We get letters! (another brick in the Wal...)

I took most of this week off to be with family and enjoy Christmas. No web work other than this little bit I did over at Six String Bliss showing how to replace your pickups.

Wow! I'm behind on my Email!! I'll be sitting down today to write to folks who have had questions this week. I have a few letters about the "Wal" Music Man bass pickup I'm working on. I'll be answering those. I got a guy who wants to know about a 13 string bass pickup. Some Neo Jazz questions. A sad story about how one of my Piper Tele pickup was killed in a freak Christmas accident. One crazy luthier that is wanting to work with me on designing his own pickups for some very unique guitars.

I better get busy!

Scarab Single String Pickups ( Back where we started...)

As I mentioned in an earlier post I didn't start out trying to be a pickup maker. I just wanted to make guitars and basses. The first bass 100% original instrument I ever built was the 5 string DragonFly bass. A vitality part of this basses design was a pickup system that would allow me to switch each strings out put independently.

This meant that I needed a small pickup for each string but one one was selling them at the time. Determined to see the project through to the end I started looking for information on making my own pickups. Back then there wasn't a lot of information out there on how to design or make pickups. I didn't' know where to get parts or what parts would work best so I had to feel my way around in the dark.

My first attempt (1) was a bobbin made out of a yellow Bic pen. I melted the ends and mashed them into flanges to hold the wire and ran a set screw through it to act as a pole. Then I needed some magnet wire. I found some at my local Radio Shack. I think it was 32GA wire or something huge like that. To wind the wire onto the bobbin I used an old cassette tape recorder and just glued the bobbin to the little spinning hub and away we went. I might have gotten 200 turns on that first bobbin. When it was done I wrapped the whole thing in Scotch Tape to keep it from coming apart Then I soldered a lead to it and stuck a ceramic button magnet on the bottom. Finally I went into my studio and plugged the thing into my amp and turned it on. It buzzed like a bee hive. I plucked the E string on my Fender P bass and held the mutant pickup up to it.... it was there.... if you listened through the buzz and the hum there was a sound that was an E note. I was stoked!!! I had made a pickup!! The thing was crap and would need to be developed but I was on the right track. Over the next 6 months or so I spent ever second I could refining the design and hunting better parts. My second (2) try at making a pickup was closer to the mark I was looking for sound wise. It used 44ga wire and a small Neodymium magnet at the center of the phenolic bobbin. I potted my windings with blue nail polish as I went to kill any microphonic feedback. It sounded good but I still wanted more low end for the bass that I was getting from it and it looked bad. This led to design #3. This time I used a cover from a CD case to make the flanges for the shorter and fatter bobbin. The pole was a bigger steel screw with a wide head on it. The Neo magnet was attached to the screw under the bobbin much like a P-90 does. The new bobbin design allowed more wire to be used. This was it!! This was the sound I was looking for. Now all I had to do was make it look like something... But how? I would cast it in plastic that's how. The next few months were spent mocking up dummy pickups to get the look right . Then I started learning to make rubber molds and experimenting with casting agents. Finally I decided on black Epoxy as my casting agent and I was on my way to realizing my idea.My wife decided the new pickups looked like little bugs... like Scarabs. And thats how the(4) Scarab Single Sting pickups were born. The bass came out fine. I showed it to some people and was having fun playing it and recording with it and planning the next one....

Then the orders started coming in....



There is an MP3 called Scarabs on the sound files page of Searcy String Works of me playing this bass in a touch guitar style, something I'm not very good at, to show the string separation and clarity. It's just a sloppy demo of the G and D string running through one effects chain and the other strings running dry through an amp to show what could be done with such a rig.

Sometimes I build guitars... (part 1.... Black Sunshine)

I didn't start out trying to make pickups. Originally I wanted to build the worlds greatest basses and guitars but somewhere along the way the obsession to make great pickup took over. Most of my time is spent making and designing pickups now but every once in a while I build a guitar or bass.

Here's one I just a few weeks ago. The body style is one I call the DragonFly. This one is almost totally hollow. It's made from Poplar and red oak. It's very light. This one I call Black Sunshine.

The Knucklehead pickups are the last of a run of epoxy cast neodymium magnet humbuckers I made a while back. They have a very bright top end compared to an Alnico pickup. They are running through a booster preamp made by my friend and master luthier Mark Swanson. Mark builds some of the most interesting acoustic and electric guitars you are likely to see. His work has been featured in several publication and his client list includes some rather big names. If that wasn't enough it also has a Bid D Varitone switch in it. I love the Veritone that Dennis makes and this combined with the preamp gives this guitar an unbelievable amount of sounds to work with.

