Update to the G2220 saga

[creaturegods]

I have decided to check all my instruments...

starting with my 59 les paul...

View attachment 4667509

How deep does the rabbit hole go?? Do humbuckers even exist at all .......

 

[skycruiser]

I think I can help clarify this question:

There are two different components to any pickup that are both sources of signal, the magnets and the coils. The pole-peices are just functionally extentions of the magnet and serve to help propagate the magnetic field through the coil.

Now the magnet is sensing the vibrations in the string, and producing a current from that, which in turn is passed through the coil through the electronics and to the amp.

The coils themselves are also a sound source though, and can act like radio antennas, picking up inducted EM waves, like radio interference (less common now that most stations have switched over to narrowband), or the 60Hz hum of the EM field produced by the wiring of the venue, stage lighting, your house, whatever.

The reason why you want the windings to be opposite (which is, in fact achieved by reversing the hot and ground leads... physically flipping the pickup over would leave the chirality of the winding the same, like the coil on a bolt remains threaded the same rotational direction no matter the orientation).

With the 60Hz hum, we aren't concerned with the magnets yet. Just the coils and the inducted radio interference that generates the 60Hz hum. Reversing the windings will put the coils out of phase with one another, so they will both produce the same radio signal but with opposite direction, effectively cancelling each other out.

Now we are concerned with the magnets and how they sense the strings.

With the magnet polarity the same, and the windings reversed, that the signal from the string will ALSO be out of phase. With both pickups on, you will get low to no signal.

How to fix that?

Reverse the polarity of the magnet. So then you get destructive interference from the radio induction, and *constructive*interference from the magnet sensing the string.

Because physics and math, it's more likely for lower frequency waves to be close to matching up than high frequency waves, and because it's nearly impossible to get exactly the same length of coilwire, you do actually get a little bit of destructive interference in the very highest register, and more constructive interference in the lowest end of the spectrum.

Which is why humbuckers tend to sound fatter.

The same thing can be acheived with a dummy coil. Gibson used to have silent P-90s by creating a cavity in the guitar where a "dummy coil" that has no magnets would live.

You could do this by buying a cheap strat pickup or P90, and knocking out all the pole peices and removing the magnets, and then depending on the polarity of the gretsch pickups, wire the strat pickup after your toggle switch (between the volume and output jack, or between tone and master vol, whatever) in a way that it is opposite of the extant pickups (so either hot or ground, depending). There is certainly plenty of space in the control cavity for this, especially where they use the cheap tiny pots on the G2220.

And that should cut down the single coil hum quite a bit no matter what pickups are selected. The orientation actually doesn't matter, and it doesn't need to be anywhere near the strings.

Back to the topic though, nobody should have to do this for a bass advertized as having humbuckers.

Even the P-Bass has a split coil which is functionally acts as a humbucker.

This comes up frequently and weird functions are attributed to the magnet (such as 'sensing vibrations in the string'). The function of the magnet is to magnetize the string. It doesn't do anything else. The string becomes a moving magnet near a coil, and as described by Faraday's law, this produces an EMF in the coil. The fixed magnetic field is just a DC field serving to keep the string magnetized. Let's not give the impression that it does anything else. Flipping the magnet flips the magnetic orientation of the string which inverts the signal generated in the coil.

 

[doran.dragic]

And that's exactly what I expected to happen. yet....



They claimed a lot of things. One of the things they claimed was that it was supposed to come with single-coils (despite being listed as otherwise on their spec sheet) and that when in the middle position it was in "humbucking mode."

One problem with that-- being that there are two bridge pickups.

They claimed supply chain issues.

They claimed that these pickups were, in fact, the spec'd pickups. (what does that even mean though? That they knew they were single coil and were purposely committing fraud? or that they were lying to my face and telling me that the single coils were humbuckers?)

They claimed that they would send me a replacement bass with the proper humbuckers (never happened.)

I am frankly just as puzzled as a lot of people are about how badly they handled my claim. They 100% dropped the ball here.

Oh wow, I was on the "it could be a mistake" team but this make it look really bad. I'd be pissed off if I were you.

Did Lobster have this information before making his video?

 

[Asher Platts]

Oh wow, I was on the "it could be a mistake" team but this make it look really bad. I'd be pissed off if I were you.

Did Lobster have this information before making his video?

I do not believe so. I did reach out to a bunch of gear review YouTubers in the comments, but I don't know if that was how Mr Lobster came about this discovery, or if it was independent of that.

Yeah, I am incensed about it. When I started out on this journey, I thought that it was just a QC oversight, and that Fender and Gretsch, with such excellent reputations on the line, would want to know about it and do everything in their power to make it right. Instead I was lied to over and over, ignored, and swept under the rug.

It did not inspire confidence in their products or their customer service.

 

[g-dude]

How deep does the rabbit hole go?? Do humbuckers even exist at all .......

