Just played with Q Tuners for the 1st time

[phat daddy]

Wow. The Q Tuners are the brightest most extended range pickups I believe I've ever heard. I had the tone knob on the passive Yamaha these were mounted in turned 3/4 the way down and the slap sound was still zinging my head off. With an active system, you'd actually have to cut treble. And the low end is off the chain too. They're also the most interesting pickups to look at, and their design is like nothing I've ever seen; don't even know where to start explaining it. Too bad they don't make these pups for Laklands. Anybody else have thoughts on experiences with the Q Tuners?

[Searcy]

Neodymium is the stuff of Gods! Thunder gods to be exact.

[luknfur]

Originally Posted by phat daddy

...Anybody else have thoughts on experiences with the Q Tuners?

See FAQ the last page of Dimento's HB experiment for my experience with one.

[Webtroll]

I'm not a fan of their test audio clips on their website. The pickups look pretty and I like the new engineering approach, but the results have been questionable to demand such a high price. I'd love to see what the magnetic field from one of their pickups looks like.

[Fender32]

Originally Posted by Webtroll

I'm not a fan of their test audio clips on their website. The pickups look pretty and I like the new engineering approach, but the results have been questionable to demand such a high price. I'd love to see what the magnetic field from one of their pickups looks like.

+ 1,000 +++

What were they thinking with that sound clip?

It was just a bunch of "pinched" harmoincs, followed by some fret rattle, IIRC.

I'd like to hear these pickups in a "standard" bass, being played in a more "standard" way, in order to judge their merits better.

My suspicion is that they're just too "transparent" to really carry a punchy groove , but I'd love to be proved wrong, as they do look like an interesting development.

Also, you can see what the magnetic field looks like from this picture. They spread some kind of ferrous gel onto the pickup, so that the "spikes" represent the effect of the magnetism.



Freaky, huh?

Oh yeah, they also make version entirely out of liquorice ....

[chunkstyle]

licorice!!!

LoL!!

[Roland777]

Fret rattle? It was played on a fretless. Quite a wellcomposed song too.
Listen close and you'll hear its low end as well. Sounds like very potent pickups to me.

[Webtroll]

too freestyle jazzy for my tastes. i wouldn't have minded them having that clip if they'd had a second with popping and slapping and a third with a motown finger groove. the tone and style that the sample provides is so far from what i want to play and sound like to le nearly laughable as a selling point (to me as a potential buyer). i'm not saying there's no talent involved, it was just somewhere south of inspirational.

[Searcy]

It's also important to remember that MP3s are super Lo-Fi, crappy representations of actual sounds. I put up some MP3s of my pickups in my web site because people demand it these days but I question what, if any, real value they present.

Too many variables.

[fullrangebass]

I had high expectations from the q-tuners but when I bought them and tried them (both bass and guitar q-tuners)was not impressed; quite bright and very transparent; very strong magnetic pull to the strings (compromising sustain) and the sound was not full or balanced IMHO. If transparency (mainly) is what you are after they are what you are looking for, but in terms of deep, full or balanced I'd look for other alternatives. Then again it's my opinion.

PS1 I gave the q-tuners for free to a friend of mine who wants to try his own things. I'll keep you posted on the progress

PS2 there are other pickups that use Neodymium magnets too. Lakland and Dingwall are two companies that use neo magnets for their pickups

[Handyman]

I don't have any opinions of q-tuners, but that picture with the magnetic goop is the coolest thing I've seen today!
Do they have any pictures of more standard pickup designs with goop on them for comparison?

[cybersnyder]

I'll second the magnetic goo being cool

[ehque]

Originally Posted by cybersnyder

I'll second the magnetic goo being cool

for i while i thought THAT was the pickup.

[Passinwind]

Originally Posted by Searcy

It's also important to remember that MP3s are super Lo-Fi, crappy representations of actual sounds. I put up some MP3s of my pickups in my web site because people demand it these days but I question what, if any, real value they present.

Too many variables.

The clip I downloaded is a .wav at 16/48, not an MP3. I do agree that it's not very instructive for most of us though. But slap/pop or Motown grooves are nearly meaningless to me, so I'm not sure what the best format might be.

I bought mine after I heard a smokin' local bassist using one. In his bass, and in mine, lack of low end balance is definitely not an issue. YMMV, as always. I'll post some more thoughts when I finally get a gig or two under my belt with the Q-Tuners.

[Webtroll]

Originally Posted by Searcy

It's also important to remember that MP3s are super Lo-Fi, crappy representations of actual sounds.

I rip all of my CDs to MP3 (variable bit rate) and listen to my music that way. I'm not an audiophile by any stretch but I do like music. There's no way I'm letting that slide as a compressed recording of any type when I regularly listen to MP3s. I'm not saying the pickups suck or that the guy who played bass on that recording sucked, only that it did nothing for me and that I believe more popular styles of music would appeal to more bassists. When I bought my computer monitor for gaming I didn't look for something that works well for coding or spreadsheets.

[coolrunner989]

This is what the goopy stuff is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrofluid

really sweet stuff!

/end derail

[Lorenzini]

Originally Posted by phat daddy

Wow. The Q Tuners are the brightest most extended range pickups I believe I've ever heard. I had the tone knob on the passive Yamaha these were mounted in turned 3/4 the way down and the slap sound was still zinging my head off. With an active system, you'd actually have to cut treble. And the low end is off the chain too. They're also the most interesting pickups to look at, and their design is like nothing I've ever seen; don't even know where to start explaining it. Too bad they don't make these pups for Laklands. Anybody else have thoughts on experiences with the Q Tuners?

Sounds like you played the Q-Tuner equipped Yamaha TRB4 owned by the dude at Guitar Center. I played that bass 20 minutes after he installed them.

Those pickups are AWESOME!!!

[Fender32]

Originally Posted by Roland777

Fret rattle? It was played on a fretless. Quite a wellcomposed song too.
Listen close and you'll hear its low end as well. Sounds like very potent pickups to me.

You're right of course, Roland777, I should perhaps have said "string noise" instead . Also, I agree that the low end came through (in parts) very well.

My concern is the same as Webtrolls' (and a few others, in previous threads about these pickups ). The suspicion is that maybe these pickups are only really beneficial when used in that very "up front and clinical" setting, maybe getting lost in a "full band setting"!? Just speculation on my part, of course, but fullrangebass's experiences with them sound all too close to my perception of them .

Anyway, let's have another picture, to liven up the thread . I call this one, "$200 Harmonica" :

[Verne Andru]

I did a Q-Tuner thread a while back. Clips are the most thankless things you can do as you can never please anybody any of the time - so I just cycled through some arpeggios.

The neatest thing about the Q-Tuners is how adjustable they are. There is so much power in the multiple pole-pieces that once you grok what they do, you can dial in anything from clinically bright to booming bass. The mojo is in the balance between pickup distance from the strings and the pole-piece settings. It takes quite a bit of trial and error, but the payoff is well worth it.

As for the price - Q-Tuners are custom made to order. They are a 2 person shop - actually 1 since Sjaak does all the building and Erno does the other stuff. According to Enro, it takes 8 hours just to do the windings per pickup. Personally I think they are a bargain for what you're getting.

[cnltb]

And are there no string pull issues, given that neodymium is quite strong?