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Laguna burger build
- Thread starter RichterScale
- Start date
I'm trying to imagine where the magnets, poles and coil are in that thing.
Unless it's nothing like a typical pup inside. It's driving me nuts, not knowing how it works.
If I did use something like that (would be awesome if I can, because I want to make the body thin), it would be in a fixed position on the bass I'm thinking about.
But that's a great idea to have it moveable. That never crossed my mind. But I like it.
Unless it's nothing like a typical pup inside. It's driving me nuts, not knowing how it works.
If I did use something like that (would be awesome if I can, because I want to make the body thin), it would be in a fixed position on the bass I'm thinking about.
But that's a great idea to have it moveable. That never crossed my mind. But I like it.
@dwizum
Do you have any idea how the internals of those slim Lace pups are constructed?
Do you have any idea how the internals of those slim Lace pups are constructed?
I'm getting the impression it's like the alumitone but sealed in a slab of carbonite or whatever. I've always been curious about the alumitones just for the weight alone. Many of the sound clips I hear are horrible, but not all of them so I think the pups may be good. I just started a thread in pickups asking if any one DIYs these things.
How about just a thin sheet of steel under the strings on the body, then you can stick the pickup anywhere. It's got magnets, right?
I'm pretty sure it is just an alumitone in a different case. There's really no way to build a standard wound copper wire coil based humbucker that thin. There are some really thin pickups out there that are essentially very thin sidewinders, popular on cigar box guitars, but given Lace's focus on the alumitone and the fact that it's really thin, it seems like that's the case.
I'm not really a fan of their stuff in general. But I know a lot of people like their pickups and I agree with the comments above that a pickup made for a guitar will usually sound good on a bass too.
When I'm building basses, one thing I try to keep in mind is swap-ability down the road. If I don't like a pickup, I want to have other choices. If you design a bass around that slim lace pickup and then decide you don't like it, it would take a pretty significant modification to fit something more typical. Meanwhile if you wanted a typical Diva style oval pickup, you could just build an oval wood case designed to hold a standard pickup core (a BC size for instance) and then you'd have dozens and dozens of choices. For my own pickups I do more or less the same thing, I build all my humbuckers so the "guts" have 1" x 3" x 5/8" dimensions and they fit in a BC or other standard size case.
I'm not really a fan of their stuff in general. But I know a lot of people like their pickups and I agree with the comments above that a pickup made for a guitar will usually sound good on a bass too.
When I'm building basses, one thing I try to keep in mind is swap-ability down the road. If I don't like a pickup, I want to have other choices. If you design a bass around that slim lace pickup and then decide you don't like it, it would take a pretty significant modification to fit something more typical. Meanwhile if you wanted a typical Diva style oval pickup, you could just build an oval wood case designed to hold a standard pickup core (a BC size for instance) and then you'd have dozens and dozens of choices. For my own pickups I do more or less the same thing, I build all my humbuckers so the "guts" have 1" x 3" x 5/8" dimensions and they fit in a BC or other standard size case.
The Alumitones have intrigued me and I try to take note of opinions people have on them. That some people like them and some people complain that they can't get a good sound out of them makes me wonder whether they work optimally with some particular tone stack and (for passive harnesses) the values aren't the same as the usual Fender-ish ones.
The pickup would definitely stay in place but it would sound significantly different (and probably in a bad way). When magnetically permeable materials like steel are placed in a magnetic field, they sort of act like pipes in terms of directing the magnetic field. A big steel plate like that, touching the magnets, would take the nice focused field and spread it way out.
I've seen pics (mostly here) of pups during construction, so I have a pretty decent grasp of the basic concept.
But I have no idea what a sidewinder is, or how that construction could be translated into something that thin.
Any chance you have a pic or a reference to link to, to give me some type of visual cue on how this thing is possible?
It's still driving me nuts and I really don't want to spend $150 and wait a week for shipping, just to cut one of these apart and scratch that itch in my brain.
And no, a wire coat hanger doesn't work.
So basically it's a pair of windings, one on each side of the poles.
- Apr 18, 2008
- 16,013
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- 31,722
- Disclosures
- I'm highly opinionated and extremely self-assured
Yes, but the Alumitones (and, by extension and assumption, the USAB) are something entirely different.
Agreed, but he asked what a sidewinder was.
I still can't figure out the Alumitones.
- Apr 18, 2008
- 16,013
- 1
- 31,722
- Disclosures
- I'm highly opinionated and extremely self-assured
Agreed, but he asked what a sidewinder was.
I still can't figure out the Alumitones.
Me neither! I’m hoping someone with all the science in their noggin will come along soon and explain it all in small words….
Ok. I see the sidewinder construction.
Now I just need to know exactly what kind of nutty, devil worship, dark magic crap they used to get whatever inside of something as flat as that slim pup.
If no one knows, I can always try the coat hanger trick.
Now I just need to know exactly what kind of nutty, devil worship, dark magic crap they used to get whatever inside of something as flat as that slim pup.
If no one knows, I can always try the coat hanger trick.
The pickup builders thread has been been discussing sidewinders in all kinds of configurations lately.
A sidewinder has the coils laying on their sides, so they point sideways - towards the bridge and neck, instead of both pointing up towards the strings.
