Just picked up a used guitar with two alumitones. These are crazy versatile. Tons of output BUT very clear, which is something of a contradiction in my mind. They have that clear attack of a single coil with the body of a humbucker; something I didn't think was possible. They don't muddy up with gain.
They sound like single coils though. It’s too thin and bright for a hum bucking style guitar once you put some gain on there. Just my opinion. I mean there’s a reason why HSS is a very popular config for a strat, no one really wants that single coil thin bright ice pick sound in the bridge position.
@@5urg3x I had the same issue with the Alumitone deathbuckers until I caught a footnote in the instructions recommending 250k pots. Retained the clarity but made them nice and beefy.
The Alumitones sound more sound-like than the more soundish soundishness of the other sound. However, the sound of the different sounds sound different than the different sounds of the other sounds. For me, I prefer the sound to the sound. But that's just my opinion.
Some corections: Aluminium has HIGHER resistivity than copper not the other way round as stated. And this would have very little to do with the sound which is shaped by the magnetic circuit of the pickup together with its built in transformer. Also, just stating the resistance of an pickup has very little to do with its sound. The key here is fequency dependent IMPEDANCE which is something else. Oversimplifications do not help people understand what factors contribute to a certain kind of sound
+nilton61 Maybe you could offer some clarification. I am considering buying the Alumitone's, because I am excited someone is creating a new design out of a new material, and I am always in search of a more versatile signal. I recognize that Lace and their partners way of explaining the technology, is borderline false advertisement. The aluminum exo provides less resistance in the magnetic field that the strings are coming in contact with, which allows the manufacturer to use less materials.... therefore they can make these pickups for cheaper than conventional higher end pickups. The market is not current based vs voltage based, unless someone is trying to replace their active pickups with these. How well balanced are alumitones,? Specifically with dirtier distortions?I am finding reviews everywhere that tell me these cant be beat.... I don't know if these reviews are accurate, or if the guitar reviewing world is joining a cult that Lace has created. This video gives me a great idea if I play blues only.... but its not 1930 anymore. Id love to get someones honest feedback before I waste money on another ploy. Thanks
+joe snyder : A magnetic pickup works by the interaction of a magnetic circuit (magnet and string) and a electric circuit (winding EMF and impedance and amplifier input impedance) by means of a physical phenomenon called induction. The law of induction states that the induced voltage is proportional to the rate of change in flux density, the area covered by the coil and the number of turns in the coil. The induced voltage then interacts with both the winding impedance and amplifier impedance (and to some extent, volume- and tone control and cable impedance) to produce a certain timbre, that is different voltages at different frequencies. What Lace have done is that have designed a pickup with a winding of just 1 turn!. This will yield i a very low output voltage but also a extremely low impedance and more important a very even frequency response. This very low output voltage/impedance is then converted to a higher and more usable one by means of a built in transformer. This transformer is called a secondary in lace terminology and has less impact on coloring the sound since it can be designed with less leakage inductance and less parallel capacitance thus giving higher output levels at higher frequencies. The thing is that this explanation is hard to undertand for a majority of people. Thus greatly oversimplified explanations like the one presented flourish.
That makes perfect sense, I'm not an electrical engineer so I had to do a lot of my own research to understand the basics of the pickup. Your explanation has helped a lot. Thanks for your time. I will have to buy one and try it out. I guess I bought my fat strat style guitar 15 years too late, since the single coils and double coil routing doesn't make much difference anymore, especially with these pickups.
The best feature of the Dissonant Aggressors is they can be coil-split, to a very clean and usable single-coil mode. It still has a lot of body, unlike a lot of split humbuckers that sound very weak on an individual coil, and it also has the very low noise of a Lace Sensor pickup. You could even use that split mode as your normal position, and then shift back into the full humbucker mode to turn it up to 11!
