neon_Knight_]

It's OK, my guitar has a full maple cap over an old wood mahogany body, with an ebony fretboard, and a cocobolo truss rod cover, so my tone still rulez.

I'm not sure what relevance your joke about tonewoods has to my statement about wired electrical signal vs bluetooth signal.

In order to avoid horrible latency issues with bluetooth, the signal has to be compressed (therefore compromising on the sound quality), but even then the latency will still be far greater than with a wired connection. For context, wired headphones have a latency of approx. 5ms, while bluetooth headphones often have a latency of 100-300ms.

If you don't care about sound quality or latency, I'm unsure why you would want this 'battery chargeable bar' to "send a bluetooth signal to a box that would then have a 1/4" out jack to run to your regular amp", rather than sending the signal direct to the amp via bluetooth.

 

[jco5055]

I'm actually surprised Alumitones aren't more popular, I assume mainly (besides guitarists as a whole don't like change) I do think they look rather ugly.

 

[Emperoff]

I'm actually surprised Alumitones aren't more popular, I assume mainly (besides guitarists as a whole don't like change) I do think they look rather ugly.

Because most people that tried them hated them. Which is a shame because I actually like their look and really wanted to like them. Their cleans are really something:

 

[jco5055]

Because most people that tried them hated them. Which is a shame because I actually like their look and really wanted to like them. Their cleans are really something:

Are the distorted tones just terrible?

 

[Lemonbaby]

Are the distorted tones just terrible?

Pretty much so, it needs a lot of pre distortion EQing to not sound like a mess.

 

[Emperoff]

Are the distorted tones just terrible?

The problem with all these "hifi/extended frequency" pickups is that we as guitarists don't like those added frequencies. They just get in the way. We don't want extended lows as that is bass player's business and we cut them anyway with boosts and whatnot. We also don't want extended highs as that is just more fizz to dial out.

So we end up needing to do a lot of EQ sculpting to make them sound "good". That is not a problem if all your guitars have those pìckups or find workarounds with digital gear, but in most cases is just an added annoyance.

I'd love if companies tried to innovate in concept, but not trying to shove fairydust bullshit into something that already works. Meaning, give me those alumitone advantages (lightweight, useable coil split sounds, etc) but tweak them to sound like a normal pickup, goddammit.

 

[Achilleion]

It would be nice to have plug and play pickup systems in guitars, pop them in, pop them out. No soldering required.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

It would be nice to have plug and play pickup systems in guitars, pop them in, pop them out. No soldering required.

gibson, relish and gyrock all have proprietary systems to let you swap pickups without soldering.

 

[Achilleion]

gibson, relish and gyrock all have proprietary systems to let you swap pickups without soldering.

It's cool that a few have gone there, but proprietary means just that. Remember when all the cell phone manufacturers had their own special power adapter shape?

 

[MaxOfMetal]

It would be nice to have plug and play pickup systems in guitars, pop them in, pop them out. No soldering required.

Just get some crimp on connectors and a pair of pliers. That's what EMG and all the other "solderless" brands do. Nothing is proprietary, it's all stuff readily available and dirt cheap.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

It's cool that a few have gone there, but proprietary means just that. Remember when all the cell phone manufacturers had their own special power adapter shape?

Apples and oranges.
All those brands can take a variety of pickups, but use proprietary connector rigs for putting them into the circuit. The relish and gyrock stuff are basically overbuilt quick connect systems where the pickup ring/harness makes a positive connection with a terminal that runs to the rest of the electronics. There's some other brands adopting the relish system already, so it could become more prevalent over the next few years.

Getting brands to standardize anything is never going to happen unless guitarists demand standardization. There's zero incentive to have brands adopt stuff like that when soldering is dirt cheap and easy.

The need to quick swap pickups is super niche though. Outside of studio situations I can't think of any situation where I'd be like "hmm yess I require this specific pickup for this specific song"

 

[odibrom]

It would be nice to have plug and play pickup systems in guitars, pop them in, pop them out. No soldering required.

Install something like PCB connectors inside the control cavity to work as an interface between the pickups and the switches and pots...

Here's what I use:

Here's how these are applied:

This is obviously wired for regular passive humbuckers, but also obviously other solutions are possible, including active pickups or Lace Alumitones or whatever else there may be.

I initially used these connectors only to swap pickups, but then I started to use them also to swap other components, specially the switch, so to try different combinations...

