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The Pickup Place / Re: Does Decking a Tremolo Effect Signal to Noise Ratio of Pickups?

« on: November 06, 2021, 03:49:04 AM »

I can see it affecting sustain but signal to noise ratio? Any physics experts here explain how that works?

It won’t even affect sustain. The body doesn’t generate sustain. There’s this big myth that you need to transfer vibrations from the strings to the body and neck. But that’s the opposite of what you want for sustain. You can want the energy from the moving string to stay in the string. The body and neck will remove that energy and the string will stop vibrating. This is conservation of energy.

A solid body has more sustain than an acoustic guitar because the mass of the body means it has a high mechanical impedance. It’s hard for the strings to vibrate the body. So you don’t get much acoustic output but you get long sustain.

Now look at a banjo. Almost all the energy of the string is used to vibrate the head. You get a loud acoustic output and almost zero sustain. 

On a trem, the springs will rob some energy. This is probably why Fender put 5 springs on the trem originally.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Does Decking a Tremolo Effect Signal to Noise Ratio of Pickups?

« on: October 31, 2021, 10:45:41 AM »

I’d say that’s a bunch of nonsense.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Middle pickup suggestions?

« on: September 25, 2021, 05:12:09 PM »

Since you already have two humbuckers I wouldn’t put a single coil in the middle. It won’t hum cancel with the other two (unless you split them, which always sounds weak, IMO)

In my three pickup pickups (always with some form of hum canceling pickups) I find a bright middle pickup works best.

Or get another of what you have there already.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Has anyone ordered direct from Dimarzio lately?

« on: September 02, 2021, 05:31:54 PM »

They were shut down for quite a while last year, so they are really backed up.

I have a client that wanted a Model P for his bass. He called DiMarzio, and several online sellers. They quoted him like 3-6 months. So I ended up making him one instead.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Difference between "W"-labeled Areas and not

« on: August 27, 2021, 01:13:10 PM »

I believe w is white. 


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The Pickup Place / Re: Why doesn’t DiMarzio have any “named” pickup winders

« on: August 03, 2021, 04:22:56 PM »

Because that’s a marketing gimmick.


Agreed. I have used both brands at one time or another. I still see posts where people claim that the J.B. wound by "M.J." is SOOOOOOO much better than the standard J.B. Having used J.B.s on and off for some time, and accidentally getting one that actually was wound by her, I can tell you that the difference is ZILCH, as in ZERO, as in NADA. Aside from manufacturing tolerances from one pickup to the next, there is nothing significant about an "MJ wound" JB that makes it any better than any other. It is part marketing scheme as well as internet myth that somehow MJ winds her pickups, which would be to some sort of spec put forth my Seymour, or another designer, would sound any different than one wound by someone else in that factory.

When I worked at American Showster I installed a set of pickups made by Seymour himself. They were signed too.
They sounded good, but no different than off the shelf pickups. I think they were for Robbin Crosby from Ratt. It’s a long time ago so…

He’s going to train his workers to wind pickups the way he wants them wound.

And really Duncan has one named winder. How about the other 20 (or whatever). Lol


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The Pickup Place / Re: Why doesn’t DiMarzio have any “named” pickup winders

« on: July 12, 2021, 02:13:20 AM »

They use automated winders, but a person operates them. You have to solder on a lead wire, attach the bobbin to the winder, set the number of turns, etc, and then sit and watch it wind. Then remove the bobbin, attach the other lead, and test it.

It is a factory setting, so you might do a couple of hundred bobbins. But it’s not totally automated.

My first week there was spent installing pole piece screws in bobbins with an arbor press. Everyone there takes pride in what they do. I was one of the few people who was actually a player and understood pickups. The woman who was training me was an older woman who had worked there over 20 years. So she was like their “MJ” … they are very secretive. Phones weren’t allowed in the work area. You’ll never see a factory tour on YouTube.

I was surprised how much DiMarzio makes in house. All the patch cables. They had a few elderly ladies sewing straps! The bobbins and magnets all come from the US.




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The Pickup Place / Re: Why doesn’t DiMarzio have any “named” pickup winders

« on: July 10, 2021, 03:14:27 AM »

I wish Larry DiMarzio would do a run of limited edition authentic 1970’s versions of the Super D and FS1.

Larry doesn’t run the company. His daughter does. I think he lives in Montana.

The Super D and FS1 are made exactly the same as the old ones.  Same parts and all. I have a vintage Super Distortion from the 70s. It’s the same as the new ones. The parts all come from the same place.

Also, how many “famous” winders are there? I’m sure Fender had more you never heard of.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Why doesn’t DiMarzio have any “named” pickup winders

« on: July 10, 2021, 03:10:06 AM »

Because that’s a marketing gimmick. Unless you buy some “custom shop” pickup from Duncan, it’s just being made on the shop floor by an employee. 

DiMarzio designs pickups. Steve Blutcher designs a lot of them. And while he probably winds the prototypes, all the production pickups are wound on automated machines by a bunch of experienced workers.

DiMarzio isn’t a big shop. There’s about 8 or 10 people winding pickups. I worked at DiMarzio for a short time. A lot of the workers had been there like 20 years. But you won’t see their name on anything.

Duncan uses the fact that they have one or two “retired” winders from Fender as a marketing ploy. But how many Duncan pickups are hand wound?


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The Pickup Place / Re: Which Pickup Features Which Technique

« on: April 28, 2021, 12:44:29 AM »

Dual resonance just means each coil was wound with different gauge wire.  Usually 43 and 44 AWG.


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The Pickup Place / The feel and response of air pickups

« on: April 20, 2021, 10:15:57 AM »

The 36th also has increased inductance due to small iron slugs installed into the bottom of the bobbin between the pole screws. That warms up the tone.

And the slugs in the slug coil are actually shaped like the screws, with a wide “head” and thin shaft. This was probably to make room for the air spacers. But it also makes both coils have a more similar steel load. It looks like a regular humbucker, but is built very differently. Especially compared to the Duncan.


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The Pickup Place / Re: What is Dimarzio LH7SF1BKL?

« on: March 15, 2021, 03:17:34 PM »

They make a lot of pickups for Ibanez. Even the pickups branded as Ibanez. Might not be an exact DiMarzio model that matches.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Dimarzio tech support MIA?

« on: March 06, 2021, 06:45:24 PM »

Yes, they were shut down for a while. Much of NYC was.


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The Pickup Place / Re: Pickup model winding accuracy

« on: November 09, 2020, 04:45:36 PM »

They use automated winders, with an operator running the machine. So they are all exactly the same.
I know this because I worked there for a short time.

But here’s the thing with hand winding; every hand wound coil is random and therefore different. So you would expect two hand wound single coils wound to the same number of turns to sound different, right? But they don’t.

Old Gibson pickups varied a lot because they just wound the bobbins until they were full. They didn’t count turns very accurately.

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The Pickup Place / Re: HELP KEEP THIS PLACE RUNNING!

« on: October 04, 2020, 01:37:31 AM »

Duncan pickups just more popular. It seems like they care more about promotion than DiMarzio. So there are more Duncan users and that is why their forum is more active.

People like to say that Duncan is more popular, but DiMarzio makes all the OEM guitar pickups for Ibanez and Ernie Ball. Unless it’s a model with Duncan or DiMarzio branded pickups, they are made by DiMarzio. I know this because I worked there for a while. It’s not a very big company. They probably get all the orders they can handle.

To the person running this forum. Please update your Tapatalk plugins. It’s broken. Lots of traffic would come via Tapatalk.