This video is sponsored by Skillshare. The first 500 people who click the following link will get 2 free months of Skillshare Premium: skl.sh/csguitars6 What does a Ground Lift do? Why do Fender guitars have a stripe on their neck? What to the numbered grades of AlNiCo magnets mean? These questions and more are tackled within this Tiny TATAs episode, the littlest questions that you are Too Afraid To Ask. How Microphones Work video: ua-cam.com/video/uSvNrFB7oz4/v-deo.html #TATA #GroundLift #CSGuitars More from CSGuitars: Gain access to exclusive content at: www.patreon.com/csguitars Buy CSGuitars Merchandise: www.csguitars.co.uk/store Website: www.csguitars.co.uk Contact: colin@csguitars.co.uk
I feel like it's really important to mention that "Ground Lift" switches on older combos and heads are NOT for hum canceling, they were fused connections for stage performances where gear could not be properly grounded to earth, such as music festivals out in the desert, fields, etc. Anywhere where equiptment was running off generators / non-mains power. Using these old ground switches is extremely dangerous as if you lift the ground for your amplifier and make contact with something else that IS grounded, ex a piece of metal, or even concrete which retains a lot of water even significantly after drying out, you can be shocked and in worst case scenarios, electrocuted to death, If the current passes through your heart. If you have an old Fender with a 3 way or two way switch that says "Ground Fuse" or something to that effect, DO NOT TOUCH IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT UR DOING. Improperly grounded gear can be extremely deadly, as was the case for the vocalist of English rock band Stone The Crows, whose vocalist was famously electrocuted to death mid show by an improperly grounded microphone. I have personally been shocked by a vintage fender amp before as I wasn't aware how the ground lift switch worked, and I touched my elbow to the bridge of my bass while bending down and flicking the on switch for my fender Stage Lead 1X12 which our guitarist was using, the ground was lifted and it sent a shock up my arm and luckily into the bridge as had my elbow not been grounded to the bridge, the current likely would've crossed clean through my chest and out my other hand grounding into my strings which I was also holding at the time. SO BE CAREFUL!!!
"The stripe is to show it's poisonous nature and ward off any predators interested in devouring the poor creature. Its biggest enemy is, alas: Man. For man's pure drive to play Stairway To Heaven in its local Guitar Center will surely be the demise of us all"
The only way to combat the “Stairway To Heaven” players at GC is to fight fire with fire... Crank up that solid state beginners amp and unleash some poorly tapped “Thunderstruck” to assert dominance.
The angled pickup is an overlooked element of the Hendrix sound, from when he played a righthander strung upside down, giving the high strings the rounder hollow tone and the bass strings a sharp twang.
Weirdly, Stu of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard used a Hagstrom F12 with a microphonic pickup and used it quite often to feedback or make weird sounds
Thank you for the quickest easiest explanation of a ground lift. I had no idea what position it should be in and what it did and didn't know if I was causing damage by not having in the correct position. After watching this it makes perfect sense and i was able to connect everything and cancel all the humming :) thank you!!!
Too afraid to ask what "out of phase" actually means in terms of guitar pick ups. I am aware of what phasing is with microphones but I don't see how it relates itself to guitar pickups.
It's about the electrical signal from the pickups. Two pickups together will send two signals, and how those electrical signals combine together differs when in or out of phase. In phase, the signals are added together. Out of phase, the signals subtract.
If you recall that the signal coming out of a pickup is basically an electrified form of the waveyboi the string is doing, there are two ways guitar coils can be "phased": "In phase" basically means that the pickups are wired together in such a way as their output signals reinforce each other. You get a stronger, hotter signal as each coil pushes and pulls the other and vice versa. The strongest tones from each pickup get reinforced by the weakest tones from the other pickup. This is how the bridge and neck pickups of a strat are phased, and if you have your strat custom modded to be able to use just those pickups together somehow, you can get some ferocious hum out of them. "Out of phase" means that the pickups are wired together in such a way as their outputs INTERFERE with each other. You get a weaker signal as each coil essentially pushes or pulls AGAINST each other simultaneously, negating the weaker tones from each pickup whilst allowing the stronger tones to come out. So where each pickup has its strongest output, that's what ends up in the overall output signal. The middle pickup on a strat is typically "out of phase" to the other two pickups, and the two intermediate stops on a strat's pickup selector (not the middle-most stop, mind you) select some combination of bridge or neck with middle pickup to get some hum cancellation because of their out-of-phase-ness (more on that in a minute). In both cases, phase wiring can be done in one of two ways, depending on what's called the pickup's "polarity". This is determined by which end of the pickup's magnets are pointing towards the string, and which direction the pickup's coil is wound. Change either of those, and you change the pickup's polarity, and therefore you flip the output signal upside down or right side up. You can also do this by switching which wire you use as the pickup's output wire, without even having to swap the magnets around or rewind the coil. When the pickups share the same polarity, they are said to be "in phase". Where one pickup outputs a positive peak, so does the other, and these signals reinforce each other. And where the pickups share the opposite polarity, they are said to be "out of phase". Where one pickup outputs a positive peak, the other pickup outputs a negative, and these signals will cancel each other out, leaving only the tiny bit left over from whichever pickup had the stronger signal. Humbucker pickups use this to their advantage. With a single bar magnet underneath that has its north and south poles along its long edges, each coil of the humbucker has opposite polarity if wound in the same direction. They produce stronger output compared to a single coil because you have two coils with more turns of coil overall compared to a single, but they're a little bit less sharp on the high end because the opposite phases reign each other in somewhat. But the cleverness of this is the hum cancellation... That is mains hum, and you are constantly surrounded by it whether you know it or not. The electrical wiring wherever you are is constantly buzzing with a recognizable 50Hz or 60Hz wave, and this wave generates an electromagnetic field. This makes transformers emit a characteristic humming sound... and so, too, will it make your guitar hum as well, as the pickups can quite literally pick up on that electromagnetic field and convert it into output. In a humbucker pickup, this creates an electrical phenomenon known as "common mode noise" across both coils. I.E. it's "noise" that is consistent and identical across multiple conductors. It's noise that perfectly cancels itself out between pickups that are out of phase with one another. Exactly as humbuckers are, or the middle pickup on a strat to the bridge or neck. :)
Nicely done. I'll add to the discussion of magnet types the identification of CuNiFe magnets, which were used in the legendary Fender Wide Range Humbuckers. This is an alloy of copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and iron (Fe). Not as brittle as AlNiCo, they could be machined to have a thread, which was frustratingly next to impossible with AlNiCo. The threading allowed them to be height-adjustable polepieces. The old DeArmond Dynasonics had height-adjustable AlNiCo polepieces, but the polepieces themselves couldn't be moved. Their height was adjusted via the bracket each polepiece sat on. RE:Potting. I've been winding my own pickups for myself for almost 40 years. Not placing myself in front of a dimed Marshall stack, the risk of feedback from microphonic pickups is not THAT severe, but still exists. While having the potting wax soak into the entire coil is optimal, really it's the outside 1/3 of the coil where the greatest risk of loose turns occurs; the inner 2/3 being more tightly wound. So, I do two things. I pot my coils from the outside by laying the coil/bobbin on its side, holding a candle several inches above, and melting the candle with a heat gun or hair dryer. Applying gentle heat after the drops have landed on the coil helps it to soak in. The second thing I do is use teflon plumber's tape to wrap the coil more tightly. It's cheap, almost exactly the same width as the coil, conforms nicely to the shape of the coil, and has no adhesives. Once the coil is taped up, one can then apply whatever decorative tape you want over top of that. Such tape can be removed in future, without damaging the coil because the teflon tape is protecting it.