If you'l go this route, don't forget to use heat shrink insulation sleeves, so to guarantee there won't be any shorts because the pins are touching something they shouldn't. Other than that, these are a "bullet proof" solution to swap pickups between brands with different wire color code.

 

[bigcupholder]

It seems crazy to me that the big aftermarket pickup companies (Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio) didn't come up with a standardized connector 40 or 50 years ago. That would've helped pickup swapping become more normalized as it would have been accessible to more people.

I was thinking about this yesterday when swapping wheels on my desk chair... Freaking desk chairs have standardized plugs in the base for the wheels that work across almost every manufacturer around the world, but somehow an industry that was dominated for decades by a few companies couldn't standardize.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

It seems crazy to me that the big aftermarket pickup companies (Seymour Duncan and Dimarzio) didn't come up with a standardized connector 40 or 50 years ago. That would've helped pickup swapping become more normalized as it would have been accessible to more people.

I was thinking about this yesterday when swapping wheels on my desk chair... Freaking desk chairs have standardized plugs in the base for the wheels that work across almost every manufacturer around the world, but somehow an industry that was dominated for decades by a few companies couldn't standardize.

Aftermarket pickup swaps is small potatoes.

The real money is supplying OEMs for initial install.

You know what's harder than swapping a single set of pickups? Retooling and retraining giant guitar factories and swapping SKUs.

 

[CanserDYI]

Yeah, adding the crimp connectors are super easy and its nice because you can do it outside the guitar, and then fish everything through and connect. No more weird soldering inside your guitar cavity with a towel around the body. It's not even a big deal that they don't come already installed on aftermarket pickups. It'd be cool, but like Max said the last hundred times this has been asked, there's no real benefit to manufacturers to get together and standardize, and they'd be standardizing for a very small sect of guitarists who actually change their pickups themselves.

 

[odibrom]

Yeah, adding the crimp connectors are super easy and its nice because you can do it outside the guitar, and then fish everything through and connect. No more weird soldering inside your guitar cavity with a towel around the body. It's not even a big deal that they don't come already installed on aftermarket pickups. It'd be cool, but like Max said the last hundred times this has been asked, there's no real benefit to manufacturers to get together and standardize, and they'd be standardizing for a very small sect of guitarists who actually change their pickups themselves.

When I started to use these connectors, that was the major accomplishment, not more needing to solder inside the guitar's cavities... it brings the soldering to a whole new level of tranquility.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Standardized quick connect for pick ups would add a whole new layer to the tone of chasing rabbit hole that I absolutely do not need in my life. It's bad enough when I have multiple guitars, amps, and dirt pedals to choose from.

No more weird soldering inside your guitar cavity with a towel around the body

I, uh... "no more." Right. Because I am definitely not just sticking a hot iron in there.

 

[oversteve]

Btw are there any guitars with emg's that come stock with solderless wiring? The only one I've ever seen is ESP EII ST1

 

[bigcupholder]

Aftermarket pickup swaps is small potatoes.

The real money is supplying OEMs for initial install.

You know what's harder than swapping a single set of pickups? Retooling and retraining giant guitar factories and swapping SKUs.

I'm talking about the early days of aftermarket pickups when it was dominated by SD and Dimarzio. Third party pickups as stock parts were extremely rare then. If SD and Dimarzio could've aligned on a standard connector and gotten even a few OEMs (not even Fender/Gibson tier) on board with this system (and not necessarily their pickups, just the connectors), they could've grown that industry faster.

If it caught on with a few OEMs and they saw sales increase because people preferred to buy guitars that they could easily swap pickups on, I believe it would've spread and become standard.

Again, we somehow have that for freaking desk chair wheels.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

I'm talking about the early days of aftermarket pickups when it was dominated by SD and Dimarzio. Third party pickups as stock parts were extremely rare then. If SD and Dimarzio could've aligned on a standard connector and gotten even a few OEMs (not even Fender/Gibson tier) on board with this system (and not necessarily their pickups, just the connectors), they could've grown that industry faster.

If it caught on with a few OEMs and they saw sales increase because people preferred to buy guitars that they could easily swap pickups on, I believe it would've spread and become standard.

Again, we somehow have that for freaking desk chair wheels.

Again, swapping pickups is entirely niche. The greater majority just sticks to what's stock, and those who care enough to swap them overwhelmingly just get someone else to do it.

If there was money in it, they'd do it, you can count on that.