Hi.
I've thought for many years that it would sound nice if one could have one single analog signal for each string of the guitar. Then one could stereo pan each string separately and have separate effects for the strings. I want to share my successful experiment on this subject and I've written a short article with sound samples.
http://www.carmi.se/misterstarshine/Projects/7
Please let me know if this type of product would be considered useful or meaningful. To me it's an apparent benefit to be able to do advanced things with guitar pickups and to evolve stuff from good to even better. The best judge is your ears. With some refinement one could probably make the sound totally mindblowing.
Thanks for your time.
Best Regards
Tom
I've thought for many years that it would sound nice if one could have one single analog signal for each string of the guitar. Then one could stereo pan each string separately and have separate effects for the strings. I want to share my successful experiment on this subject and I've written a short article with sound samples.
http://www.carmi.se/misterstarshine/Projects/7
Please let me know if this type of product would be considered useful or meaningful. To me it's an apparent benefit to be able to do advanced things with guitar pickups and to evolve stuff from good to even better. The best judge is your ears. With some refinement one could probably make the sound totally mindblowing.
Thanks for your time.
Best Regards
Tom
In fact there are a bunch of artists and even signature guitars equipped with hexaphonic MIDI pickups. Those are in constrast to this pickup optimized and intended for MIDI signals. This applies to bass as well I think. The fortune with my pickup is the intresting sound with overdrive on some or all strings.
hexaphonic pickups
Hi, nice work on your project!
I've done some work with hexaphonic pickups as well. I don't use a preamp board... mine work well completely passive. The signal isn't quite as hot as a regular pickup, but it's close, and the signal to noise is very good, so it's easy enough to turn up the amp a bit to reach the same volume.
There's an article with pics and sound clips here:
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2008/08/six-output-pickups-for-stereo-guitars.html
The first pic is of two hex pickups, not a humbucker, but they could be wired together as a humbucker. The only advantage to that would be added gain, because as I said above, the signal to noise is already very good.
Hi, nice work on your project!
I've done some work with hexaphonic pickups as well. I don't use a preamp board... mine work well completely passive. The signal isn't quite as hot as a regular pickup, but it's close, and the signal to noise is very good, so it's easy enough to turn up the amp a bit to reach the same volume.
There's an article with pics and sound clips here:
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2008/08/six-output-pickups-for-stereo-guitars.html
The first pic is of two hex pickups, not a humbucker, but they could be wired together as a humbucker. The only advantage to that would be added gain, because as I said above, the signal to noise is already very good.
hexaphonic pickups
I finally got around to putting up a webpage for my hexaphonic pickups: it's http://www.ubertar.com/hexaphonic. There's a little more info there than at the article I linked to above.
Again, congrats on your project! How do yours sound without the preamp circuit? I'm not a big fan of the sound of active pickups in general, but that's just a matter of personal taste. I haven't had a chance to check out your sound samples yet-- I will soon... but it's almost 4 am here now, so it'll have to wait...
Cheers,
Paul
I finally got around to putting up a webpage for my hexaphonic pickups: it's http://www.ubertar.com/hexaphonic. There's a little more info there than at the article I linked to above.
Again, congrats on your project! How do yours sound without the preamp circuit? I'm not a big fan of the sound of active pickups in general, but that's just a matter of personal taste. I haven't had a chance to check out your sound samples yet-- I will soon... but it's almost 4 am here now, so it'll have to wait...
Cheers,
Paul
In fact, The only sample I've got is this one http://www.carmi.se/misterstarshine/Projects/5/test2.mp3
Can't believe why I haven't uploaded any samples in clean mode. Don't know what I was thinking. The pickup sounds just great in clean mode as well. Although it's more challenging to make it sound good in overdrive mode in my opinion since the noise rejection is more demanding as well as the channel separation.
My hex pickup project is idle at the moment due to studies but I plan to complete the concept with a breakout box. Right now the breakout is a messy breadboard collecting dust.
Can't believe why I haven't uploaded any samples in clean mode. Don't know what I was thinking. The pickup sounds just great in clean mode as well. Although it's more challenging to make it sound good in overdrive mode in my opinion since the noise rejection is more demanding as well as the channel separation.
My hex pickup project is idle at the moment due to studies but I plan to complete the concept with a breakout box. Right now the breakout is a messy breadboard collecting dust.
Some thirty years ago ARP sold a quitar synthesiser that was fed via a hex pickup.
If you are using effects that generate a lot of hash (=IMD) when driven with mixed frequencies (like fuzz) or that won't work at all (like frequency dividers and doublers etc). It would be a clear advantage to chordal playing when you use such pickups and multiple parallel effect ways.
I own an ERB and sometimes I think it would be great to use pickups the are splitted and that feed two seperate EQ sections on a preamp. When the instrument spans such a large range it is quite possible that one string's bloom is the other one's boom and that's where such a system would help.
Regards
Charles
If you are using effects that generate a lot of hash (=IMD) when driven with mixed frequencies (like fuzz) or that won't work at all (like frequency dividers and doublers etc). It would be a clear advantage to chordal playing when you use such pickups and multiple parallel effect ways.
I own an ERB and sometimes I think it would be great to use pickups the are splitted and that feed two seperate EQ sections on a preamp. When the instrument spans such a large range it is quite possible that one string's bloom is the other one's boom and that's where such a system would help.
Regards
Charles
i bought one of those game controllers with the 6 string guitar on evilbay just to get the hex pup off it...gonna be fun to play with. have uses hex pickups with my midi'd guitars for years, they're very cool and useful...there's been a lot of commercial variants, even kramer marketed one back in the 80's...the thing is tho, that for most people, it's overkill..that's why they've never been more popular.
Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead) used quad bass pickups. Sometimes even completely seperate amplification and speakers for each string. His bass wasn't mic'd thru the main PA either, instead of going thru the main board it had its own volume footpedal under the mixing board table, and its own sound system.
The idea has a lot of merit for extremely clean sound IMHO. You can make a single-string pickup with quite a bit of output but not too much resistance or inductance (which cuts the treble) if you really try.
For 'active'...something like high-voltage phantom power for three 12AX7's right in the guitar could make me pretty happy.
The idea has a lot of merit for extremely clean sound IMHO. You can make a single-string pickup with quite a bit of output but not too much resistance or inductance (which cuts the treble) if you really try.
For 'active'...something like high-voltage phantom power for three 12AX7's right in the guitar could make me pretty happy.
see if you can find an old line printer that used hammer solenoids (Printronix or older Genicom or Manesmann-Tally with the big "wobbler" cam). the hammer solenoids are about the right size for building pickups from. there were also some large (3"dia with a 3" long "nose") dot matrix printheads that had 24 solenoids arranged in a circle, and the solenoids were replaceable, and these are another source of coils the right size for a pickup. these printheads were used in NCR check processing machines for printing a bank's endorsement on the back of the check, but i'm sure they were used in large dot matrix printers of some kind elsewhere.
one thing, however, printer solenoids often need to be soaked in alcohol to get all of the ink residue out of them.
one thing, however, printer solenoids often need to be soaked in alcohol to get all of the ink residue out of them.
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