"Let's make a hum free pickup that isn't muddy like humbuckers are": Alumitone "Now let's make a hum free pickup that's even more horribly muddy than humbuckers are": Dissonant Aggressor
I just bought a used GODIN Dorchester with LACE Alumitone pickups. I'd never heard of them before today, and they were not a factor in my purchase decision. I'm rather chuffed to find out how innovative this pickup design is!
Welcome to the club! As you can see from my avatar, I'm a Richmond Dorchester fan as well. I think the pickups are very underrated and I wish you a lot of fun with your guitar. Cheers.
Is there a wiring diagram? I have also 4 pots and want to use coil split with the tone pots. But actually only the Bridge PU works. In a different wiring only the neck PU worked
9:52 Umm, no, alumin(i)um is about 56% MORE resistive than copper for the same cross section, which is why a 200amp mains panel requires 0000 gauge aluminum feeder lines, but only 000 gauge copper. The vast majority of the resistance you're seeing in the Alumitone is still due to it's copper windings. The resistance contributed by that large of a chunk of aluminum would be infinitesimal, but only by virtue of its large cross section and short length. Now impedance? Depending on the dark magic physics the pickup employs, that could be a completely different story altogether.
True, but a block of aluminium tends to have less corrosion and oxidisation issues than copper windings, so it's still a useful idea to minimise copper use. Though it might be better to move the transformers to the control layout. :D
@@user-yv2cz8oj1k Oxidation only happen on exposed surfaces though. As long as the wire insulation is intact and connection endpoints are buried beneath a correctly-made solder joint, it's largely a non-issue. Both copper and aluminum are self-protecting metals -- once the surface is oxidized, it acts as a barrier which inhibits further reaction with atmospheric oxygen. That said, I apparently misunderstood the role of the aluminum in the Alumitone pickup, thinking it was somehow an in-series part of the transducer circuit itself. Turns out the aluminum/magnet "circuit" is completely standalone, and is only coupled _inductively_ to a separate copper coil which *_is_* part of the signal path. Very cool design, in any case.
I would have to agree with a previous comment, the stock pickups sounded the best to my ears. Maybe we are all biased towards the classic tones, but it did sound warmer and also doing the job of transmitting the woody tone of the guitar quite well. The single notes sounded fuller as well. Pretty cool lick by the way.
This just confirms a long held belief that as with girls, when it comes to guitars there is such a thing as 'too clean'. Seriously though the Lover HB was designed to compliment a Les Paul. These Aluminium picks just don't. I have heard the P90 version in a slab body and it sounded alright but really, the imperfect imperfection of the 50's technology is why we all love it. Mr Lace would have a lot in common with the late great Les Paul. Nobody wanted his 'crystal clear' pickups either sadly..
You don't have to understand. Different strokes for different folks. The Alumitones in this video comparison sound a tad bit sterile to me. I don't like muddy as much as I like sterile.
They are much nicer in an RKS, but I'd slap more mahogany in the cavity and change the tone circuit to suit the pickup. A Q filter would be a good addition too.
OOOOOO...so begins every phrase-with a slide! From now on this I will call it pigeonage,it is both a habit and sounds like one.That said thanks for playing consistent chords in all positions.
The Alumitones are OK for the clean sounds but as soon as you push the drive, stock are better to my ears. Besides, the aesthetics are questionable… \m/
Why are there so few or any demonstration of Hemi set? Lots of Nitro Hemi, Drop 'n Gain, Lace Sensor series, even alumitone series getting more attention.
!Personal opinion warning! I thought that the amp being used was colouring the tone of guitars way too much. There was *very* little different in the tone and, from the sound, it sounds like the amp. I don't know what kind of amp you guys used, but I'd suggest using something a little more neutral, like a Marshall JCM, or a Fender Blues Junior, etc.
My favorite by far is the red burst guitar with the Korean PAF clones. The neck alumitone sounds interesting clean, the bridge is way too bright, and with gain they both sound terrible. The other white guitar sounds like it’s trying to mimic active pickups, but doesn’t quite make it. I’m not really a fan of active pickups anyway.
