Lollar's new '63 Jazzmaster Pickups

[Larry Mal]

There's a video!

[Telliot]

Woof. Not the way I'd have chosen to demo them.

[Larry Mal]

OK, so it's not just me.

[Telliot]

Nope. That was terrible in every possible way.

[Larry Mal]

Nope. That was terrible in every possible way.

I only listened on my Macbook Pro's speakers, so I figured I would double back on it. But I was making dinner for the kids and stopped and went over to look at what I was hearing.

Based on that video I would never buy these pickups. I'm sure they sound better than that. But somehow they made the Jazzmaster sound cheap and tinny in that video, which is really opposite how Jazzmasters sound.

[GilmourD]

I will never understand bad demos...

There's bad demos of gear I own and I'm often found saying "Wow! I'm glad I didn't watch this first because mine sounds awesome and that does... Not."

[timtam]

Regarding the Lollar EQ charts, I don't see any explanation of how they were derived (maybe I missed it ?). And their "recommended" pots for the pickups are 250k and 1meg. There's no way you can have a single chart that is the same with those different pots.

Were the EQ charts based on trialing the pickups in a particular guitar (which guitar, what amp ?*) And was anything actually measured to derive them ? Or was it just a group of staff sitting around a guitar saying "Now what do we give the mids ? I reckon they get a '3'. Any advance on '3' ?"

Such EQ-style charts (also used by several other pickup makers, similarly undefined) also give the mistaken impression that pickup makers can manipulate mids and lows directly. Whereas in fact their only control is really around treble. You can manipulate the resonant frequency (ie the peak frequency's position in the treble end of the frequency spectrum) and its amplitude (Q factor). A bode plot (see below) shows that the frequency response is basically flat except around the resonant frequency, and beyond it. So mids and lows are only really influenced - indirectly - by the characteristics of the treble response. If the treble is emphasized, then the mids and lows are not; and vice-versa.

As a reminder, this is what antigua's bode plot of the neck and bridge Pure Vintage 65s looks like. The "loaded" plot is with 200k and 470pF, for the effect on the resonant frequency of the pots' net resistance and a typical guitar cable capacitance (there is something to be said for tailoring the resistance loading more closely for the guitar type in which the pickups are typically used).

https://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/threa ... sis-review

Those measurements would make a good benchmark - they are pickups that many people have heard. Every jazzmaster pickup maker could easily publish plots of their own products in comparison, as the measurement conditions are well-defined. Based on typical DCRs quoted for actual vintage 60's JM pickups being sold on reverb, IIRC the PV65s do seem to be reasonably typical of mid-60s JMs (ie high 6 kOhm's region).

*Sweetwater's HB trials last year showed nicely how much different rigs can make the same pickup sound very different (not that we didn't know that ... but it helps to be reminded that single 'demo' sound samples of pickups recorded under uncertain conditions have limited usefulness).
https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/humbu ... d-to-hear/

[Embenny]

So mids and lows are only really influenced - indirectly - by the characteristics of the treble response. If the treble is emphasized, then the mids and lows are not; and vice-versa.

This reminds me of an incredible insight Antigua gave me from his posts.

Basically, it was that the frequency of the resonant peak determines our perception of brightness (quite intuitive), but the Q of the resonant peak determines our perception of bassiness (quite counterintuitive to me).

That's why something like a Filtertron or Burns Trisonic sounds both "bright" (high resonant frequency) and "bassy" (low Q), while a Strat pickup sounds bright (high resonant frequency) but not bassy (high Q).

But it makes sense once you think of the sound energy as being divided into proportions of the signal. A high Q (tall/narrow peak) means much of the energy is concentrated there, especially since our ears are far more sensitive to high midrange frequencies than bass ones. But a very flat curve (low Q) means that the lows and low mids are much more balanced with the high mids, and thus the pickup sounds warmer and fuller.

It's really all just manipulation of two parameters that determines the bulk of our perception of a pickup's inherent tone.

[Larry Mal]

Regarding the Lollar EQ charts, I don't see any explanation of how they were derived (maybe I missed it ?). And their "recommended" pots for the pickups are 250k and 1meg. There's no way you can have a single chart that is the same with those different pots.

Were the EQ charts based on trialing the pickups in a particular guitar (which guitar, what amp ?*) And was anything actually measured to derive them ? Or was it just a group of staff sitting around a guitar saying "Now what do we give the mids ? I reckon they get a '3'. Any advance on '3' ?"

Right... there's no real information there. They might as well have used colors or flavors or something. Like maybe the 63's have a more habanero midrange and the '58's only have jalapeño but you still have to email and ask if that's a jalapeño with the seeds removed or what.

But who cares, it's harmless- it's Mr. Lollar's description of what these pickups sound like in his mind compared to other pickups he makes. And the guy knows pickups, I'll still get a set of his El Rayos some day.

