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Messages - DarthPhineas

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1
The Pickup Place / Re: New Jake Bowen Signature Mirage Pickups
« on: June 28, 2023, 07:16:12 PM »
Mine arrived today.  Installed them with a 5-way super switch to get the Jake Bowen configuration shows in the wiring diagram

Only ran them for a few minutes to confirm proper installation, so not long enough to commit to a definite commentary.  But I am liking what I'm hearing so far, especially with the super switch options

2
My set showed up today.

Will probably install them tomorrow

3
The Pickup Place / Re: New Tone Charts!?!
« on: December 08, 2022, 07:40:08 AM »
What i would love for Dimarzio to do would be to publish inductance and resonant peak frequencies instead, together with oscilloscope traces like in the old 1978 catalog that i have.

adding inductance and resonant peak info puts any pickup maker ahead of the game.  no reason that a company like DiMarzio wouldn't already have that info.


I understand why it will probably never happen, but the major companies coming to an agreement on a standardization of mV measurements would be great for customers.... but these companies operate more out of fear that what can help customers might help customers choose another brand.  lol!

4
The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio EBMM Music Man Axis Bridge Humbucker
« on: December 08, 2022, 07:31:08 AM »
if you haven't already, go poke around http://www.billlawrence.com/

it's a must for any one that is genuinely curious about pickups.

he clarifies concepts such as DCR is not Output.  if magnets "age".  eddy currents.  mV output.  inductance.  and more.

there's a snippet in that site about how tolerances of the nature you're asking about can happen.  I've already laid it out, but maybe reading it from someone else might help clarify it better/more.

5
The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio EBMM Music Man Axis Bridge Humbucker
« on: November 23, 2022, 10:06:34 AM »
Quote
"there are many statements made that the coils of this Humbucker are balanced."
are those people saying the pickups sound balanced or have a balanced voice/character/tone?  or are they saying the specs off the meter show a balanced wind from one coil to another?
The statements are usually based on DCR.

Chasing DCR can be a fool's folly.  Two coils made with the same wire off the same spool can have the same # of turns and have different DCR.  Any one or combination of what was suggested (in the below quote) can apply, as well as any one of countless other oddities that really don't add up to a hill of beans.



Quote
At the end of the day, it could be simple.  One coil was made on one machine by one winder, and the other made on a different machine by a different winder.  Or one was made on Friday afternoon, and the other on Monday AM after a fresh calibration of the winder.  Or maybe a setting shifted and the pitch or tension were tweaked.  Or it was the same winder on the same machine made back-to-back with the same settings, but one coil was the end of a spool of wire and the other coil was from the beginning of another spool.  Or the winder did one coil before lunch, came back to do the second without getting all the sopressata washed off their fingers and it got on the tensioner felt.
I would have expected more consistency and repeatability from a series production like DiMarzio. I'm not a professional winder, just wound a few pickups by myself because of curiosity. Using a very simple winding rig and guiding the wire by hand, I have managed to wind coils that are really close to each other (DCR, Inductance and Capacitance). Would be strange to me that in a professional process there is that much variation.

and yet the late 1950s PAFs from Kalamazoo are some of the most coveted humbuckers out there.

those were made to a timer, not a counter.  a few seconds off could be dozens (or more) of turns on the coil.  they were tossed in a pile and an assembler down the line would just grab whatever off the top and put it in to whatever slot in the guitar.... no "neck" or "bridge" designation.  the materials used was whatever was available that day/week/month... could be alnico 2 on this batch and alnico 4 on that batch and alnico 5 on another.  the facility didn't have climate control as we know it and environmental concerns were like the wild west back then... so you could expect to find a steaming hot big room in the summer with the windows open and no a/c with a bunch of ladies smoking their unfiltered Camel cigarettes while winding with the ash tray (if there even was one) within inches of machinery that was pumping out pickups that some people are paying thousands of dollars for today just to put in a guitar that hangs on a wall in some lawyer's home office and gets the dust wiped off more than it gets played.