The Alumitone's characteristics have nothing to do with aluminium's conductivity, which is actually poorer than copper's. So when Jeff Lace said "as electrons travel through the aluminum, it offers a greater current flow" he either broke physics or was talking about something else, like the comparatively huge cross-section of that single-turn Al winding. It does not influence the "nuances and characteristics of amplifiers", however. That is just typical marketing bullshit. An interesting design but thoroughly misunderstood, mostly through Lace's own fault.
Or your lack of understanding that he means the width of the aluminium block compared against a single fine copper wire as traditionally used in a pickup. You could recreate this with a copper block, but it's likely to corrode a lot faster.
i remember meeting the lace guys at namm and got to try, at the time, their prototype - not impressed. Sounds like plucking a guitar straight into a computer speaker - lacking depth, richness. Sounds very sterile. But I also thought of something else - if it achieves a great clear sound. Why not making a jazz pickup out of it since a jazzer struggle is when we turn down the tone knob, typical humbucker starts to sound like underwater garbage with no discernable inner voicings even though we play the most complex chords. And finally years later they did (this year).
I just installed one yesterday on my Fender D'Aquisto Elite. I don't remember how I stumbled across it, but I was impressed by the sound of the demo on Lace's site. I've never cared for the muddy sound myself, and so far, I very much like this pickup. I compared it to the supposed Benedetto A6 the guitar came with (not original), and a Lollar humbucker sized Charlie Christian. Yes, I swapped them out in the same guitar, not an easy feat on an archtop. As of right now, the Lace is staying. They are currently on sale for $99.00 on the lace website.
I think people may miss that a major property of Alumitones, according to Lace, is the ability to preserve the original characteristics of guitar effects/processors 'as designed'. Well and good but, one then wonders how then do these manufacturers like Boss ect. test their final results? Guitars I guess, but chances are, not guitars sporting Alumitones. I think certain players will be drawn to the option of alleged neutrality of the Laces though.
Please don't talk about things when you don't understand them. Aluminum is FAR less conductive than copper.. look it up. The reason these are low resistance is because the length of copper used is so much shorter.
If you just slot in new pickups with a flat response with no change to the tone circuit or changes to the setup of the signal path then expect to get a crappy sound.
Just picked up a used guitar with two alumitones. These are crazy versatile. Tons of output BUT very clear, which is something of a contradiction in my mind. They have that clear attack of a single coil with the body of a humbucker; something I didn't think was possible. They don't muddy up with gain.
The clarity of the alumitone pickups is second to none.
are they passive
@@bassa69 Yes. They are.
LOL!
They sound like single coils though. It’s too thin and bright for a hum bucking style guitar once you put some gain on there. Just my opinion. I mean there’s a reason why HSS is a very popular config for a strat, no one really wants that single coil thin bright ice pick sound in the bridge position.
@@5urg3x I had the same issue with the Alumitone deathbuckers until I caught a footnote in the instructions recommending 250k pots. Retained the clarity but made them nice and beefy.
The Alumitones sound more sound-like than the more soundish soundishness of the other sound. However, the sound of the different sounds sound different than the different sounds of the other sounds. For me, I prefer the sound to the sound. But that's just my opinion.
For a moment, I actually tried to make sense of that first sentence. You got me. :D
Exactly
Sound mate
A college man, eh?
Some corections:
Aluminium has HIGHER resistivity than copper not the other way round as stated. And this would have very little to do with the sound which is shaped by the magnetic circuit of the pickup together with its built in transformer.
Also, just stating the resistance of an pickup has very little to do with its sound. The key here is fequency dependent IMPEDANCE which is something else.
Oversimplifications do not help people understand what factors contribute to a certain kind of sound
+nilton61 we stand corrected, we might need to get you a column Nilton!
+Guitar Interactive - The Free Online Guitar Magazine
If this is an offer i will gladly considerate...
+nilton61 Maybe you could offer some clarification. I am considering buying the Alumitone's, because I am excited someone is creating a new design out of a new material, and I am always in search of a more versatile signal.