Invalid Link Removed

 

[Durham52]

One question would be, if the "wrong" pickups were accidentally put in all these basses, which model actually has these single coil, in humbucker housing, in them? To put the wrong pickups in, they had to be in the factory to begin with, right?

It's not like cheap mini humbucker pickups are hard to come by in China, there's heaps of them for sale on Reverb and ebay etc. You cab buy a set for as low as US$12.92 + S 4.99 shipping today. (and that's retail, imagine what Fender/Gretch are paying wholesale for bulk orders...) If putting single coils in was a money saving exercise, how cheap must the SS versions be?

USD 12.92

USD 23.99

 

[LBS-bass]

One question would be, if the "wrong" pickups were accidentally put in all these basses, which model actually has these single coil, in humbucker housing, in them? To put the wrong pickups in, they had to be in the factory to begin with, right?

It's not like cheap mini humbucker pickups are hard to come by in China, there's heaps of them for sale on Reverb and ebay etc. You cab buy a set for as low as US$12.92 + S 4.99 shipping today. (and that's retail, imagine what Fender/Gretch are paying wholesale for bulk orders...) If putting single coils in was a money saving exercise, how cheap must the SS versions be?

USD 12.92
View attachment 4667724
USD 23.99
View attachment 4667726 View attachment 4667727

That's the puzzling thing, right? It makes no sense to intentionally swap out these pickups for single coils when the cost to deliver humbuckers instead can't be all that high. I don't know if we'll ever know what really happened here but it sure seems like a royal screw up.

 

[g-dude]

That's the puzzling thing, right? It makes no sense to intentionally swap out these pickups for single coils when the cost to deliver humbuckers instead can't be all that high. I don't know if we'll ever know what really happened here but it sure seems like a royal screw up.

Don’t forget that a small cost for a part gets bigger as you move the instrument through the process of building, importing, etc. all the way until the retailer gets their markup.

People have literally lost their lives as a result of cost cutting.

In the case of the Ford Pinto, they saved $11 and people died as a result. They didn’t want to recall the vehicles once the accidents started happening because according to their estimates, it was cheaper to deal with the lawsuits.

Than $11 part on an $1800 car is the equivalent of saving $1.83 on a $300 bass from a percentage standpoint.

If there’s a way to cut costs, it’ll happen.

 

[SPlavick]

The most egregious thing IMO is all these basses were assembled and left the factory with a pickup clearly labeled "Bridge" in the neck position. Someone involved in assembly saw that.

 

[Gostdevil]

I so needed to come home to this today:

I liked the pre-admission single coils better than the post-admission single coils.

Well played. I honestly am a bit shocked Gretsch/FMIC actually said or did anything. I second Old_Noob. I'm not really interested in the $100 in accessories. I like my bass, and I'm not hurt in any way. Gives me an excuse to mess around with pickup swaps (I can tell the wife I had to do it this way ). I was thinking of the SD's, but I may try the GFS mini-birds a try (I can't really tell on construction, but I saw a pic of the back of one and didn't have screws poking out like the other GFS mini's - so maybe blades?). Start with the $60 or so pair first for the $300 bass. If that doesn't work out maybe then the SD's or Dimarzios.

Also, glad to see Lobster vindicated. Thinking of some of the things people said (especially on the Gretsch forums) about his video I couldn't help but think of this scene:

 

[-Asdfgh-]

One question would be, if the "wrong" pickups were accidentally put in all these basses, which model actually has these single coil, in humbucker housing, in them? To put the wrong pickups in, they had to be in the factory to begin with, right?

It's not like cheap mini humbucker pickups are hard to come by in China, there's heaps of them for sale on Reverb and ebay etc. You cab buy a set for as low as US$12.92 + S 4.99 shipping today. (and that's retail, imagine what Fender/Gretch are paying wholesale for bulk orders...) If putting single coils in was a money saving exercise, how cheap must the SS versions be?

USD 12.92
View attachment 4667724
USD 23.99
View attachment 4667726 View attachment 4667727

Those look like they are for six-string piccolo bass...

 

[-Asdfgh-]

I can tell the wife I had to do it this way )

Yes, Gretsch insisted you change them!

 

[-Asdfgh-]

The most egregious thing IMO is all these basses were assembled and left the factory with a pickup clearly labeled "Bridge" in the neck position. Someone involved in assembly saw that.

Not necessarily anyone who understands English or pickups, though. It might just have been someone told to put component X in hole A and hole B.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Don’t forget that a small cost for a part gets bigger as you move the instrument through the process of building, importing, etc. all the way until the retailer gets their markup.

People have literally lost their lives as a result of cost cutting.

In the case of the Ford Pinto, they saved $11 and people died as a result. They didn’t want to recall the vehicles once the accidents started happening because according to their estimates, it was cheaper to deal with the lawsuits.

