My favorite description of "Tone"

[erikbojerik]

Inspired by another thread....many actually...

OK, so some of you may have heard of pickup maker Wolfe Macleod - on another forum, he posted an email he received from someone inquiring about his pickups. It is far and away the most outlandish and amusing description of desired "tone" I have ever read in my life - I had to save it for posterity.

Post your own faves if you have any.

----------

Hi, I am searching for pickups for a custom made guitar. Please read my explanation.

I´m Searching: Pickups to suit and make satisfying contribution to my kind of guitar sound, not for versatility. Preferably custom made pups for both bridge and the neck position. Pickups are to be direct mounted in tight fitted cavities through the top and into the neck through, to capture more of the guitar's overall resonance. Pups will actually have physical contact with both top and neck-through which are glued together around the cavity areas. Also a internal pickup system will be used for “reading” the wood, blending with the magnetic pups. (Probably a film transducer type, if you don´t have a better or specific advice for that purpose).

The two main issues of a custom pickup would be:
1. Picking up the guitars´ sound in the truest way.
2. Refining/sculpturing and making their own contribution to the wanted final sound.

Wanted sound explained by treble, mids and low-end:
Silky trebles, rounded but clear.
Burnished, silky and enhanced mids.
Tight and balanced low-end.

The overall tone I want:
Burnished and Glassy. It can`t simply be burnished, glassy, silky and smooth enough.
A dark tone quality. Crystal Clear, but on the silky and darker side.
Silky and smooth.
Glassy, but not hard or edgy.
Crystal clear and articulate balanced with a “oily” tone.
Thick/Fat.
Dense but not hard and still open sounding.
Articulate focused attack with "piano-like brilliance” as Macassar Ebony does to guitars.


Not - What I don´t want is:
Brittle
Bite
Gritty
Grind
Sharp
Nasal
Crunch
Rattling and buzzing (caused by magnetic pull of the strings)
Breakup sound
Brown Sound
Harsh
Sizzling
Ice-pickey
Twang
Quack
Mush
Mud

Qualities in guitar sound to suite my playing style and fusion music:
A clear singing sustain for legato lines using overdrive.
Dense and articulate/defined tone for very fast picked line phrasings (overdrive and clean tone).
Good string separation for closed voice chords using clean amp sound.
Dynamic for differentiating stronger and softer attacks and different points of striking the string.

Guitar used: I am about to get build a neck-through-body hollow archtop with a flat zero radius fretboard. The Idea of the instrument is simply the density and sustain of a solidbody given the liveliness, tone amplifying/enhancing body and other qualities of an archtop. Also using the advantages of direct coupling that only neck-throughs can provide.

Pickup placements/distance from saddle and neck is of course adjustable as of yet the guitar is not built. But in general I find bridge pickups placed to close to the bridge making a nasal sound which I don't like. The neck pickup would probably be placed as close to the 24th fret as possible.

Wood selection:
Neck-through: Brazilian Rosewood for glassy, burnished and reverby sound w smooth highs.
Top, back and sides: Koa for strong sweet midrange, warm, thick clear and open resonant tone with tight low-end and lots of sustain.
Fretboard: Macassar Ebony for an articulate focused attack with piano-like brilliance.

The neck-through is in touch with the top at the fretboard, pickup cavities and tremolo/bridge area only. Pickups are to be mounted directly to the top/neck-through, pressed into very tight pickup cavities.

Would be nice if the pickup mounting screws/bolts/bolt´n´nut could be mounted from the back side of the neck through, the cavities would look nicer made for pickups without the dog-ears.


Tone reference:
Ideal would be the 1st string of a Classical Gut string guitar striked with an extremely polished/burnished nail. Added sustain as if the note very bowed(as a violin bow). This might demand a pickup making the strings sound thicker than they really are.
Lace Sensors Gold in my Strat Plus have some but nice glassy sound to them using clean sound, though they are lacking in other areas especially used with overdrive.


Amp/sound:
Fusion style improv music, using gain overdrive for sustain and easy going legato (lead playing sound). A combination of power amp overdrive and gain would be better. Right now I am using the Soldano Caswell preamp and Fender Concert combos (for clean sound).
I am searching for an amp with smooth and not brake-up type of sound, combining preamp overdrive with power amp overdrive sound., hopefully I will have Tony Bruno make a custom one. But first I have to have a guitar with convincing pickups.


Pickups I have tried:
Stock Anderson H2+ is to woody and dry. Seymour Duncan Alnico II pro ( It has a nice sweet tone, but it is too small and are not polished enough
The Anderson single coils sounds too crunch and not polished enough using overdrive/distortion.
All Mahogany PRS 87` w stock pickups: Very nice midrange, some burnished qualities but not big or open sounding.
Seems like a I don`t usually care for hot pickups. They make the tones coming on to hard, hardens the attack as spitted out of the amp as opposed to hitting a note putting vibrato to for an almost volume swell, blooming appearance. They often loose tone as well made by an unbalanced amount of string sound vs. the sound resonating through the wood. I have not tried a lot though, and mostly spring mounted ones.


Ending with a few questions:
· To which degree is it possible for a pick up to alter the qualities of sound (ex. more silky, glassy and burnished) independent of the frequencies(quantities)?
· Is it possible for pups to make all the strings sounds more equal (as if they were of similar gauge), the treble strings thicker and the lower ones more slinkier/slimmer, without filtering out a lot of the guitars` own sound?
· The art of building pickups as the art of building guitars are more much more than measuring data /specs, I would appreciate your specs/type advice according to the listed aspects, that is to closer the wanted sound qualities I described above?