But Jesus wept am I done with guitar marketing. That video they put out talks about how they found a 1963 Jazzmaster from a rusting Cadillac in a field or something and the pickups were just so amazing that they had to re-create them, and somehow that resulted in the thing I heard in that video. It's just a bad video is all, but fuck, I am so tired of this vintage re-creation mythos that the guitar industry as a whole keeps puking up.

This never makes me popular on guitar forums, but I am just exhausted of being marketed to in this way. It's been forty years of the same shit. It used to be middle aged men selling nostalgia to younger men, now it's old men selling nostalgia to middle aged men. It's not very exciting. I can't imagine sitting my kids down and telling them about how the best pickups were made seventy years before they were born. Jesus fucking Christ.

"They sound like Woodstock," I might say. "You guys like Crosby, Stills and Nash?"

I found Kinman pickups, which sound like other pickups I like, but without the fucking noise. That's good enough for me. He has to market them as sounding exactly like old pickups also while simultaneously talking about how he has entirely new technology that no one else has, two things that really can't be reconciled, but I can kind of just skip over that.

I'm out- next stop, Alumitone pickups. After that, active pickups. I'm not doing the nostalgia thing any more.

This is hideously off topic, so to address the original question: whatever pickups I heard in that video were not inspiring.

[Embenny]

I'm out- next stop, Alumitone pickups. After that, active pickups. I'm not doing the nostalgia thing any more.

Just skip the Alumitones and go straight to Fishman Fluence. Best active pickups I've ever heard. Tried them "accidentally" by inheriting a set in a parts Tele I picked up a couple years ago. They sounded like Tele pickups, and they were utterly silent beyond anything I've ever experienced. Even quieter than Kinmans in a fully shielded guitar.

Plus they had the freaky property of sounding absolutely exactly the same no matter where the volume knob was set. It made me realize how crude the common solutions of 50s wiring and treble bleed circuits really are. They make volume knobs more usable, but the knob on that Tele was a literal master fader and nothing more.

They have humbucker and P90 sets that have dual- or tri-voice switching. The Tele had two voices, but they were just "thinner Tele" and "thicker Tele." The P90s and their "hot P90/vintage P90/Fender single coil" switching seem particularly interesting to me.

I just hate batteries in Fender style guitars where you have to pull off the pickguard to get to it. In a guitar with a rear control plate or preexisting battery box, it's totally fine. And the Tele set had a little charging port and rechargeable battery built into the output jack plate, which was handy...other than the fact that it was micro-USB.

But yeah, Fluence pickups overall are quite impressive. Definitely the most interesting active pickups I'm personally aware of.

[PlayWithPride]

Just skip active pickups and go with Alumitones. They will sound better and weigh less than any other type of pickups and don't rely on a stupid battery or the additional routing necessary for said battery.

[JSett]

Woof. Not the way I'd have chosen to demo them.

I mean, he's sitting in front of a Friedman and a vintage Vibrolux Reverb... of COURSE you'd put it through a HX Stomp, right?

Fucking hell. The world has gone wrong.

[GilmourD]

This never makes me popular on guitar forums, but I am just exhausted of being marketed to in this way.

That may be the perception difference between us. At no point have I ever felt that any marketing was "to" me. I may be a consumer of a lot of products but I'm fairly numb to the messaging of marketing as none of it never applies to me, since almost every purchase I make is based on factors and sources outside of said marketing.

It used to be middle aged men selling nostalgia to younger men, now it's old men selling nostalgia to middle aged men. It's not very exciting.

Well, that's a larger problem in general more suited to another non-guitar-related thread.

I can't imagine sitting my kids down and telling them about how the best pickups were made seventy years before they were born.

Maybe I listen to too much stuff like Periphery and Polyphia and have spent too much time talking to Frank Falbo for that message to come out of my mouth. When I buy a pickup it's because I have a sound in mind and I buy whatever best achieves that sound. I just tend to avoid Seymour Duncan these days. Not that they don't make awesome products but because their corporate drones that have left Seymour himself as just an employee did me dirty when I was one of their forum moderators.

[Larry Mal]

That may be the perception difference between us. At no point have I ever felt that any marketing was "to" me. I may be a consumer of a lot of products but I'm fairly numb to the messaging of marketing as none of it never applies to me, since almost every purchase I make is based on factors and sources outside of said marketing.

Well, I don't know you, and you may truly be the exception among humans. But marketing absolutely works, and it does not work in linear ways, like, "We have these pretzels for sale" and then you evaluate the factors of the pretzels and arrive at a decision.

I've been very successfully marketed to in the guitar world, and over the last years I've been very resistant to it and irritated by it.

I remember once I was having some pickups made by a pickup maker, nice guy, and I was on the phone with him for an hour or so. At the end of it I decided on "vintage" type pickups. I guess now I know that "vintage" means "lower wind" but it's not clear to me if I knew that then or if I was just on the bandwagon.