I recognize that Lace and their partners way of explaining the technology, is borderline false advertisement. The aluminum exo provides less resistance in the magnetic field that the strings are coming in contact with, which allows the manufacturer to use less materials.... therefore they can make these pickups for cheaper than conventional higher end pickups. The market is not current based vs voltage based, unless someone is trying to replace their active pickups with these. How well balanced are alumitones,? Specifically with dirtier distortions?I am finding reviews everywhere that tell me these cant be beat.... I don't know if these reviews are accurate, or if the guitar reviewing world is joining a cult that Lace has created. This video gives me a great idea if I play blues only.... but its not 1930 anymore. Id love to get someones honest feedback before I waste money on another ploy.
Thanks
+joe snyder : A magnetic pickup works by the interaction of a magnetic circuit (magnet and string) and a electric circuit (winding EMF and impedance and amplifier input impedance) by means of a physical phenomenon called induction. The law of induction states that the induced voltage is proportional to the rate of change in flux density, the area covered by the coil and the number of turns in the coil. The induced voltage then interacts with both the winding impedance and amplifier impedance (and to some extent, volume- and tone control and cable impedance) to produce a certain timbre, that is different voltages at different frequencies.
What Lace have done is that have designed a pickup with a winding of just 1 turn!. This will yield i a very low output voltage but also a extremely low impedance and more important a very even frequency response. This very low output voltage/impedance is then converted to a higher and more usable one by means of a built in transformer. This transformer is called a secondary in lace terminology and has less impact on coloring the sound since it can be designed with less leakage inductance and less parallel capacitance thus giving higher output levels at higher frequencies.
The thing is that this explanation is hard to undertand for a majority of people. Thus greatly oversimplified explanations like the one presented flourish.
That makes perfect sense, I'm not an electrical engineer so I had to do a lot of my own research to understand the basics of the pickup. Your explanation has helped a lot. Thanks for your time.
I will have to buy one and try it out. I guess I bought my fat strat style guitar 15 years too late, since the single coils and double coil routing doesn't make much difference anymore, especially with these pickups.
The best feature of the Dissonant Aggressors is they can be coil-split, to a very clean and usable single-coil mode. It still has a lot of body, unlike a lot of split humbuckers that sound very weak on an individual coil, and it also has the very low noise of a Lace Sensor pickup.
You could even use that split mode as your normal position, and then shift back into the full humbucker mode to turn it up to 11!
Those alumitone add a strat/tele characteristic to the LP
finally a pickup for an lp that does not pour mud down your ear.
You can still add the mud if you want.
The Alumitone pickups sound very interesting.I love the concept but all 3 guitars sound good way less low end from the alumitone.
Tweak the signal, job done.
The stock pickups sound the best to me. Clarity is impressive on the alumitones but there’s a tradeoff: they lack authority.
"Let's make a hum free pickup that isn't muddy like humbuckers are": Alumitone
"Now let's make a hum free pickup that's even more horribly muddy than humbuckers are": Dissonant Aggressor
I just bought a used GODIN Dorchester with LACE Alumitone pickups. I'd never heard of them before today, and they were not a factor in my purchase decision. I'm rather chuffed to find out how innovative this pickup design is!
Welcome to the club! As you can see from my avatar, I'm a Richmond Dorchester fan as well. I think the pickups are very underrated and I wish you a lot of fun with your guitar. Cheers.
Unless I missed it, I would like to know what pots and wiring these use? 500K 250K or other?
Love that alumitone sound. Geez...
Be careful now Tom and don't say bad things about EMG pickups cause super strong body building guitarists-philosophers will smite you !!! Ha ha ha
Is there a wiring diagram? I have also 4 pots and want to use coil split with the tone pots. But actually only the Bridge PU works. In a different wiring only the neck PU worked
9:52 Umm, no, alumin(i)um is about 56% MORE resistive than copper for the same cross section, which is why a 200amp mains panel requires 0000 gauge aluminum feeder lines, but only 000 gauge copper. The vast majority of the resistance you're seeing in the Alumitone is still due to it's copper windings. The resistance contributed by that large of a chunk of aluminum would be infinitesimal, but only by virtue of its large cross section and short length. Now impedance? Depending on the dark magic physics the pickup employs, that could be a completely different story altogether.