Because of the way one frets a guitar, the apex of your string wave comes closer to the bridge the higher the note. On top of that, overtones have more apexes and therefore more apexes closer to the bridge so the closer your pickup to the bridge, the more higher frequencies will be picked up
I have cousins who are in a local band and they sometimes play in some really old venues. I am talking about buildings that were new in 1900. Some of the wiring and grounding issues are really a mess. I was loading them into a gig and when we powered the whole thing up, it was crazy. Ground lifts were the only solution. Every effect pedal was affected, every mic, the amps...and add a single coil guitar to the mix and you had a cacophony of hums, buzzes, pops, crackles and some sounds I can't put a name to. We ended up buying a power conditioning unit that everything plugs into. Only one connection to the venue. The Furman brand is what we chose. No ground lifts needed.
What are the most important things to know about gains, pre/post mixer stuff, sends, returns, etc? I’ve been doing a lot of research on different ways to use my passive mixer and came across your videos! Really like your knowledge and ways you explain this type of stuff!
hot guitar builder tip: slanting the bridge pickup the opposite way to the strat is quite nice for guitars that are going to be playing mostly metal and djent. it gives the low strings more bite for chugging riffs while mellowing the lead strings to sweeten up sweep picked arpeggios. I've done this on one of my basses to great effect.
This! They had some strange ideas in the sixties on what harmonic content should be in a sound for it to work in a mix. It's like with the selector on Les Pauls: The neck pickup is labeled rhythm and the bridge labeled lead, but many players today use them in the opposite way, since you often want a thinner sound for chordal work to avoid muddin up the mix, and a fuller sound for solos.
Hey, here's a topic for you. How to set up two guitar amps in a band with two guitarsts so that you don't clash with each other, bass and drums, and it sounds good. I am talking mid gain, heavy classic punk-rock, but any general ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.
If both setups are very similar just try no not play the exact same thing at the same time. However any difference in setup can also help to stand them apart
Hi Colin! Have you ever had a fuzz pedal pick up local radio signals and play them through your amp? You should do a video on the physics behind this phenomena! Cheers, -Adam Taylor
As an electrical engineering student and a guitar player. I love you vids. Keep up the great work. I am probably going to add your bucket brigade video to my list of external sources for my students in the signals class I ta in because of how well you describe aliasing.
Another note, my fender with a rosewood board has a skunk stripe, just because the look is so popular they include it even when it’s unnecessary. Further proving your point about the aesthetic success of the solution.
Could you talk about the differences between blade/rail style pickups and traditional slug/screw pole piece pickups and why the rail style is much less common?
This is my favourite guitar/music related tech channel out there. Awesome work explaining that clearly and editing that smoothly every time. Greetings from a mexican fan, man!
Regardless of whatever numbers that link ends up doing, I really hope Skillshare appreciates the effort you put into holding up your end of the bargain. You make the sponsored content portion entertaining and pertinent, and the little progress bar is a nice touch.
Honestly, it takes minimum effort to make an entertaining sponsor section. It really comes down to how much you care about what you're promoting and how much you care about your audience.
I have un-potted pickups in a 50s style LP I built. They are very microphonic, but I don’t find them particularly difficult to control. Once I turn the sustain down on my compressor, they behave like my other pickups. On a cramped stage with multiple amps and monitors that might be different though.
Colin mentions that AlNiCo magnets are superior to the previous low-performance Iron magnets. 0:40 Unsaid was the fact they were also superior to the subsequent Ferrite Ceramic low-cost magnets. That is why some players prefer them despite their cost. Neodymium magnets were a further improvement, too powerful perhaps for some old-fashioned brown tones, but much less weight to achieve useable strength.
I've got a guitar with microphonic pickups and I often use my phone to play samples through them and into my pedalboard. The guitarist from black midi does as well I believe
Potting really does reduce the harmonic response of the pickups a little bit. I didn't believe it either until I saw the plots from some tests that Wolfe MacLeod of Wolfetone Pickups did a few years back.
My dumbs comments aside, your clarity is appreciated. Great work, you’re a natural educator. I know, I’m a teacher. Not everyone can do it. One interesting note, the most recent wide range humbuckers from fender are unpotted, trading microphonic problems you describe for a more open and airy tone. So it’s a trade off. They sound great, but are feedback prone.
I wish I could have heard all my class lectures in this voice. I would have had such an easier time retaining information. This channel is just the best. 🙏🏼
The strength of the magnet has no direct influence on the tone of the pickup. The difference in tone is caused by the fact that a pickup with a stronger magnet can have the same output with less windings and therefore kill less of the highs. Furthermore, a higher output will obviously give a more saturated tone as it drives the input of the tube amp harder.
About the strat pickups, I thought the pickups (at least the originals) where identical in all positions, you can adjust the volume difference by adjusting pickup distance from strings. Also, the angling of he bridge pickup must have had some other roots, back to early telecaters and the lap steels, probably to make the new guitars look familiar or maybe they had a bunch of lap steel pickups laying around but they needed to be angled to fit the narrower string spacing of the tele. Just a hypothesis. Another question could be why all pickups are not angled then? Or maybe angled differently? Mainly because it would look strange. And once the trend is set, you can make up reasons why "wound strings sound worse if pickup is close to bridge".
