What do guitar pickups pick up?

OK thanks, Is each pole piece a little magnet? or a piece of steel with one magnet down inside?

I've been having my own magnetic field struggles. I was testing an optical pumping, the "high field"* line width was crummy... and not so great at low field.

I started following a red herring (a wrong track) I'm using a relatively new detector, cramming it in close to the coils made the low field linewidth worse. I ripped it apart and tried my magnet everywhere. Well, the case of the photo diode detector (we've been using for years) and the new switch, were about** equally magnetic. I made a demagnetizer (copper coil on my weller 200W soldering gun.) and the low field LW was a beautiful. High field it still sucked.

A new set of high field coils. A few percent of coils don't work. I don't know why.

George H.

** how do you measure how "magnet" something is? a crude solution is to take a 200g scale, place an inverted plastic cup on it, place permanent magnet on top of cup bottom. Suspend "magnetic piece" above magnet at some standard distance and record weight difference.

Hey Tim I have an idea... mind you I know nothing of guitar pickups.

The permanent magnet induces a dipole in the string... (this seems to be in the wrong direction?? I was picturing the dipole axis along the string?) I've then got a vibrating dipole in a coil... induced emf.. etc...

I'm not sure about how to put numbers into the induced dipole in the string... Do you know how big the signals are? (It's a problem I'd like to know how to solve for other reasons....)

George H. George H.

A given PU may be less sensitive in the vertical plane, but guitar strings vibrate mainly in the horizontal one - strong vertical vibrations cause the string to impact against frets near where it has been fingered by the player hence damping the motion.

FFS just plug the two instruments into a scope and play with plucking the strings in various ways. It's fascinating to watch the result.

Magnetic guitar pickup only look simple.

..... Phil

More $$$ = better sound. Always. That's why the "dip it in LN2" crowd always starts an audio equipment review with the price tag.

On Thu, 02 Jun 2016 11:26:24 -0500, Tim Wescott Gave us:

Finally someone gets it right.

On Thu, 02 Jun 2016 14:28:15 -0400, Ecnerwal Gave us:

Just like the way a "metal detector" works, they "provide" a discernable response". The string motion causes changes in the inductance of the coil. With a standing DC bias on them, it can be "detected" and amplified with little or no distortion of the original motion of the string, thereby providing a "tone accurate" response.

What gets done to that "tone" downstream of that is for the guitarist to "manipulate".

On Thu, 02 Jun 2016 15:58:06 -0500, Tim Wescott Gave us:

They pick up ANY motion as it "perturbs" the static standing field value in the circuit. Simply pressing on a string muting the tone by keeping in contact causes a thud to pass through. The faster motion of an actual vibrating string goes through as well, regardless of the plane of motion. It picks up ANY motion of the string as "no motion" "establishes" the "zero point" and ANY motion from that "perturbs" that point.

OK those.. misunderstood the original post. Looks like the straddled pole pieces would help a lot to pick up parallel vibrations. More 2nd harmonic it would seem but for bass that would make it stand out more in the mix. Hmmm... now I'm more curious - could connect a pickup to a scope and manually move a string in different directions and observe the deflections.

- Terry

Hand wound coils are less densely wound, giving less C and higher frequency of rolloff. Whether that has any material effect on the resulting audio I don't know.

NT

What do guitar pickups pick up?

women?

I thought about posting that, but decided it was too vulgar.

Actually they pick up ferrous materials. Women do not fit into that category. At least, the ones I know do not.

On Mon, 6 Jun 2016 10:21:10 -0700 (PDT), snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com Gave us:

That's only lead guitarist pickup lines.

Well, some are pretty hard and others just as dense. ;-)

On Mon, 06 Jun 2016 17:22:25 -0400, Spehro Pefhany Gave us:

Twice as many chicks!

You come across as an expert in those things. Good for you.

Too bad women won't give you the time of day.

On Tue, 07 Jun 2016 12:15:44 -0400, krw Gave us:

Too bad you are a misogynistic asswipe like Trump.