I'm not here to defend defend DiMarzio by any means.  but I might suggest than most current big-name pickup makers have consistency, repeatability, and a professional process that we might consider would blow away the conditions currently priceless Gibson humbuckers were made under.  I think Larry is a jackass and he should replace his office staff with ladies that don't have to ride brooms to work.  just as it's my opinion the Carter Duncan Corp (Seymour doesn't own it... and he's retired) is ran by a cabal of buffoons that I wouldn't trust to operate a deck of cards.  and even so, they seem to do well enough to be above the scrutiny of a set that you happen to have that has a spec that you don't understand.

with all encouragement to your efforts..... wind yourself a few hundred pickups (literally) and discover what anomalies you encounter along the way.  I'm guessing by that time that this random coil will make more sense by then.


6
The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio EBMM Music Man Axis Bridge Humbucker
« on: November 15, 2022, 09:20:36 AM »
Jörg,

If I could take a look at your post and maybe unpack a few things

"there are many statements made that the coils of this Humbucker are balanced."
are those people saying the pickups sound balanced or have a balanced voice/character/tone?  or are they saying the specs off the meter show a balanced wind from one coil to another? 

What would be the inductance of each coil in @darthphineas set?
how would someone else know the readings that I took?  lol! I don't post every single spec that I get off every coil for this very reason.  it can/will confuse and/or obsess people with minutiae that can keep them from seeing the forest for the trees. 

Why is the difference so huge in my set (It is actually quite high to be explained by manufacturing tolerances in my opinion)?
But manufacturing tolerances are a fact.  I have 2 sets of these and none of the coils on the respective positions are identical.  In fact, one set has higher inductance on both pickups than the inductance on the other set.  There could be any one of a half-dozen solid reasons for the offset you are seeing in your readings.  Your answers will probably be found with DiMarzio tech support rather than on a forum.

I would have expected the inductance to be closer, if not greater for the screw coil (based on the higher DCR).
There's no rule that the higher the resistance, the higher the inductance.  I have examples of the same model where there's a lower DCR and a higher H.  In fact, in instances where I see that, I prefer the sound of a lower DCR and higher H to the same model with a higher DCR and lower H (in the relative comparison) - but that's me.  Yet it is good to be aware of inductance in the same way it's good to be aware of distributed capacitance, as the notion of DCR being "THE" measurement has fooled too many for too long.  If you haven't already, go poke around Bill Lawrence's website (Wilde pickups) to read his take on Inductance as well as the Q Value.



my questions do not relate to the fact that I'm searching for a specific sound. It rather comes from the mystery that is made around this pickup and understanding the parameters of influencing a pickup's sound.

Here's the part that really matters:

At the end of the day, it could be simple.  One coil was made on one machine by one winder, and the other made on a different machine by a different winder.  Or one was made on Friday afternoon, and the other on Monday AM after a fresh calibration of the winder.  Or maybe a setting shifted and the pitch or tension were tweaked.  Or it was the same winder on the same machine made back-to-back with the same settings, but one coil was the end of a spool of wire and the other coil was from the beginning of another spool.  Or the winder did one coil before lunch, came back to do the second without getting all the sopressata washed off their fingers and it got on the tensioner felt.


7
the existence of a rockstar winder would indicate that there are variances in production that need to be looked at and if you think about it, it works both ways as some could also be worse than the baseline reference.



The term "handwound" is used very generously all over the place.

there's a lot to unpack with both of those comments.  lol!

the short version is that I'm not that much of a fan of the "rockstar" pickup winders concept...

and I think certain marketing approaches have fed in to way too many misconceptions about "handwound" and "scatterwound" and "calibrated set"... and I think one company is behind a lot of the phrasing used to sell over-priced products.

8
The Pickup Place / Re: Which Pickup Features Which Technique
« on: March 30, 2022, 07:32:08 AM »
Updated AT-1, Crunch Lab and Liquifire info from the excellent reviews by DarthPineas.


thanks for the kind words and the reference.