Quite a few folks still like unpotted pickups - they do have just a hair more high end which I really enjoy. The SD Antiquities are one of the more popular models sold like that, although they are in the vintage output range so maybe that helps with the feedback?
It's not so much much the strength of the magnet that alters the tone but it's permiability - how well it behaves as the inductive core of a coil. Iron alone is really good at this, and the more you have of this the darker the sound, ceramic and neodymium magnets behave similar to air in this respect and more and bigger magnets can be added to boost output without altering tone. Alnico is quite permiable but not as permiable as iron, and permiability changes with the grade of alnico.
Great video. These TATA ones are really great because if you haven't already asked yourself about something yet you would eventually get there so keep up the good cause! My TATA is how does the effect of the valves change if you blast volume with lower tone control settings versus the opposite on an old super reverb amp until you reach desired (or allowed) output volume?
I’ve potted all my vintage pickups and didn’t notice any change in tone or volume. It’s not changing the magnetic field at all so I don’t see how it would…. But people swear by it.
Interestingly, resin potting was also used for vintage computer components and is proving to be damaging to these vintage components, as is in the case with some of the vintage Apollo Guidance Computer hardware that has been recovered from the development and test phases of the Apollo program, making some modules no longer functional. Now, modern resins may not have this issue, but it's worth considering, certainly.
I live in Arizona. I can confirm that leaving a pickup (thankfully uninstalled) in the car during the summer will result in wax flowing out of the pickup.
Depending on which ones your talking about, it's either one loop of a thick wire around a magnet or the magnet is surrounded by a metal plate similar to how a regular pickup works but with the plate/wire taking the place of the coil of very thin magnet wire. This creates a sensing circuit hence the name and then a transformer boosts the voltage to a more usable amount.
Here is a TATA, I found my dad's old digital home theatre system receiver. It's rated at 100 watt at 8 ohm. Would it work being plugged into a guitar cab. Perhaps this would be a game changer with something like a kemper
What I never thought about was that cobalt is number 27 and has one electron less, but weighs more than nickel at 28 and one electron more. Does it have more neutrons? I forget the particle physics completely. Regarding pickups, I hear that today's alnico 2 are often more powerful than the vintage alnico 2 and sometimes even older alnico 5 etc. However I don't know if that's due to losing the magnetic properties over time or the original specs. It's also noteworthy that the skunk stripe is so traditional that even Fenders that didn't necessarily need the stripe got one in later years. People just liked it or expected to see it.
Don't most of the larger pickup mfgs use vacuum wax potting? Where they pot them inside a vacuum chamber in order to vacuum the air out of the chamber while pulling the wax into every nook & cranny in the coil wires and pickup?
The difference is the material the transistors are made from. Germanium and silicon semiconductors have very different response characteristics both in their junction forward voltage and electron/hole mobility. Germanium transistors are able to function faster than silicon, but they are less stable to voltage and temperature. Semiconductor physics is a whole thing. Maybe I pluck up the courage to talk about it one day.
I know that wasn't really the point, but I feel like there's artistic reasons you'd use an unpotted pickup. There's styles where weird guitar noises are not only fine, but desirable! I imagine some punk and noise rock bands have played around with that to great effect.
Update: I actually know of one, turns out! Nagi, of the Japanese nu-core band OHAYOGOZAIMAS, often sings backup vocals (well, shouts, y'know how punk-flavored music is!) and sometimes on stage he'll just shout into his pickup! I'm not sure if he does this since switching from an old Yamaha LP clone to his new Jazzmaster HH, as that pickup is almost certainly potted, but it's a fun move.
Hi Colin, here’s my TADA. Why do electric guitars have sound holes if their pickups aren’t microphonic? Is it purely cosmetic or weight saving or what???🤨. Cheers. Jim.
Colin youre, a genius... Afraid to ask stuff is brilliant.. Coz im afraid to ask lol.. A, wee fellow scot tae... Thank you so much for these videos.. Do some repairs at times.. While i can guess whats happening eith somethhing... You have taken out the mystery.. Cheers
Coming soon to Dunoon to visit my childhood home, and I will have a week to look for guitar shops, haggis and whiskey all about Scotland. Can you recommend any epic guitar shops? Any other places I shouldn't miss? ..... Thanks for all that you do!
Of course he wasn't. Potting coils was a well established procedure long before EVH was on the scene. We've been doing it for transformer coils for as long as there has been transformers. Frankly the reason guitar pickups weren't potted for a short while in the 50s is probably due to ignorance in the then emerging electric guitar manufacturing industry. Also, the word experimenting suggests theory, hypothesis, and scientific process. What Eddie did was fuck around blindly until something worked. He ruined as many guitars as he got right.
@@ScienceofLoud Thanks Colin , clears that up , I did hear Eddie ruined a lot of guitars , Thanks again, always look forward to your posts , I have learned a lot from them.
Great video thanks. Would you be able to explain the following in a video when you have time please? In a FX loop (in particular on the Boss Waza tube amp expander), there is a level switch (+4dBu, -10dBu). How would you know when to use which (+4dBu vs. -10dBu)? For instance I have an EP booster pedal from Exotic that I wanted to plug on the FX Loop but I don't know in which position to set the switch. I checked online but could not find a proper explanation or how to find out. Thanks. Cheers.
what is the difference between a preamp pedal and normal one?? how do you know which is which?? and what is the way to use them properly?? Hello from Uruguay
Tiny TATA: PA speaker size - if an 8" and 15" have similar loudness and usable frequency range, why use the larger size? The consensus is typically to use a 12 or 15" speaker - is that just old practice, or is there a practical reason?
You're like a guitar professor lol you make learning fun :) (even though I might have known one or two of the things I enjoy your take and presentation. Good work!)
Too afraid to ask: is a tuner pedal not just a tuner pedal? I bought a Boss tuner pedal which works great, yet the other guitarist in my band bought a much cheaper pedal that tunes his guitar just fine. What is the difference between different quality tuners so long as they tune the guitar properly?