Than $11 part on an $1800 car is the equivalent of saving $1.83 on a $300 bass from a percentage standpoint.

If there’s a way to cut costs, it’ll happen.

Sometimes a component simply becomes unavailable and the substitutes available are either more or less expensive than the original and someone on the factory floor may take a decision to change it for the cheaper one as renegotiating the contract to increase cost is not an option. Which is fine if the specs are the same, but often the specs are the same within a certain operating environment which the product is supposed to operate within but not outside it. Then, when the product is outside its operating parameters 'stuff' happens. And that can even happen if entirely in house. If it's safety critical this should not happen. Changes happened a lot in terms of op amps and overdrive and distortion pedals, although intentional, and they are not safety critical in most bands.

 

[J_Bass]

"Previously, the toothpaste tubes had a small opening of about 5 millimeters for squeezing out the paste. If you increase the diameter of the hole from 5mm to 6mm, the volume of paste squeezed out for a given length of squirt along the brush is increased by 40%. So, most users have to consume the tube that much faster and hence need to buy more."

"Nearly 30 years ago American Airlines made a startling discovery. They determined that eliminating one olive from each passenger’s salad plate would reduce costs by $40,000."

"In 1987 Northwest Airlines saved $500,000 by cutting limes into 16 pieces instead of 10 for its drinks service."

 

[J_Bass]

It's really strange that a company would do something obscure just to save a few cents in each unit, or try to make a product look more refined and expensive than it is.

Companies don't do things like that, do they?


"The cost to build the luxury Beats headphones is only about $20, with the metal weights being added to the devices to make them heavier and feel more valuable. A teardown of Beats Solo headphones posted on Medium revealed that the gadget contains four metal parts that make up 30 percent of the weight of the headphones."

 

[Durham52]

Don’t forget that a small cost for a part gets bigger as you move the instrument through the process of building, importing, etc. all the way until the retailer gets their markup.

People have literally lost their lives as a result of cost cutting.

In the case of the Ford Pinto, they saved $11 and people died as a result. They didn’t want to recall the vehicles once the accidents started happening because according to their estimates, it was cheaper to deal with the lawsuits.

Than $11 part on an $1800 car is the equivalent of saving $1.83 on a $300 bass from a percentage standpoint.

If there’s a way to cut costs, it’ll happen.

Yes, While I haven't intended to suggest that Fender/Gretch deliberately tried to cheat people, it can be hard not to be skeptical about the motivations of large companies, though I certainly accept that degree maters and that not all "mistakes" are deliberate and not mistakes at all.

The stories of dodgy dealing and cost cutting are legion and I know from experience that the consequences can be dire. I worked in accident investigation and Occupational Health and Safety for many years and when you see the same sort of thought processes that lead to cost cutting and penny pinching, applied to areas and items that can cause serious injury or death, being cynical becomes pretty much inevitable...

 

[Glazenn]

Not necessarily anyone who understands English or pickups, though. It might just have been someone told to put component X in hole A and hole B.

Or at an early stage, someone ran short of 'NECK' stickers...

 

[MrClassicMetal]

"Previously, the toothpaste tubes had a small opening of about 5 millimeters for squeezing out the paste. If you increase the diameter of the hole from 5mm to 6mm, the volume of paste squeezed out for a given length of squirt along the brush is increased by 40%. So, most users have to consume the tube that much faster and hence need to buy more."

"Nearly 30 years ago American Airlines made a startling discovery. They determined that eliminating one olive from each passenger’s salad plate would reduce costs by $40,000."

"In 1987 Northwest Airlines saved $500,000 by cutting limes into 16 pieces instead of 10 for its drinks service."

And those are the benign ones, that aren't illegal.

 

[Asher Platts]

I so needed to come home to this today:



Well played. I honestly am a bit shocked Gretsch/FMIC actually said or did anything. I second Old_Noob. I'm not really interested in the $100 in accessories. I like my bass, and I'm not hurt in any way. Gives me an excuse to mess around with pickup swaps (I can tell the wife I had to do it this way ). I was thinking of the SD's, but I may try the GFS mini-birds a try (I can't really tell on construction, but I saw a pic of the back of one and didn't have screws poking out like the other GFS mini's - so maybe blades?). Start with the $60 or so pair first for the $300 bass. If that doesn't work out maybe then the SD's or Dimarzios.

Also, glad to see Lobster vindicated. Thinking of some of the things people said (especially on the Gretsch forums) about his video I couldn't help but think of this scene:
View attachment 4667840

If you can, record a before/after video! I have been thinking about buying a used G2220 and then installing the GFS minibirds with a prewired harness, but I'd want to get an idea of what they actually sound like first.

If the sound is similar, and it *is* in fact the pickup placement (it's almost always the physical location relative to the string that gives an instrument a unique tone) and not something peculiar about the construction that gives it the tone it has... I think I will follow suit.