9

Agreed. I always wanted to try a double whammy or megadrive, or at least hear something about them.

have you tried google?   ;)

I've had a megadrive review up on my site for 5 years.    :D

10
The Pickup Place / Re: DiMarzio Dreamcatcher
« on: October 28, 2020, 07:56:27 AM »
Any thoughts/reviews on this pickup?

google "dimarzio dreamcatcher review"

there's an interesting result dated Mar 11, 2020    ;)

11
The Pickup Place / Re: Number of winds/turns per coil
« on: October 28, 2020, 07:54:26 AM »
if you can't find it, it could be because Larry had it shut down.

he's literally threatened to take action against at least one online DiMarzio-themed resource for people discussing the engineering of DiMarzio products as well as posting photos of a DiMarzio product someone bought and disassembled.

let that sink in.  a place started and operated by a fan as a place for other fans to gather, not unlike this forum.  DiMarzio didn't start it and isn't funding it or even supporting it.  and Larry threatened to take action because someone bought a product, which makes it their property, and posted a photo of the bottom with the baseplate removed... which is something that anyone can figure out from the publicly available patent info... as in, it's no big secret.



anyway, good luck on finding the info you're looking for.   ;)

12
The Pickup Place / Re: JP Neck Pickups
« on: October 28, 2020, 07:44:53 AM »
I know that but this is a forum about pickups. We are supposed "want" to know the differences between those. All the details. Does that makes sense to you?
I mean yeah but Darth Phin is right - these are pretty minor changes in pickups that feel and sound very similar. The CL/LF is has the most treble and is the most aggressive overall, the Illuminator has a bit more low-mids and less low bass than that and a brighter but less extended treble (so a growlier rather than snarlier attack under gain), and the Sonic Ecstasy is basically the same tonal recipe as the Illuminator but a bit sweeter on the treble. They're all a great steak, so to speak, it's just a matter of whether you're a skirt steak (CL/LF), NY strip (Illuminator), or ribeye (SE) kinda person. Even JP seems to take them as just evolutionary steps bc every time a new pickup comes out, all of the guitars he still plays switch over to them (JP 15 started with CL/LF, got Illuminators, JP16 started with Illuminators and switched to SE, Majesty did the same).

Welp maybe right about the minor changes but for the record I own both Crunchlab and Illuminator bridge. Tested both on several guitars. Similar but not "that" close.

What I disagree with is telling someone not to sweat the details. Pickup forum bro. Stay curious.

in case it wasn't clear.  probably shouldn't sweat those details.

to break it down for the "bros" that are "curious", JP wants a homogenous result from whatever comes from the output jack of whatever guitar.  the "curious" will note that whenever JP changes up something with his EBMM model, there is generally a new pickup to go along with it.... to... yep, keep the result in line with the basic result he wants hitting his amp.

so, yeah "bro" they are close enough to throw down with some slight amp tweaks to get similar results without dropping $100 on new gear.  which, for anyone "curious" is also what it's about.  like most artist DiMarzio models, JP's cost a little more because he gets a piece of that action.  it's marketing for all the OCD players that thing the slightest bit of this or that will transform their tone so much that the dude ordering another beer will turn around and tell the bartender "Wow! that "bro's" tone really cut through my drunken stupor as the best thing since EVH!  why's that band been playing open mic night at the HoJo for 5 years when they should be on the main stage at OzzFest"

good luck on your tone quest, "bro".  if you're genuinely "curious", you'd be throwing down the $ and trying them out instead of flexing on a message board.

13
The Pickup Place / Re: D-Activator X wire gauge
« on: October 28, 2020, 07:31:05 AM »
whoever you send it to for the rewind should be able to figure it out.... as they'll also need to inspect the existing wire for the type and build of insulation, among all the other details.

14
Tosin Abasi plays 7 and 8 strings.  not sure if his 8th string tuning goes as low as your detuned 7th string.  but he is known for clarity in his tones.

he was using the Ionizer sets when he was with DiMarzio.  I'm selling my Ionizer 7 set.  if interested, you can reach me through my FB, Twitter, or IG, which are all checked daily.

15
Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: PAF MASTER SET REVIEW
« on: July 08, 2020, 04:31:21 PM »
Quote
So I'd say it's my opinion they are doing something that I like.



Fixed.

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