The original Ceramic Magnet hex pole Schaller humbucker pickup from my red 1983 Kramer Pacer Special! I put up with it for 30+ years squeeling and yeah, I could yell in it and hear my voice over the amp. I should have waxed it, but I swapped it out 10 years ago with a MUCH better, wax potted Alnico V magnet humbucker that made that guitar sing like it should have from the start. Eddie anyone?... Lots of mids, so now I can be haired :)
Ahhh, the skunk stripe.....takes me back to the early 90s when I used to enjoy a nice bit of skunk myself 😆 Back in those days we used to work all week and go camping or some free festival in the back arse of Malvern with our guitars and a nice bag of skunk, maybe some mushrooms or some acid. Those were the days when we'd use those things and not let them use us....Not like the wastrels and ne'er do wellers of today who spend their entire days smoking that stuff. Moderation is the key. A little bit of it opens your mind but too much burns your soul. ✌
Great video. Do you use Cobalt-Lithium-Nitrogen magnets in your custom made pickups? ok, i'll see myself out now, but before I exit, I still have a tata. Adjusting pickup height. The more I mess around with it, the worse it sounds.
So let's say that I'm totally insane and would like the middle pickup of the custom Hendrix guitar I've been building to feedback more easily at lower volumes. Is there a way to safely "de-pot" the pickup without harming the coils and/or plastic housing?
Hey how’d you go with circuit bending that tc shimmer verb? I’ve got one and I never use it so I was wondering if there’s any decent bends I could do to it?
Colin, can you please explain, as a tata, why it is that if you turn down the guitar volume (say to 7) and then use a boost pedal to boost the guitar signal to the same volume as when the guitar's volume control was on 10, you get a different sound.
The output impedance of the guitar and the capacitance of the cable forms a filter. when you change the volume you change the output impedance of the guitar and thus the filter
I'm not Colin, but I'll give it a shot. Wall of text ahead. There's an electronic circuit called a voltage divider, whose purpose is to take an input signal and reduce it to a lower level as desired. It's made of two resistors, and it has a total of three contact points - the input, the output (which is the mid-point between the two resistors) and the ground point. A volume pot is a variable voltage divider because as you're turning it, you're changing how much resistance there is between the input and the output (the series resistance), as well as between the output and the ground point (the parallel resistance). When your volume pot is turned down, the resistances inside are divided so there's maximum resistance in series, but minimum to none in parallel. When there's no resistance in parallel, all the signal from your pickup just goes to ground (because it's literally the path of least resistance) and the guitar is dead silent. As you're turning your volume up, the resistances are readjusted so the parallel resistance grows (preventing all of the signal from just rushing to ground), and more and more signal start going through the output mid-point, and your volume slowly grows until you're at full volume and the entirety of the resistance is parallel. The reason the volume changes also affect tone is that pickups aren't ideal sources - they're coils (inductors), which physically tend to pass low frequencies and block high frequencies, and once your pair them up with a parallel resistor, they end up behaving like a filter that gives whatever signal gets collected by the pickup a distinct coloration (by virtue of letting more or less of some frequencies through). Inductor-resistor circuits (LR circuits) where the resistor is in parallel are low-pass filters, and the bigger the resistor is, the more frequencies it passes through. So as you're turning the volume down, you're making the parallel resistor smaller, moving that frequency cut-off point more "downwards" towards the lower frequencies. This is also the reason why, if you take a guitar with 500k volume potentiometers and swap them for 250k volume potentiometers, it will sound a lot "darker" when turned to full. No matter how much boost you put after such a guitar, it won't sound as bright as a 500k volume-equipped guitar.
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This video is sponsored by Skillshare.
The first 500 people who click the following link will get 2 free months of Skillshare Premium: skl.sh/csguitars6
What does a Ground Lift do? Why do Fender guitars have a stripe on their neck? What to the numbered grades of AlNiCo magnets mean?
These questions and more are tackled within this Tiny TATAs episode, the littlest questions that you are Too Afraid To Ask.
How Microphones Work video: ua-cam.com/video/uSvNrFB7oz4/v-deo.html
#TATA #GroundLift #CSGuitars
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Contact:
colin@csguitars.co.uk
𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐮𝐩𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐠𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝. 𝐈 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐬𝐲𝐥𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚. 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐣𝐨𝐛 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐆𝐢𝐛𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐫, 𝐈 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝟔𝟎 𝐜𝐲𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬. 𝐈 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟐 𝐋𝐞𝐬 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞. 𝐒𝐨 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭, 𝐈 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐫, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦. 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤, 𝐬𝐨 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐡𝐮𝐦, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞, "𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠." 𝐓𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐥𝐲. 𝐒𝐨 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞, 𝐈 𝐩𝐥𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐬 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥 (𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐰, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝) 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐮𝐦, 𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐚 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟎 𝐒𝐆, 𝐚 𝟏𝟗𝟔𝟔 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐈𝐈, 𝐚 𝟔𝟎'𝐬 𝟏𝟑𝟓, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟒 𝐋𝐞𝐬 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐈 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧? 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬.
I feel like it's really important to mention that "Ground Lift" switches on older combos and heads are NOT for hum canceling, they were fused connections for stage performances where gear could not be properly grounded to earth, such as music festivals out in the desert, fields, etc. Anywhere where equiptment was running off generators / non-mains power. Using these old ground switches is extremely dangerous as if you lift the ground for your amplifier and make contact with something else that IS grounded, ex a piece of metal, or even concrete which retains a lot of water even significantly after drying out, you can be shocked and in worst case scenarios, electrocuted to death, If the current passes through your heart. If you have an old Fender with a 3 way or two way switch that says "Ground Fuse" or something to that effect, DO NOT TOUCH IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT UR DOING. Improperly grounded gear can be extremely deadly, as was the case for the vocalist of English rock band Stone The Crows, whose vocalist was famously electrocuted to death mid show by an improperly grounded microphone. I have personally been shocked by a vintage fender amp before as I wasn't aware how the ground lift switch worked, and I touched my elbow to the bridge of my bass while bending down and flicking the on switch for my fender Stage Lead 1X12 which our guitarist was using, the ground was lifted and it sent a shock up my arm and luckily into the bridge as had my elbow not been grounded to the bridge, the current likely would've crossed clean through my chest and out my other hand grounding into my strings which I was also holding at the time. SO BE CAREFUL!!!
777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777
I'm here to hear you say PECKUP
I haired it, too! 🤘😉
Or Woood!!
@@H_A_R_M extremely underrated response
Great... Now it can't be unheared =l
Don't forget the "Bredge"
"The stripe is to show it's poisonous nature and ward off any predators interested in devouring the poor creature. Its biggest enemy is, alas: Man. For man's pure drive to play Stairway To Heaven in its local Guitar Center will surely be the demise of us all"
This. This was the correct answer.
I got it wrong again.
@@ScienceofLoud Damnit Colin, can we even watch those videos without double checking everything you say ?
I am just as unreliable a source as any other. Double checking would be a smart thing to do.