Most sidewinders have very typical coil dimensions. The coil is fairly "square" in that it's more or less as tall as it is wide, or within a 2:1 factor or so. But some cigar box sidewinders have very narrow, very tall coils - such that when they're laid sideways, they form a very thin, but very wide pickup:
But again, I don't think that's what the Lace pickup is. Lace does the whole alumitone thing as their signature style. An alumitone pickup is essentially a very low impedance pickup that uses a transformer to boost the voltage of the signal and match impedance to what the controls and amp can handle.
Consider that a normal bass pickup might have 5,000 - 10,000 turns of wire on each coil, and the wire is very fine (usually around 42 gauge) and fairly high resistance - so, the pickup's DC resistance is somewhere in the 5 - 15k ohm range, and the signal produced is usually in the couple-hundred millivolt range, or even above a volt or two. This combination of voltage and impedance is what amps are designed to work with so you can wire the pickup and passive controls directly to the jack.
By contrast, a low impedance pickup often has one "turn" of "wire," or sometimes just a few turns. And often the wire isn't even actual wire. The "wire" is much, much heavier gauge and the resistance is close enough to zero that it might as well be zero. The lace pickups literally use the aluminum frame as the coil wire - it's just an aluminum plate with a hole in it. The voltage in the signal produced by this style of pickup is several orders of magnitude lower than a conventional pickup, so a transformer coil is used, offline from the sensing "coil" to boost the voltage and get the impedance up from near-zero to the several-k ohm range that'll work with an amp.
The main difference in terms of the signal is that a low impedance pickup doesn't have any coloring from the resistance of the coil wire. The sensing is done in a circuit that is closer to "perfect" than a conventional coil, and then that "perfect" signal is boosted afterwards. Typical passive pickups get some treble roll off and then a hump of a resonant peak in the high mids, as a result of the loading on the coil. A low impedance coil boosted by a transformer doesn't end up with that same filtering. It is, in a sense, a similar concept as using a conventional pickup with an active preamp. The thing is, an actual "perfect" signal with no tonal coloring at all is not what people are used to, so to a lot of people, it sounds unusual and undesirable. Most pickups of this design have elements in the design that are basically a bandaid at adding some color back in to keep the signal from sounding too sterile, so it's kind of hard to see the "it's a perfect signal" thing as an advantage.
Anyways, I hope that helps in terms of understanding, without having to rip one apart. But on the other hand, if you do rip one apart I hope you show us all what you find.
Most sidewinders have very typical coil dimensions. The coil is fairly "square" in that it's more or less as tall as it is wide, or within a 2:1 factor or so. But some cigar box sidewinders have very narrow, very tall coils - such that when they're laid sideways, they form a very thin, but very wide pickup:
But again, I don't think that's what the Lace pickup is. Lace does the whole alumitone thing as their signature style. An alumitone pickup is essentially a very low impedance pickup that uses a transformer to boost the voltage of the signal and match impedance to what the controls and amp can handle.
Consider that a normal bass pickup might have 5,000 - 10,000 turns of wire on each coil, and the wire is very fine (usually around 42 gauge) and fairly high resistance - so, the pickup's DC resistance is somewhere in the 5 - 15k ohm range, and the signal produced is usually in the couple-hundred millivolt range, or even above a volt or two. This combination of voltage and impedance is what amps are designed to work with so you can wire the pickup and passive controls directly to the jack.
By contrast, a low impedance pickup often has one "turn" of "wire," or sometimes just a few turns. And often the wire isn't even actual wire. The "wire" is much, much heavier gauge and the resistance is close enough to zero that it might as well be zero. The lace pickups literally use the aluminum frame as the coil wire - it's just an aluminum plate with a hole in it. The voltage in the signal produced by this style of pickup is several orders of magnitude lower than a conventional pickup, so a transformer coil is used, offline from the sensing "coil" to boost the voltage and get the impedance up from near-zero to the several-k ohm range that'll work with an amp.
The main difference in terms of the signal is that a low impedance pickup doesn't have any coloring from the resistance of the coil wire. The sensing is done in a circuit that is closer to "perfect" than a conventional coil, and then that "perfect" signal is boosted afterwards. Typical passive pickups get some treble roll off and then a hump of a resonant peak in the high mids, as a result of the loading on the coil. A low impedance coil boosted by a transformer doesn't end up with that same filtering. It is, in a sense, a similar concept as using a conventional pickup with an active preamp. The thing is, an actual "perfect" signal with no tonal coloring at all is not what people are used to, so to a lot of people, it sounds unusual and undesirable. Most pickups of this design have elements in the design that are basically a bandaid at adding some color back in to keep the signal from sounding too sterile, so it's kind of hard to see the "it's a perfect signal" thing as an advantage.
Anyways, I hope that helps in terms of understanding, without having to rip one apart. But on the other hand, if you do rip one apart I hope you show us all what you find.
That's funny. But should work.
Allow me to take it a little bit crazier
If you mounted neodymiums in the right place the pickup would snap into certain positions and those magnets would become part of the field and therefore part of the pickups. The pickup would not even need its own magnets for sound and could just have steel poles like in many ceramic designs, or have magnets and the "snap to" magnets will increase the strength.