These pickups are being marketed as a '63 type pickup as opposed to a '58 type pickup, and that carries some meaning not based on technical definitions or sound, as Mike points out. But I bet a lot of us made some kind of association with what this product would be like based on that year designation, that's marketing. Kinman does it, Lollar does it, Fender does it with their absurd "Sound of Woodstock" claim despite Woodstock having dozens of performers ranging from 50's revivalists Sha-Na-Na to Santana's use of Latin rhythms combined with a Gibson SG.

But Fender says the "Sound of Woodstock", and that has meaning, that meaning is pure marketing. If that phrase carries any kind of meaning to you, even to provide you with some kind of frame of reference or preconception of what this might sound like, that's marketing.

By comparison, Alumitone can't market themselves as the sound of anything, which historically has proven to be a very precarious place to be in the guitar world. But they are going for it! Even if they do say things like "Broadband response like our single coil version, but voiced for the classic mid range response humbucker tone," this product is doing something you rarely see guitar pickup companies do.

[GilmourD]

That may be the perception difference between us. At no point have I ever felt that any marketing was "to" me. I may be a consumer of a lot of products but I'm fairly numb to the messaging of marketing as none of it never applies to me, since almost every purchase I make is based on factors and sources outside of said marketing.

Well, I don't know you, and you may truly be the exception among humans. But marketing absolutely works, and it does not work in linear ways, like, "We have these pretzels for sale" and then you evaluate the factors of the pretzels and arrive at a decision.

Oddly enough, I am that type of person to actually see an advertisement for pretzels and go look up the ingredients. There's plenty of marketing that in theory is aimed directly at me but my experiences in life (and, potentially, also the fact that I'm neurodivergent), on top of working heavily in retail environments for years, has led me to an understanding that marketing and advertisement is merely the tip of the iceberg with regards to the information I need to make an educated purchase. I'm not sure if I would necessarily call it "distrustful" but most certainly wary. This works its way down small purchases, like cookies or snacks, where I differentiate how I take those in as inexpensive enough to risk a purchase solely for the experimental knowledge, versus larger purchases where I drive my wife nuts by obsessively researching until I find not only the right product but also the best price.

I've been very successfully marketed to in the guitar world, and over the last years I've been very resistant to it and irritated by it.

I remember once I was having some pickups made by a pickup maker, nice guy, and I was on the phone with him for an hour or so. At the end of it I decided on "vintage" type pickups. I guess now I know that "vintage" means "lower wind" but it's not clear to me if I knew that then or if I was just on the bandwagon.

These pickups are being marketed as a '63 type pickup as opposed to a '58 type pickup, and that carries some meaning not based on technical definitions or sound, as Mike points out. But I bet a lot of us made some kind of association with what this product would be like based on that year designation, that's marketing. Kinman does it, Lollar does it, Fender does it with their absurd "Sound of Woodstock" claim despite Woodstock having dozens of performers ranging from 50's revivalists Sha-Na-Na to Santana's use of Latin rhythms combined with a Gibson SG.

But Fender says the "Sound of Woodstock", and that has meaning, that meaning is pure marketing. If that phrase carries any kind of meaning to you, even to provide you with some kind of frame of reference or preconception of what this might sound like, that's marketing.

By comparison, Alumitone can't market themselves as the sound of anything, which historically has proven to be a very precarious place to be in the guitar world. But they are going for it! Even if they do say things like "Broadband response like our single coil version, but voiced for the classic mid range response humbucker tone," this product is doing something you rarely see guitar pickup companies do.

I feel like this is something where I would research to build context. I find it extremely difficult to take most things at face value these days, so this would (if I hadn't already had a good idea) set me on a path of researching what the expectations are for a '58 type pickup versus a '63 type pickup.

Also, what does "The Sound of Woodstock" mean when Fender says it? Do they elaborate or just scream it like "ALPHA ALPHA! BUY MY PRODUCT!". Within the context of what they seem to be marketing it's very Hendrix-heavy in connotation. What did Hendrix's Strat sound like at Woodstock? What were Fender's Strat pickups like back then? Brighter-sounding greybottoms? OK, then the question becomes "Is that what I want?".

Marketing for the educated consumer should just be a jumping off point. Good marketing should fill you with confidence in the product (very much unlike that video for these pickups). Good marketing could even be what convinces you to NOT buy something! There have been multiple times that something was very well-marketed and seemingly aimed towards me but after looking into it I ended up buying something else entirely.

But, hell... Even my wife is like that. Look at all the girls I spent my life dating and then look at my wife, who has spent the past 18 years making me happy beyond my wildest dreams (and even takes joy in some of my potentially overly-large guitar collection), and you go "Wait... She's nooooothing like the girls he dated before."