The only way to combat the “Stairway To Heaven” players at GC is to fight fire with fire... Crank up that solid state beginners amp and unleash some poorly tapped “Thunderstruck” to assert dominance.
ShredAimlessly92
One Riff to rule them all, One Riff to fight them,
One Ring to bring them all to guitar center and in the darkness bind them.
*0 3 5*
The fact that you show how long the ad is automatically makes you the best guitar channel.
Where does it show? I must have missed it.
I just fast-forward.
Alnico = Aluminium Nickel Cobalt.
Alright, now how am i supposed to sleep now that my mind is blown ? Thanks, Colin.
The angled pickup is an overlooked element of the Hendrix sound, from when he played a righthander strung upside down, giving the high strings the rounder hollow tone and the bass strings a sharp twang.
I guessed the skunk stripe reason correctly. 20 years in carpentry has finally paid off! Boom goes the dynamite!
Weirdly, Stu of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard used a Hagstrom F12 with a microphonic pickup and used it quite often to feedback or make weird sounds
That man is an animal with that guitar. Sad to see he has put it down for touring and uses a 12 string sg now
Thank you for the quickest easiest explanation of a ground lift. I had no idea what position it should be in and what it did and didn't know if I was causing damage by not having in the correct position. After watching this it makes perfect sense and i was able to connect everything and cancel all the humming :) thank you!!!
Flawless like always, such a pitty there's no bassplayer explaining like you. Congrats
*peckup intensifies*
I think one of the reasons I love your videos are so amazing is partly because of your accent.
Acksendt
Yes, I wonder if he is as popular where he lives? For us here in the states, it’s kind of like watching old cartoons, or Shrek. 😂
Too afraid to ask what "out of phase" actually means in terms of guitar pick ups. I am aware of what phasing is with microphones but I don't see how it relates itself to guitar pickups.
It's about the electrical signal from the pickups. Two pickups together will send two signals, and how those electrical signals combine together differs when in or out of phase. In phase, the signals are added together. Out of phase, the signals subtract.
This would make a good topic, especially if you get into players who use out-of-phase pickups to their advantage like Peter Green or Brian May.
If you recall that the signal coming out of a pickup is basically an electrified form of the waveyboi the string is doing, there are two ways guitar coils can be "phased":
"In phase" basically means that the pickups are wired together in such a way as their output signals reinforce each other. You get a stronger, hotter signal as each coil pushes and pulls the other and vice versa. The strongest tones from each pickup get reinforced by the weakest tones from the other pickup. This is how the bridge and neck pickups of a strat are phased, and if you have your strat custom modded to be able to use just those pickups together somehow, you can get some ferocious hum out of them.
"Out of phase" means that the pickups are wired together in such a way as their outputs INTERFERE with each other. You get a weaker signal as each coil essentially pushes or pulls AGAINST each other simultaneously, negating the weaker tones from each pickup whilst allowing the stronger tones to come out. So where each pickup has its strongest output, that's what ends up in the overall output signal. The middle pickup on a strat is typically "out of phase" to the other two pickups, and the two intermediate stops on a strat's pickup selector (not the middle-most stop, mind you) select some combination of bridge or neck with middle pickup to get some hum cancellation because of their out-of-phase-ness (more on that in a minute).
In both cases, phase wiring can be done in one of two ways, depending on what's called the pickup's "polarity". This is determined by which end of the pickup's magnets are pointing towards the string, and which direction the pickup's coil is wound. Change either of those, and you change the pickup's polarity, and therefore you flip the output signal upside down or right side up. You can also do this by switching which wire you use as the pickup's output wire, without even having to swap the magnets around or rewind the coil.
When the pickups share the same polarity, they are said to be "in phase". Where one pickup outputs a positive peak, so does the other, and these signals reinforce each other. And where the pickups share the opposite polarity, they are said to be "out of phase". Where one pickup outputs a positive peak, the other pickup outputs a negative, and these signals will cancel each other out, leaving only the tiny bit left over from whichever pickup had the stronger signal.
Humbucker pickups use this to their advantage. With a single bar magnet underneath that has its north and south poles along its long edges, each coil of the humbucker has opposite polarity if wound in the same direction. They produce stronger output compared to a single coil because you have two coils with more turns of coil overall compared to a single, but they're a little bit less sharp on the high end because the opposite phases reign each other in somewhat. But the cleverness of this is the hum cancellation...
That is mains hum, and you are constantly surrounded by it whether you know it or not. The electrical wiring wherever you are is constantly buzzing with a recognizable 50Hz or 60Hz wave, and this wave generates an electromagnetic field. This makes transformers emit a characteristic humming sound... and so, too, will it make your guitar hum as well, as the pickups can quite literally pick up on that electromagnetic field and convert it into output. In a humbucker pickup, this creates an electrical phenomenon known as "common mode noise" across both coils. I.E. it's "noise" that is consistent and identical across multiple conductors. It's noise that perfectly cancels itself out between pickups that are out of phase with one another. Exactly as humbuckers are, or the middle pickup on a strat to the bridge or neck. :)
The little pre-ad striped box in the corner was a nice touch, brings back memories
I came here primarily to learn about the Skunk Stripe. I also acquired knowledge to unanswered questions about my pickups. Bravo! Awesome video!
"It'll be Christmas before you know it, and what will you have accomplished?" Well, I have some bad news from the future.
Underrated comment. Lol!
Nicely done. I'll add to the discussion of magnet types the identification of CuNiFe magnets, which were used in the legendary Fender Wide Range Humbuckers. This is an alloy of copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and iron (Fe). Not as brittle as AlNiCo, they could be machined to have a thread, which was frustratingly next to impossible with AlNiCo. The threading allowed them to be height-adjustable polepieces. The old DeArmond Dynasonics had height-adjustable AlNiCo polepieces, but the polepieces themselves couldn't be moved. Their height was adjusted via the bracket each polepiece sat on.
RE:Potting. I've been winding my own pickups for myself for almost 40 years. Not placing myself in front of a dimed Marshall stack, the risk of feedback from microphonic pickups is not THAT severe, but still exists. While having the potting wax soak into the entire coil is optimal, really it's the outside 1/3 of the coil where the greatest risk of loose turns occurs; the inner 2/3 being more tightly wound. So, I do two things. I pot my coils from the outside by laying the coil/bobbin on its side, holding a candle several inches above, and melting the candle with a heat gun or hair dryer. Applying gentle heat after the drops have landed on the coil helps it to soak in. The second thing I do is use teflon plumber's tape to wrap the coil more tightly. It's cheap, almost exactly the same width as the coil, conforms nicely to the shape of the coil, and has no adhesives. Once the coil is taped up, one can then apply whatever decorative tape you want over top of that. Such tape can be removed in future, without damaging the coil because the teflon tape is protecting it.
