Mastery Cyclic Pickups?

[Norrin Radd]

Brittany Howard is just an amazing singer and showman, for instance.

Truth. I wish she had put out more music with Alabama Shakes but her other stuff is pretty good too. Been listening to the remixed jaime album lately.

Waitaminute... Is she subliminally promoting those Cyclic pickups in the pic below?

And the thread has come “full circle”.

[Embenny]

And the thread has come “full circle”.

And, more importantly, back to a supremely talented musician rather than gear snake oil salesmen.

Give me Brittany playing a guitar with some ceramic Artec pickups over just about anybody else on these Mastery pickups, any day of the week.

[hexes]

Waitaminute... Is she subliminally promoting those Cyclic pickups in the pic below?

pm dawn vibes! she should do a split with them. i wonder how well cyclics fit in an SG

[Fiddy]

Somebody should photoshop a wifi symbol with a neck attached to it..

Then photoshop the mastery pickups on top of the wifi symbol..

Porkyprimecut is a master photoshopper.. Maybe he'll be up for the challenge..

[hexes]

someone should also photoshop cyclic pickups on some nice track or road bicycle wheels! like the light up spoke LEDs all the kids have now.

You must be crazy.

my doctor will gently nod in your direction, but the new BRZ is just blissful on a canyon road and has all the power it needs. then again, I also greatly enjoy driving miatas on a track. just can’t fit in them. not everyone can afford a porsche.

[tammyw]

pm dawn vibes! she should do a split with them. i wonder how well cyclics fit in an SG

With the three point mount, I don't think they'd fit very well in an SG. To position the pickups in the six inch diameter they were styled for, the neck pickup would need to be about an eighth inch from the fretboard, but then the corners of the mounting flange would be sticking out of the cutaways, outside of the wood. To fit under a standard pickguard, it would need to be almost an inch down from the fretboard.

As for the bridge pickup, I'm not sure how close you would want to route in right in front of the bridge posts, but with the bridge pretty high I guess it wouldn't need to be routed very deep. You might even have a problem raising the pickup high enough before the mounting bits hit the back of the pickguard, if it's too close to the bridge.

It might be worth a try anyway, if you push the pickups a little closer together. I'm undecided on this one, but I'd still consider it.

[Larry Mal]

pm dawn vibes! she should do a split with them. i wonder how well cyclics fit in an SG

With the three point mount, I don't think they'd fit very well in an SG. To position the pickups in the six inch diameter they were styled for, the neck pickup would need to be about an eighth inch from the fretboard, but then the corners of the mounting flange would be sticking out of the cutaways, outside of the wood. To fit under a standard pickguard, it would need to be almost an inch down from the fretboard.

As for the bridge pickup, I'm not sure how close you would want to route in right in front of the bridge posts, but with the bridge pretty high I guess it wouldn't need to be routed very deep. You might even have a problem raising the pickup high enough before the mounting bits hit the back of the pickguard, if it's too close to the bridge.

It might be worth a try anyway, if you push the pickups a little closer together. I'm undecided on this one, but I'd still consider it.

They would probably suck in an SG and likely any other guitar.

So, there's a reason why pickups are straight, that's because they are positioned to be directly underneath a node:

"Here is a series of general rules:

- the further apart the pickups are, the greater the variety of sound we will get on the instrument.
- the closer the pickup to the centre of the empty string vibration, i.e. to the 12th fret, the warmer the sound will be, and the richer in volume and bass
- the closer the pickup to the bridge, the more brilliant the sound will be.

Moreover, on both the Stratocaster and the Telecaster, which at that time both had 21 frets, Fender went in search of a particular sound, deciding to position the pickup at the neck exactly on the third node of the fourth harmonic (where the 24th fret would theoretically be) and not as close as possible to the fretboard as one would expect. In this position, the 4th harmonic does not play (see photo below).

In other words, where Fender placed the neck pickup on his guitars, some harmonics of the note corresponding to the free-played notes do NOT sound or are in counterphase, and it is precisely this that contributes to create the typical "twang" sound of the tele that we all love.

Clearly Fender chose this exact point because he liked THAT sound.

This also teaches us something else: that Fender, when calculating the position of the pickup at the neck, considered the nodes and antinodes of the vibration by centring on the open string, giving more importance to the first two harmonics (fundamental and second) than to the subsequent partial ones. The fundamental is in fact the harmonic with the loudest volume."

The article also tells us that the Telecaster bridge pickup being slanted is because "Fender tilted the bridge pickup slightly towards the neck to give the low strings a little more roundness and warmth."

Pickup placement is a pretty big deal, especially in the world of the bass guitar, think of the Stingray, which puts the pickup in a place where it will naturally pick up a lot of treble. This is at the expense of bass frequencies to a degree, so those are compensated for by the electronics.

