Author Topic: Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?  (Read 855 times)

jazzyvee

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« on: May 14, 2015, 11:39:49 PM »
I've just been reading FC's thread about weight of basses and saw a picture of a Sadowsky with tone chambered body. It reminded me of a thought I had ages back about pickup movement. I understand that the body of a bass including the neck moves when a string is plucked and has an affect on the movement of the vibrating string and hence it's movement across the pickup magnetic field, which then impacts on the signal output from the bass.  
 
However I've often wondered if there is a significant input to that scenario from the pickup which would also be vibrating from the movement of the body and hence producing a moving magnetic field that would induce it's own signal as it moves relative to the string.  
 
This would presumably be different in a solid body to a hollow or chambered body and again different if it was fixed to a scratch plate of varying materials or to the body of the guitar. It first came to mind when I had alembic pickups put on my strat and mounted from a maple scratchboard.  I noticed it had more of an acoustic guitar component to it's sound than my Orion guitar and that got me wondering where that difference came from.
 
I'm just curious as to how significant this effect is and is it something designers think about when considering the construction of an instrument.
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sonicus

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #1 on: May 15, 2015, 01:18:52 AM »
Jazzyvee ,  
                Yes ! Absolutely . The location of the pickup will make a profound effect. I have heard bass's with moveable pickups and the location and the results from variations of the location is remarkable.

edwardofhuncote

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2015, 03:42:22 AM »
There's a remarkable difference repositioning the rotating pickup on Rick Turner's Model One instruments, both basses and guitars. (which by-the-by are an acoustic chamber) Kind of a mix of what (I think) you're talking about jazzy.  
 
Funny you posted this when you did - I was just thinking about this yesterday after one of those early Model One basses popped up for sale.

elwoodblue

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2015, 04:06:29 AM »
I'm pretty sure jazzyvee is asking about how the vibrations that the pickup receives (with differing mounting systems)
from the body/guard/assembly might add and subtract to the final output ...given any fixed position.
 
I bet Leo (and other makers) knew how a single ply guard differed tonewise from a 3 ply guard.Also which springs work  better than others to isolate them from the body vibes. Lots of small things that players have the luxury to not think about ;)

David Houck

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2015, 10:28:41 AM »
I too think that Jazzyvee is asking about the difference in tone between, for instance, having the pickups mounted to the body and having them mounted to a scratchplate.
 
Generally, in an Alembic instrument (there are exceptions), the pickups are tightly suspended between the heads of two bottom screws and two top screws, and all four screws are mounted directly in the body, which is vibrating.
 
When pickups are mounted on a scratchplate, they lose that direct connectivity to some degree.  The scratchplate is connected to the body with screws; but usually the scratchplate is made of different material than the body, often plastic.
 
I didn't spend much time on this, but I did find an article who's writer thinks that mounting directly to the body results in more resonance.

5a_quilt_top

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2015, 11:26:57 AM »
Looking at it very simplistically (which I have to do because I'm not a technician...) - a pickup is a microphone.
 
I think that we can all agree that mic placement in a studio relative to the room and a mic's proximity to the amp can have a huge affect on recorded tone. Even the angle at which the mic is placed can affect it. Experienced vocalists routinely manipulate microphones to enhance the tonal quality of their singing.
 
Using that logic, pickup location / placement (including distance from strings) on an instrument can be just as critical to obtaining a desired tone.
 
It's been said that Van Halen and Fender evaluated 80 prototype pickups prior to settling on the specs for the Wolfgang pickup. They then experimented further with placement on the guitar body. He has said that mounting the pickup directly to the body is critical to obtaining the tone he wants and that variations in placement of even fractions of an inch one way or another can have a profound affect on the presence of the harmonics.
 
I think a pickup mounted directly to a resonant guitar or bass body would absolutely be affected by the vibration (movement) when the strings are set in motion. Since the pickup is the instrument's microphone, it's voice or tone would be affected.

gtrguy

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2015, 11:42:03 AM »
Not really...

jazzyvee

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #7 on: May 15, 2015, 12:38:11 PM »
Thanks guys as always, interesting responses.  ElwoodBlue you have sussed me correctly I was interested if the vibrating pickup  would add anything to the tone. In an extreme example if I could move the pickup at 440hz over one of the strings without moving the strings I would expect to see 440hz on an oscilloscope connected to the pickup. So from that I would take that a pickup vibrating due to the body it's fixed to would indeed provide some signal output from the guitar. How significant this is, is my question and would this signal provide an acoustic component since it is being moved by the body and not the string directly
. :-)
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gtrguy

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #8 on: May 15, 2015, 04:23:27 PM »
More importantly would be the magnetic effect of the field slowing down the string vibration and decreasing sustain.  
 