Because of the way one frets a guitar, the apex of your string wave comes closer to the bridge the higher the note. On top of that, overtones have more apexes and therefore more apexes closer to the bridge so the closer your pickup to the bridge, the more higher frequencies will be picked up
So the notes are getting higher as you ascend the neck? 😂
I have cousins who are in a local band and they sometimes play in some really old venues. I am talking about buildings that were new in 1900. Some of the wiring and grounding issues are really a mess. I was loading them into a gig and when we powered the whole thing up, it was crazy. Ground lifts were the only solution. Every effect pedal was affected, every mic, the amps...and add a single coil guitar to the mix and you had a cacophony of hums, buzzes, pops, crackles and some sounds I can't put a name to. We ended up buying a power conditioning unit that everything plugs into. Only one connection to the venue. The Furman brand is what we chose. No ground lifts needed.
What are the most important things to know about gains, pre/post mixer stuff, sends, returns, etc? I’ve been doing a lot of research on different ways to use my passive mixer and came across your videos! Really like your knowledge and ways you explain this type of stuff!
Woah one of my questions made it into a video, thanks Colin! Love your sharing of knowledge to us 🙌
PATREON NOTIFICATION SQUAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDD!
5:48 Goddamnit, u don't have to rub that on my face like that
ASSEEEEEMBLE
Not many can make a paid promotion as entertaining as Colin.
Tresixteen little did he know that what the whole world would learn this year is how to wash their hands and estimate 6' distance...
hot guitar builder tip: slanting the bridge pickup the opposite way to the strat is quite nice for guitars that are going to be playing mostly metal and djent. it gives the low strings more bite for chugging riffs while mellowing the lead strings to sweeten up sweep picked arpeggios. I've done this on one of my basses to great effect.
This!
They had some strange ideas in the sixties on what harmonic content should be in a sound for it to work in a mix.
It's like with the selector on Les Pauls: The neck pickup is labeled rhythm and the bridge labeled lead, but many players today use them in the opposite way, since you often want a thinner sound for chordal work to avoid muddin up the mix, and a fuller sound for solos.
Hey, here's a topic for you. How to set up two guitar amps in a band with two guitarsts so that you don't clash with each other, bass and drums, and it sounds good. I am talking mid gain, heavy classic punk-rock, but any general ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.
If both setups are very similar just try no not play the exact same thing at the same time. However any difference in setup can also help to stand them apart
Hi Colin! Have you ever had a fuzz pedal pick up local radio signals and play them through your amp? You should do a video on the physics behind this phenomena!
Cheers,
-Adam Taylor
As an electrical engineering student and a guitar player. I love you vids. Keep up the great work. I am probably going to add your bucket brigade video to my list of external sources for my students in the signals class I ta in because of how well you describe aliasing.
That black and white box just before the advert. Takes me back man, takes me back.
Another note, my fender with a rosewood board has a skunk stripe, just because the look is so popular they include it even when it’s unnecessary. Further proving your point about the aesthetic success of the solution.
Could you talk about the differences between blade/rail style pickups and traditional slug/screw pole piece pickups and why the rail style is much less common?
This is my favourite guitar/music related tech channel out there. Awesome work explaining that clearly and editing that smoothly every time. Greetings from a mexican fan, man!
Learned a few things today. Some things I already knew. But still, the way you present it is a real joy to watch. Keep ‘m coming! 👌
Regardless of whatever numbers that link ends up doing, I really hope Skillshare appreciates the effort you put into holding up your end of the bargain. You make the sponsored content portion entertaining and pertinent, and the little progress bar is a nice touch.
Honestly, it takes minimum effort to make an entertaining sponsor section. It really comes down to how much you care about what you're promoting and how much you care about your audience.
I have un-potted pickups in a 50s style LP I built. They are very microphonic, but I don’t find them particularly difficult to control. Once I turn the sustain down on my compressor, they behave like my other pickups. On a cramped stage with multiple amps and monitors that might be different though.
Colin mentions that AlNiCo magnets are superior to the previous low-performance Iron magnets. 0:40 Unsaid was the fact they were also superior to the subsequent Ferrite Ceramic low-cost magnets. That is why some players prefer them despite their cost. Neodymium magnets were a further improvement, too powerful perhaps for some old-fashioned brown tones, but much less weight to achieve useable strength.
2:16 "EFF YOU LUKE TO THE BACK OF A NECK"
I've got a guitar with microphonic pickups and I often use my phone to play samples through them and into my pedalboard. The guitarist from black midi does as well I believe
It's not a bug. It's a feature. 😃
Always a good education listening to you. Thanks.
The truushhroad !
Love the way he pronounces permanent. "pear-manent".
Bit late to this video but I very much enjoyed the cue mark before the ad. Nostalgic vibes :)
Good deal with the Q&A channel Colin. I enjoy listening to your research, well done.
Also, I like unpotted pickups sometimes because I like to fuck around with feedback a lot
Potting really does reduce the harmonic response of the pickups a little bit. I didn't believe it either until I saw the plots from some tests that Wolfe MacLeod of Wolfetone Pickups did a few years back.
Thanks for answering the Ground Lift question!!
My dumbs comments aside, your clarity is appreciated. Great work, you’re a natural educator. I know, I’m a teacher. Not everyone can do it. One interesting note, the most recent wide range humbuckers from fender are unpotted, trading microphonic problems you describe for a more open and airy tone. So it’s a trade off. They sound great, but are feedback prone.
I wish I could have heard all my class lectures in this voice. I would have had such an easier time retaining information. This channel is just the best. 🙏🏼
Question: Why are the thicker strings wound? Are there sets with all strings without the winding?
I think it's due to strength - unwound, thicker strings are more brittle, and easier to break.
Colin, do you like Phish and The Grateful Dead?
And speaking of Jerry Garcia will you do something on Auto-Wah?
The strength of the magnet has no direct influence on the tone of the pickup. The difference in tone is caused by the fact that a pickup with a stronger magnet can have the same output with less windings and therefore kill less of the highs. Furthermore, a higher output will obviously give a more saturated tone as it drives the input of the tube amp harder.