Yeah, I stopped watching the video at that point. He obviously doesn't do his research.
True, but a block of aluminium tends to have less corrosion and oxidisation issues than copper windings, so it's still a useful idea to minimise copper use. Though it might be better to move the transformers to the control layout. :D
@@user-yv2cz8oj1k Oxidation only happen on exposed surfaces though. As long as the wire insulation is intact and connection endpoints are buried beneath a correctly-made solder joint, it's largely a non-issue. Both copper and aluminum are self-protecting metals -- once the surface is oxidized, it acts as a barrier which inhibits further reaction with atmospheric oxygen.
That said, I apparently misunderstood the role of the aluminum in the Alumitone pickup, thinking it was somehow an in-series part of the transducer circuit itself. Turns out the aluminum/magnet "circuit" is completely standalone, and is only coupled _inductively_ to a separate copper coil which *_is_* part of the signal path. Very cool design, in any case.
They sound amazing but don’t sound too different from single coils, or what one can do with a pickup selector, and a few single coils..
I would have to agree with a previous comment, the stock pickups sounded the best to my ears. Maybe we are all biased towards the classic tones, but it did sound warmer and also doing the job of transmitting the woody tone of the guitar quite well. The single notes sounded fuller as well. Pretty cool lick by the way.
I agree
Do these Alumitones have any need for a treble bleed circuit like traditional humbuckers?
Really like the sound of the Alumitone, very clean and strat like
Half the clips are out of tune. Kind of bothersome.
How do the alumitone compare to alnico classic humbuckers?
The alumitones make a les Paul sound hollow! Couldn't imagine how good they sound in a 339!
It's a flat response, but with modern signal processing you can form the signal envelope how you want with a flat signal output.
The Alumitones seem to sound the same no matter the position of the pickup selector.
great demo.
you've demonstrated that a shit amp will ruin any pickup
good job
This just confirms a long held belief that as with girls, when it comes to guitars there is such a thing as 'too clean'.
Seriously though the Lover HB was designed to compliment a Les Paul. These Aluminium picks just don't. I have heard the P90 version in a slab body and it sounded alright but really, the imperfect imperfection of the 50's technology is why we all love it. Mr Lace would have a lot in common with the late great Les Paul. Nobody wanted his 'crystal clear' pickups either sadly..
"Lace Paul"
I don't understand why anyone would want any muddied tone on their guitars.
You don't have to understand. Different strokes for different folks. The Alumitones in this video comparison sound a tad bit sterile to me. I don't like muddy as much as I like sterile.
They are much nicer in an RKS, but I'd slap more mahogany in the cavity and change the tone circuit to suit the pickup. A Q filter would be a good addition too.
OOOOOO...so begins every phrase-with a slide! From now on this I will call it pigeonage,it is both a habit and sounds like one.That said thanks for playing consistent chords in all positions.
aluminum has more resistance but the aluminum conductor is thicker
The Alumitones are OK for the clean sounds but as soon as you push the drive, stock are better to my ears. Besides, the aesthetics are questionable… \m/
As soon as you push the drive it depends what you are feeding the signal through.
@@user-yv2cz8oj1k Yes of course. I was referring to the signal chain used in the demo video.
Why are there so few or any demonstration of Hemi set? Lots of Nitro Hemi, Drop 'n Gain, Lace Sensor series, even alumitone series getting more attention.
!Personal opinion warning!
I thought that the amp being used was colouring the tone of guitars way too much. There was *very* little different in the tone and, from the sound, it sounds like the amp. I don't know what kind of amp you guys used, but I'd suggest using something a little more neutral, like a Marshall JCM, or a Fender Blues Junior, etc.