Sounds like what you are talking about is what the EBow can do, and there are sevaral people using them on bass with amazing results (you can see them on YouTube).
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAOu9sg5RFc

mario_farufyno

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2015, 05:29:35 PM »
A Pick Up senses string movement, not to sound, as affects its magnetic field while vibration gets closer or farther from it. So we could expect some interference if a PU also moves, but in a opposite phase to the string.  
 
But there is a catch, lower harmonics and fundamental are produced by large amplitude swing of a string and may be this prevents tiny moves caused by the scratchboard from affecting them (imagine that two opposite signal off phase that almost doesn't cancel each other because one is so weak that main signal prevails).
 
If that sounds reasonable, we could expect that just upper harmonics could be affected, since they are produced by faster and smaller vibrations. But is also true that PUs can't reproduce higher frequencies due to its own nature (electro-magnetics inductors - that is what PUs really are and what makes them able to convert movement of a metal string into electricity - also acts like a low pass filter). Notice that smaller coils cut frequencies in a higher point and that is why Alembic's low impedance PUs are more open sounding.
 
So may be those PU movements could indeed interact with the string, but may be we can not hear it happening, or because it is too weak or because it can't be converted as an audio signal. I'm trying to figure this out although I'm aware that a hollow body will affect the string movement's nature and all its harmonic content and this will be clearly noticed by the PU (but this relates more to how mass and stiffness can change mechanical motion transferences between the string and bass body).
Not just a bass, this is an Alembic!

bigredbass

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #10 on: May 16, 2015, 10:39:51 PM »
I'm with Mario, mics and pickups are two very different things.
 
I also agree with EVH, I way prefer his (and Alembic's) method of screwing them solidly to the body.  I've seen no end of Gibsons where the humbucker rolls around in those spring mounts like one of those floating-gimbal compasses on a ship.  Maybe it doesn't make any difference, but I really don't like it.
 
Just to make this even more aggravating (as pickups and strings are a truly black art if there ever was one), besides the vagaries of the body and hardware on the pickups, I've always wondered doesn't the magnetic field extend in all directions and not just under the strings?
 
Joey

jazzyvee

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2015, 04:35:20 AM »
Well to add something to your last point Joey, when I went to the alembic meet a couple of years ago and collected my S2 bass, Ron was answering some of my questions about his basses and I recall him telling me that part of what he does when calibrating the Series basses is to deal with effects of the magnetic fields and little currents that  are induced in and around the the metalwork on the bass when its being played.
The sound of Alembic is medicine for the soul!
http://www.alembic.com/info/fc_ktwins.html

lbpesq

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #12 on: May 17, 2015, 09:06:31 AM »
And to add yet another twist:
 
If we are considering the minute (mi - noot, as in small, not a unit of time) pickup movement in relation to the body, then should we not also consider the movement of the player?  What effect does it have on pickup movement when the player jumps around or is otherwise physically active (ala Pete Townsend) as opposed to the statue-type player?  
 
Bill, tgo
 
P.S.  I personally believe the differences being discussed are so minimal as to have little if any effect on tone that a listener can detect.

sonicus

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #13 on: May 17, 2015, 09:33:36 AM »
Might I suggest an actual experiment  using top of the line spectral test equipment such as a nice RTA ( real time analyzer) to test for actual spectral differences.   A test guitar body would be rigged with various different pickup mounting systems . The same pickups would be mounted on that test guitar body  each separate test in a different method and played picking the guitar identically .
               Next ; just look at the spectral test results and the actual numbers  !
 
 Wolf

gtrguy

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Does pickup movement have any significant affect on tone?
« Reply #14 on: May 17, 2015, 09:59:31 AM »
OK, I'll really add some twisted tiny thoughts. In WWII USA made magnetic torpedoes that did not work. One of the reasons (they discovered) was that magnetic fields around a ship changed size and shape as they got closer or farther from the earth's equater.