About the strat pickups, I thought the pickups (at least the originals) where identical in all positions, you can adjust the volume difference by adjusting pickup distance from strings. Also, the angling of he bridge pickup must have had some other roots, back to early telecaters and the lap steels, probably to make the new guitars look familiar or maybe they had a bunch of lap steel pickups laying around but they needed to be angled to fit the narrower string spacing of the tele. Just a hypothesis. Another question could be why all pickups are not angled then? Or maybe angled differently? Mainly because it would look strange. And once the trend is set, you can make up reasons why "wound strings sound worse if pickup is close to bridge".
Quite a few folks still like unpotted pickups - they do have just a hair more high end which I really enjoy. The SD Antiquities are one of the more popular models sold like that, although they are in the vintage output range so maybe that helps with the feedback?
@CSGuitars: swiggin' his Bru like a boss.
It's not so much much the strength of the magnet that alters the tone but it's permiability - how well it behaves as the inductive core of a coil. Iron alone is really good at this, and the more you have of this the darker the sound, ceramic and neodymium magnets behave similar to air in this respect and more and bigger magnets can be added to boost output without altering tone. Alnico is quite permiable but not as permiable as iron, and permiability changes with the grade of alnico.
Great video. These TATA ones are really great because if you haven't already asked yourself about something yet you would eventually get there so keep up the good cause!
My TATA is how does the effect of the valves change if you blast volume with lower tone control settings versus the opposite on an old super reverb amp until you reach desired (or allowed) output volume?
I’ve potted all my vintage pickups and didn’t notice any change in tone or volume.
It’s not changing the magnetic field at all so I don’t see how it would…. But people swear by it.
Interestingly, resin potting was also used for vintage computer components and is proving to be damaging to these vintage components, as is in the case with some of the vintage Apollo Guidance Computer hardware that has been recovered from the development and test phases of the Apollo program, making some modules no longer functional.
Now, modern resins may not have this issue, but it's worth considering, certainly.
How do guitar speakers produce multiple frequencies at the same time?
I live in Arizona. I can confirm that leaving a pickup (thankfully uninstalled) in the car during the summer will result in wax flowing out of the pickup.
Here's my TATA: How do Lace Sensor pickups work?
Stephen Cagle they stack 2 single coils for less hum. I have a Am Deluxe Plus w/ 3 color Lace Sensors. I love the sound.
This!
Mine are working fine! Thanks! :-D
Depending on which ones your talking about, it's either one loop of a thick wire around a magnet or the magnet is surrounded by a metal plate similar to how a regular pickup works but with the plate/wire taking the place of the coil of very thin magnet wire. This creates a sensing circuit hence the name and then a transformer boosts the voltage to a more usable amount.
+1
Here is a TATA, I found my dad's old digital home theatre system receiver. It's rated at 100 watt at 8 ohm. Would it work being plugged into a guitar cab. Perhaps this would be a game changer with something like a kemper
I bought a neck on aliexpress, it's skunk stripe was routed with a sharpie
What I never thought about was that cobalt is number 27 and has one electron less, but weighs more than nickel at 28 and one electron more. Does it have more neutrons? I forget the particle physics completely. Regarding pickups, I hear that today's alnico 2 are often more powerful than the vintage alnico 2 and sometimes even older alnico 5 etc. However I don't know if that's due to losing the magnetic properties over time or the original specs.
It's also noteworthy that the skunk stripe is so traditional that even Fenders that didn't necessarily need the stripe got one in later years. People just liked it or expected to see it.
Don't most of the larger pickup mfgs use vacuum wax potting? Where they pot them inside a vacuum chamber in order to vacuum the air out of the chamber while pulling the wax into every nook & cranny in the coil wires and pickup?
I'm happy I know about the pickup slant
Hey Colin! I got another TATA for you; what’s the difference between Silicon and Germanium fuzz???
Germanium is warmer sounding. Silicon is harsher but less temperature sensitive.
The difference is the material the transistors are made from.
Germanium and silicon semiconductors have very different response characteristics both in their junction forward voltage and electron/hole mobility.
Germanium transistors are able to function faster than silicon, but they are less stable to voltage and temperature.
Semiconductor physics is a whole thing. Maybe I pluck up the courage to talk about it one day.
A question for your next tatas video can you use a bass amp(solid state or tube) without a cabinet? With gear waza tube expander or two notes stuff.
I know that wasn't really the point, but I feel like there's artistic reasons you'd use an unpotted pickup. There's styles where weird guitar noises are not only fine, but desirable! I imagine some punk and noise rock bands have played around with that to great effect.
Update: I actually know of one, turns out! Nagi, of the Japanese nu-core band OHAYOGOZAIMAS, often sings backup vocals (well, shouts, y'know how punk-flavored music is!) and sometimes on stage he'll just shout into his pickup! I'm not sure if he does this since switching from an old Yamaha LP clone to his new Jazzmaster HH, as that pickup is almost certainly potted, but it's a fun move.
Thank you for your informative video. How to pickup the guitar and play with passion?
Hi Colin, here’s my TADA. Why do electric guitars have sound holes if their pickups aren’t microphonic? Is it purely cosmetic or weight saving or what???🤨. Cheers. Jim.
Colin youre, a genius... Afraid to ask stuff is brilliant.. Coz im afraid to ask lol.. A, wee fellow scot tae... Thank you so much for these videos.. Do some repairs at times.. While i can guess whats happening eith somethhing... You have taken out the mystery.. Cheers
Coming soon to Dunoon to visit my childhood home, and I will have a week to look for guitar shops, haggis and whiskey all about Scotland. Can you recommend any epic guitar shops? Any other places I shouldn't miss? ..... Thanks for all that you do!
Can you explain the difference between individual pedals and multi pedal unit (such as the BOSS ME-80.) And which is better
Colin, or anyone Was Eddie Van Halen the first to pot pickups ? I know he did a lot of experimenting with pickups.
Of course he wasn't.
Potting coils was a well established procedure long before EVH was on the scene. We've been doing it for transformer coils for as long as there has been transformers.
Frankly the reason guitar pickups weren't potted for a short while in the 50s is probably due to ignorance in the then emerging electric guitar manufacturing industry.
Also, the word experimenting suggests theory, hypothesis, and scientific process.
What Eddie did was fuck around blindly until something worked. He ruined as many guitars as he got right.
@@ScienceofLoud Thanks Colin , clears that up , I did hear Eddie ruined a lot of guitars , Thanks again, always look forward to your posts , I have learned a lot from them.
excellent as usual!
