rich365 wrote:
Anyway, for the record, I think I AM comparing apples with apples. I have a set of DiMarzio True Velvet vintage pickups in my Strat and I was comparing to the Tonerider Pure Vintage in Pete's guitar. The Tonerider pickups just sounded a lot fuller with a nicer top end. I have been thinking about it though. Maybe the type of wood and neck and fingerboard has something to do with it too? His guitar has a maple fingerboard and mine has Rosewood. His guitar is also a lot lighter than mine, which has an Alder body.
Different pickups in different guitars. Yes wood and other factors make a difference, so the best pickups for a specific guitar are not necessarily the best for another.
- Alan talks about R&D - I question why this should be expensive. It's a guitar pickup! I mean how much research do you have to do on something that was essentially "perfected" during the 1950's and 60's
They weren't "perfected" - as with most things of the time, they were simply the best that they could do with the materials and technology that they had. The subsequent music and playing styles were as much shaped by those idiosyncrasies as the technology was shaped by the music.
Generally they were of a higher quality (because they were designed with a particular set of materials in mind), but there was a lot of variation from example to example with as many duds as there were "happy accidents" that suited the emerging music. A lot of the R&D in subsequent years has been in unravelling the mysteries behind what made some of them "better" than others. Just as much research has gone into trying to make pickups manufactured with modern materials sound the same as the best examples of the past.
Then there are the new technologies and modern materials that many try to incorporate into modern pickups. Different magnetic materials, advances in magnetic theory, etc. Lace Sensors, EMGs, Noiseless "single-coils", Duncan P-Rails, single-coil sized humbuckers, humbucker size single-coils
It will indeed be cheaper to produce something that has an existing blueprint, hence no "R&D".
Which is why so many companies are willing to simply copy existing designs, allowing others to do their R&D for them and copying the results cheaply. Parallels with Behringer there...
- Being in manufacturing myself I believe in automation - this is exactly what you need for consistent quality and precision
Consistent quality and precision I can go with, but one of the first things you learn about winding is that a perfect coil does not make for the perfect pickup. So ideally you find the imperfections that make it sound better and design and build machines that can copy the imperfections.
It is probably true that it is cheaper to manufacture in the East than in the USA but does the $ not have something to do with it?
It does, but labour will still be a big part of it - even if it's "only" machine and robot techs. Ideally you source raw materials close to your factory too, which are not necessarily as good as those available elsewhere.
I hope I'm not too critical for this forum and your opinions will be valuable.
Heaven forbid! No, this is interesting.
I'll come back to the noiseless pickup debate later...