Output (Inductance):
D.C. Resistance determined by:
1. the number of turns of wire:
2. the gauge of the wire:


Capacitance:
· Steel poles are supposed to make a silky top, it that your experience too?
· “Kinman's special Alnico-5 magnets that exert 40% less magnetic pull on the strings actually allow maximum Sustain” sounds interesting. But some characterises the Alnico magnets´ contribution as gritty with no smoothness, some say its warm and sweet and some say type of magnet makes no difference. What is your experience?
· Lower output Humbuckers, p-90s style, Single coil type or Jazz Master style pickups?
· Potted or unpotted?
· Could the pickups be made of Matching Koa wood or just pickups tops made of Koa (picture below for wood tops or possibly wood construction) tops and gold pole pieces ?
· It will probably be better to make the pickup after the guitar is build and stringed up, but in order to avoid waiting time the pickups could be paid in advance for getting a place in your waiting list. The guitar is done about July next year(2007). And another one is coming up a few months later.
· I am pretty shure you are using the very best of quality parts, although I have to ask, as the request may be an upcharge...?

If this sounds interesting to you or if there is a stock pickup you would want me to try before an eventually custom pickup is made, please let me know.

Looking forward hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[Dirk Diggler]

Well they certainly have enough and very descriptive words to describe what they want and don't. Do you think they got what they wanted? I seriously doubt it.
That was an interesting read in any case.
Dirk

[fookgub]

Seen that before. Pretty nutty, huh? Many of his descriptions are at odds with each other. Dark but glassy, dense but open (what?), piano-like but thick/fat. What do oily, silky, and burnished mean anyway?

As an uninvolved 3rd party, I can read this and get a good laugh. But what should a pro do with a guy like this? You can't just ignore people... that's bad for your reputation. But I sure as heck wouldn't want to have to make a pickup based on that description. And trying to clarify this guy's needs or talk some sense into him seems like it would be an exercise in endless frustration.

[Rickett Customs]

He certainly liked the word "burnished"

bur·nish (bûrnsh)
tr.v. bur·nished, bur·nish·ing, bur·nish·es
1. To make smooth or glossy by or as if by rubbing; polish.
2. To rub with a tool that serves especially to smooth or polish.
n.
A smooth glossy finish or appearance; luster.


I think he was the tool in #2

[Nelson Guitars]

Oh my...

When I run into a potential client who speaks like this I politely direct them elsewhere. The problem is that you will never satisfy them no matter how hard you try.

Greg N

[wilser]

I wonder what Wolfe's response was ...

[Mr. Majestic]

I get guys like this all the time wanting the most uber/awesome/holy grail/mother nature blessed piece of ash ever grown on earth..... What a load.

[scottyd]

Brown sound?! Is that anything like the brown note?

Most emails I get similar to this tend to never go anywhere. Some people ask lots of questions tell you what they want change their minds a thousand times and when it's time to put up or shut up, they just shut up.

[Beauchene Implements]

Wow. This guy suffers from catastrophic marketing overload.

[stflbn]

This guy would never be happy with any pickup made and would not understand why you couldn't possibly hit his expectations.


Person who sent that email probably plays some kind of ****** core or ***** punk and expects custom pickups to change his crappy choice of eq or gear.



:-)

[newbold]

he suffers from jazz fusion overload.

[tjclem]

Originally Posted by Nelson Guitars

Oh my...

When I run into a potential client who speaks like this I politely direct them elsewhere. The problem is that you will never satisfy them no matter how hard you try.

Greg N

Yup

[joeyl]

I would really like to hear him/her play

[Reindeer]

Wow.

[kosmicwizard]

I can't believe I read all of this ...

[Eilif]

Originally Posted by Nelson Guitars

Oh my...

When I run into a potential client who speaks like this I politely direct them elsewhere. The problem is that you will never satisfy them no matter how hard you try.

Greg N

Wise words Greg. I've only seen this kind of thing in the interpersonal realm, but it hold true there also. Woe to those who try to please the unpleasable.

[Jim Nazium]

Originally Posted by erikbojerik

The two main issues of a custom pickup would be:
1. Picking up the guitars´ sound in the truest way.
2. Refining/sculpturing and making their own contribution to the wanted final sound.

... which, of course, are diametrically opposed to each other.

[Taylor Livingston]

Originally Posted by scottyd

Brown sound?! Is that anything like the brown note?

Most emails I get similar to this tend to never go anywhere. Some people ask lots of questions tell you what they want change their minds a thousand times and when it's time to put up or shut up, they just shut up.

Believe it or not, "brown sound", unlike everything else in this hilarious email, is a term that means something very specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Van_Halen#Tone

[DanielM]

what on earth was he having built? a "neck-through-body hollow archtop"?! with a Brazilian Rosewood Neckthrough?

what on earth is this guy smoking?

[scottyd]

Originally Posted by conical johnson

Believe it or not, "brown sound", unlike everything else in this hilarious email, is a term that means something very specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Van_Halen#Tone

WHOA WHOA WHOA! Eddie Van Halen?? We're talking guitars now? Count me out!