Great video thanks. Would you be able to explain the following in a video when you have time please? In a FX loop (in particular on the Boss Waza tube amp expander), there is a level switch (+4dBu, -10dBu). How would you know when to use which (+4dBu vs. -10dBu)? For instance I have an EP booster pedal from Exotic that I wanted to plug on the FX Loop but I don't know in which position to set the switch. I checked online but could not find a proper explanation or how to find out. Thanks. Cheers.
LIAR in the background to the left very interesting
Thank you for the ad timer loading bar graphic, you're the fucking best.
A good tata is explaining asymmetrical and symmetrical clipping and different diodes
what is the difference between a preamp pedal and normal one??
how do you know which is which??
and what is the way to use them properly??
Hello from Uruguay
Tiny TATA: PA speaker size - if an 8" and 15" have similar loudness and usable frequency range, why use the larger size? The consensus is typically to use a 12 or 15" speaker - is that just old practice, or is there a practical reason?
Larger speakers have more low end frequencies.
Nice refresher! Love it
Hey Collin,
How far and how long can any type of amp be cranked and pushed untill it fries up?
That look after, "apparently they sound more lively than potted coils."
Great TATA video, Colin!
-> When will your set of single coils be available again?
I will buy a set of them for me!
Thanks!
You're like a guitar professor lol you make learning fun :) (even though I might have known one or two of the things I enjoy your take and presentation. Good work!)
Too afraid to ask: is a tuner pedal not just a tuner pedal? I bought a Boss tuner pedal which works great, yet the other guitarist in my band bought a much cheaper pedal that tunes his guitar just fine. What is the difference between different quality tuners so long as they tune the guitar properly?
The original Ceramic Magnet hex pole Schaller humbucker pickup from my red 1983 Kramer Pacer Special! I put up with it for 30+ years squeeling and yeah, I could yell in it and hear my voice over the amp. I should have waxed it, but I swapped it out 10 years ago with a MUCH better, wax potted Alnico V magnet humbucker that made that guitar sing like it should have from the start. Eddie anyone?... Lots of mids, so now I can be haired :)
Ahhh, the skunk stripe.....takes me back to the early 90s when I used to enjoy a nice bit of skunk myself 😆
Back in those days we used to work all week and go camping or some free festival in the back arse of Malvern with our guitars and a nice bag of skunk, maybe some mushrooms or some acid.
Those were the days when we'd use those things and not let them use us....Not like the wastrels and ne'er do wellers of today who spend their entire days smoking that stuff.
Moderation is the key. A little bit of it opens your mind but too much burns your soul. ✌
but why does the sound of the string get brighter, too? Is it because of an increase in string tension towards the bridge?
BASS player here, skunk stripe ? ? ?
I never tought about such a name!!!
What a blast!!!!!
Burns didn't angle their single coils not does Brian May using Burn TriSonic pickups
How does the wiring and impedance worok on a 4x12?
I think I get it but I'm not sure
Great vid! Still waiting on your single coil pickups!!
yeah but the skunk stripe became so iconic, you'll have two piece necks with a skunk stripe lolol.
Oh Fender, you should never change.
How ye liking the 1901 IRN BRU?
Great video. Do you use Cobalt-Lithium-Nitrogen magnets in your custom made pickups?
ok, i'll see myself out now, but before I exit, I still have a tata. Adjusting pickup height. The more I mess around with it, the worse it sounds.
That tata is going to be in my 'use your ears' video that I keep threatening to do.
I always wanted a set of Copper-Nickel-Iron (CuNiFe) magnet pick-ups. :)
@@lynetteaylsworth4739 lol. I was making a joke. That would have been a "CoLiN" magnet for Colin's custom pickups
@@jjrusy7438 Subtle!
So let's say that I'm totally insane and would like the middle pickup of the custom Hendrix guitar I've been building to feedback more easily at lower volumes. Is there a way to safely "de-pot" the pickup without harming the coils and/or plastic housing?
Hey how’d you go with circuit bending that tc shimmer verb? I’ve got one and I never use it so I was wondering if there’s any decent bends I could do to it?
You always cover such good stuff.
Colin, can you please explain, as a tata, why it is that if you turn down the guitar volume (say to 7) and then use a boost pedal to boost the guitar signal to the same volume as when the guitar's volume control was on 10, you get a different sound.
@@darkflamerpunkboy Thanks, but I think that there is more to it than this, such as loss of frequencies from the guitar. Over to Colin.
Depending on your wiring, your volume pot effects the tone controls as well
Colin HELP! This is quickly turning into a rabbit hole!
The output impedance of the guitar and the capacitance of the cable forms
a filter. when you change the volume you change the output impedance of the guitar and thus the filter
I'm not Colin, but I'll give it a shot. Wall of text ahead.
There's an electronic circuit called a voltage divider, whose purpose is to take an input signal and reduce it to a lower level as desired. It's made of two resistors, and it has a total of three contact points - the input, the output (which is the mid-point between the two resistors) and the ground point. A volume pot is a variable voltage divider because as you're turning it, you're changing how much resistance there is between the input and the output (the series resistance), as well as between the output and the ground point (the parallel resistance).
When your volume pot is turned down, the resistances inside are divided so there's maximum resistance in series, but minimum to none in parallel. When there's no resistance in parallel, all the signal from your pickup just goes to ground (because it's literally the path of least resistance) and the guitar is dead silent.
As you're turning your volume up, the resistances are readjusted so the parallel resistance grows (preventing all of the signal from just rushing to ground), and more and more signal start going through the output mid-point, and your volume slowly grows until you're at full volume and the entirety of the resistance is parallel.
The reason the volume changes also affect tone is that pickups aren't ideal sources - they're coils (inductors), which physically tend to pass low frequencies and block high frequencies, and once your pair them up with a parallel resistor, they end up behaving like a filter that gives whatever signal gets collected by the pickup a distinct coloration (by virtue of letting more or less of some frequencies through).
Inductor-resistor circuits (LR circuits) where the resistor is in parallel are low-pass filters, and the bigger the resistor is, the more frequencies it passes through. So as you're turning the volume down, you're making the parallel resistor smaller, moving that frequency cut-off point more "downwards" towards the lower frequencies.
This is also the reason why, if you take a guitar with 500k volume potentiometers and swap them for 250k volume potentiometers, it will sound a lot "darker" when turned to full. No matter how much boost you put after such a guitar, it won't sound as bright as a 500k volume-equipped guitar.