+verbw002 You are right some amps like he is using make even cheap pickups sound pretty good
My favorite by far is the red burst guitar with the Korean PAF clones. The neck alumitone sounds interesting clean, the bridge is way too bright, and with gain they both sound terrible. The other white guitar sounds like it’s trying to mimic active pickups, but doesn’t quite make it. I’m not really a fan of active pickups anyway.
Sure there bright sound pretty good but not understanding how they are supposed to be the best pickups ever ?? They got nothing on SeymourDuncan
Could you give the chord progression you are using with possibly the tab
Alumitone FTW!!!!
The Alumitone's characteristics have nothing to do with aluminium's conductivity, which is actually poorer than copper's. So when Jeff Lace said "as electrons travel through the aluminum, it offers a greater current flow" he either broke physics or was talking about something else, like the comparatively huge cross-section of that single-turn Al winding. It does not influence the "nuances and characteristics of amplifiers", however. That is just typical marketing bullshit. An interesting design but thoroughly misunderstood, mostly through Lace's own fault.
Mihai Florea z
Or your lack of understanding that he means the width of the aluminium block compared against a single fine copper wire as traditionally used in a pickup. You could recreate this with a copper block, but it's likely to corrode a lot faster.
Seems to me there is a reason no one makes instruments out of aluminium.
What kind of Korean guitars are these?
Jim Ponder - They are Tuscany Rush C Series Les Paul Copy guitars. ;)
i remember meeting the lace guys at namm and got to try, at the time, their prototype - not impressed. Sounds like plucking a guitar straight into a computer speaker - lacking depth, richness. Sounds very sterile. But I also thought of something else - if it achieves a great clear sound. Why not making a jazz pickup out of it since a jazzer struggle is when we turn down the tone knob, typical humbucker starts to sound like underwater garbage with no discernable inner voicings even though we play the most complex chords. And finally years later they did (this year).
I just installed one yesterday on my Fender D'Aquisto Elite. I don't remember how I stumbled across it, but I was impressed by the sound of the demo on Lace's site. I've never cared for the muddy sound myself, and so far, I very much like this pickup. I compared it to the supposed Benedetto A6 the guitar came with (not original), and a Lollar humbucker sized Charlie Christian. Yes, I swapped them out in the same guitar, not an easy feat on an archtop. As of right now, the Lace is staying. They are currently on sale for $99.00 on the lace website.
are the Lace Alumitone Humbucker passive
Yup
All Lace pickups are passive
Well acoustically those guitars don't sound very good. If you used a really quality guitar you would hear more of that with the Lace Alumitones! @_@
Stock was the best! Dont mistake treble shrill sound for clarity.
I think people may miss that a major property of Alumitones, according to Lace, is the ability to preserve the original characteristics of guitar effects/processors 'as designed'. Well and good but, one then wonders how then do these manufacturers like Boss ect. test their final results? Guitars I guess, but chances are, not guitars sporting Alumitones. I think certain players will be drawn to the option of alleged neutrality of the Laces though.
stock & alumatones sound same to me, the dissonant agressor s sond less trebly
good review of the pickups but actually this guy seems to know nothing about active pickup design.
Please don't talk about things when you don't understand them. Aluminum is FAR less conductive than copper.. look it up. The reason these are low resistance is because the length of copper used is so much shorter.
Jebus! Tom with hair! This is really old.
was it RKS? lol
“First with some clean tone” crunch tone ensues.
Ah, the beginning of the era of people thinking of “light overdrive” as clean….
It's like he couldn't use a decent amplifier because it might show the pickups' weaknesses. Awful "review".
I have the Lace Gold sensor pickups in a Frankenstrat and I pick up that guitar more than all the others! I am sold on the brand!
@@jeffhansen5259 claps for you.
Baduu.
If Tom Quayle can't make these guitars sound good, then what's the point of using these crappy instruments and waste time on making a demo at all?
If you just slot in new pickups with a flat response with no change to the tone circuit or changes to the setup of the signal path then expect to get a crappy sound.
Really like the sound of the Alumitone, very clean and strat like