"Gripping the wheel his knuckles went white with desire
The wheels of his mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45
True death: 400 horsepower of maximum performance piercing the night
This is black sunshine.

Finally nothing moves.
High noon.
Black top rolling below the asphalt drive
A concrete fascination scraping the edge of nothing
This is black sunshine."


Read more about this guitar and see some more pictures over at Six String Bliss.

Neo-Rocks (part 2..."passive-aggressive" pickups)

I get letters from people who have bought pickups from SSW sometimes. Remember the Neo Rock Neodymium P-Bass pickups prototypes I made a while back? Well, they went through a few changes. I switched to smaller magnets and I'm using Fender covers on them now. There haven't been many made yet because I'm still trying to decide if there is a market for then. There is one set in my personal Fender P Bass and I like them. The reports back from the field have all been positive. Just read this letter from unidentified bass player and all around good guy Geff King. Geff King is an "incomparably semi-professional" bass player, guitarist, and songwriter hailing from Greenbelt, a nice little Maryland town somewhere in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

Dear Clint & Alicia-

The NeoRocks I got from you in September are doing the job! I've posted a couple little notes in TalkBass to that effect, but wanted to take the time to write directly now that I've had a chance to seriously gig test them. Some impressions:

1. I knew I had something special when I was re-stringing the bass and the strings kept sticking to the pickups. I don't recall that ever happening with any of my Fenders.

2. On a recent show the soundman asked me to plug into the low gain on the Peavey house amp 'cos the pickups on my bass were pretty hot. I now refer to the NeoRocks as "passive-aggressive" pickups, something I've wanted for quite some time.

3. Played a nice loud gig in a small club in Arlington VA last week. There wasn't much room for the sound to go anyplace, but I could hear the bass through it all.

I may get rid of this particular P-Bass at some point if another comes up at a good price, but one thing is sure: this pickup stays with me and goes in the next P-Bass, and the ones after that too!

Thanks for providing a great product at a good price.

--
Respectfully submitted,

Geff King

Thanks Geff. It's always great to hear someone comment on new designs. I'm thinking of adding this pickup to the regular line now that all the issues have been worked out.

You can listen to me bang around on these pickups here.

Antonella Mazza (part 2 )

I try to slow things down around the Holidays so I can relax a bit and enjoy things. It usually doesn’t work out that way but I try. This year it’s not too bad. I have a few custom jobs waiting in the shop but not too many. Winter is starting to take hold and I have never had good heat in the shop. "Install better heaters" is on the list of things to do to the shop but it never seems to make it to the top of the list. So I will just have to shiver while I work on this weeks projects.

I finally got all the parts in for Antonella Mazza's pickup system. This has taken some time because I'm building a totally new system for her bass and had to spend a good deal of time researching parts. This system will consist of a pair of piezo elements that will fit under the bridge feet. The signal from these will be sent to a small preamp that will be strapped to the tailpiece of the bass. I'm debating adding a magnetic pickup to the mix as well. I think that a small Neo powered magnetic pickups blended with the piezos and combined with the EQ of the preamp will offer the best range of tone control. However a magnetic pickup will require strings that have ferrous metal cores. Antonella Mazza is sponsored by LaBella strings so I need to see which of their sets would work best for magnetics. I’m thinking of leaving that option open by adding a small jack to the preamp that we can plug the magnetic pickup into later.

I should be testing this pickup system in the next few weeks.

Clint Searcy signing off...

The MIMF Bass (Part 2... Pack it up and go...)

The snappy looking EMG sized Neo Jazz single coils with wood caps are done and out the door. Their next stop will be at the shop of David King. David is a well respected top notch bass builder out in Portland OR. who started out making travel basses but now makes a huge range of instruments. Some of his innovations such as his headless tuning system, which allows the use of standard single ball strings, are designed and build by David himself. Other features such as his sliding control cavity shop his amazing attention to detail. I'm proud to be sharing this project with so fine a talent. When it's all done this bass will be auctioned off to help pay the bills over at the MIMF.

Watching the wheels go round...

Because I offer so many different kinds of pickups and need to be ready to make just about anything I have to keep a large variety of parts on hand. Some of these parts need a lot of prep work. Flat work has to be made. Premade bobbins need to be sanded. Alnico magnets need to be charged. So every once in a while I take a week or so and just do prep work. Mostly this consists of making up Neo Jazz and other bobbins, charging magnets, taking inventory and cleaning the shop. Maybe do a little promotional work too and ship out a few back orders. Weeks like this are not exciting and can make it feel like your whole life revolves around magnets and copper wire. Maybe it does... ? It's not so bad though. All play and no work you know...