But these Cyclic pickups seem to be some sort of semi-circle, which means that no matter where you put them, at least some of the magnet is going to be outside the optimal nodes of the string's vibration, or at least so it seems to me. Clearly, I haven't ever played one of these and don't really know how they are made.

My suspicion, though, is that they are purely cosmetic.

[adamrobertt]

Pretty sure most of that is BS - Fender may have accidentally put the neck pickup on the "third node of the fourth harmonic," but I doubt he did it on purpose. He just slid the pickups around on jigs (basically a piece of plywood bolted to a neck with a bridge and some strings) until he liked how it sounded. It was very unscientific. No calculating here.

Here's a cool video showing how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KtjKFwacvs

Edit: Not saying that the harmonic/sciencey stuff is BS, just Leo's intent. For clarity.

[Larry Mal]

Pretty sure most of that is BS - Fender may have accidentally put the neck pickup on the "third node of the fourth harmonic," but I doubt he did it on purpose. He just slid the pickups around on jigs (basically a piece of plywood bolted to a neck with a bridge and some strings) until he liked how it sounded. It was very unscientific. No calculating here.

Here's a cool video showing how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KtjKFwacvs

Edit: Not saying that the harmonic/sciencey stuff is BS, just Leo's intent. For clarity.

Well, isn't the neck pickup on a Telecaster where the 24th fret would be? I don't actually have a tape measure or whatever to measure that but I always thought that was the case.

From looking at that BilT guitar on the first page, I can see that the portion of the magnet that is under the string is not a very severe curve or anything. Not more than the angle on the Telecaster's bridge pickup. So maybe it's not really a big deal... still, I'm going to go with "cosmetic" more than anything.

[hulakatt]

my doctor will gently nod in your direction, but the new BRZ is just blissful on a canyon road and has all the power it needs. then again, I also greatly enjoy driving miatas on a track. just can’t fit in them. not everyone can afford a porsche.

Agree. The BRZ/86 is one of the few "newer" cars I have any interest in at all, let alone on the affordable end of things. The feel of the engine reminds me of the Honda k20a from the mid 00's Si, the handling is up there with the Miata and steering and clutch have that really light feel that all Toyotas have.

[adamrobertt]

Pretty sure most of that is BS - Fender may have accidentally put the neck pickup on the "third node of the fourth harmonic," but I doubt he did it on purpose. He just slid the pickups around on jigs (basically a piece of plywood bolted to a neck with a bridge and some strings) until he liked how it sounded. It was very unscientific. No calculating here.

Here's a cool video showing how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KtjKFwacvs

Edit: Not saying that the harmonic/sciencey stuff is BS, just Leo's intent. For clarity.

Well, isn't the neck pickup on a Telecaster where the 24th fret would be? I don't actually have a tape measure or whatever to measure that but I always thought that was the case.

From looking at that BilT guitar on the first page, I can see that the portion of the magnet that is under the string is not a very severe curve or anything. Not more than the angle on the Telecaster's bridge pickup. So maybe it's not really a big deal... still, I'm going to go with "cosmetic" more than anything.

I mean maybe? But my point is that I seriously doubt that Leo was like “I shall put the pickup here because according to my calculations this is where the third harmonic node is and is also where the 24th fret would be if we had extended the fretboard and thus it will sound harmonically pure and clear!”

It was more like Leo Fender slides the pickup around on his homemade jig while strumming the open strings hmm I like it here the best, let’s put it here.

[Larry Mal]

I mean maybe? But my point is that I seriously doubt that Leo was like “I shall put the pickup here because according to my calculations this is where the third harmonic node is and is also where the 24th fret would be if we had extended the fretboard and thus it will sound harmonically pure and clear!”

It was more like Leo Fender slides the pickup around on his homemade jig while strumming the open strings hmm I like it here the best, let’s put it here.

I mean, I don't know how he did it, but putting the pickup where the second octave lives is kind of a no-brainer. And it's probably the result you would come up with even if you didn't do any math at all and just went by sound.

And if you've got the math to be able to know where to put frets on a guitar, then you've got enough math to be able to figure out where the nodes would be on a guitar.

But anyway. My point is if you did decide to learn where the nodes are, and wanted to capture or not capture what any particular node is providing, then you would best want a straight pickup for that.

Of course, I have never seen the Cyclic pickup, so I have no idea how they capture the information they capture.

[hexes]

With the three point mount, I don't think they'd fit very well in an SG. To position the pickups in the six inch diameter they were styled for, the neck pickup would need to be about an eighth inch from the fretboard, but then the corners of the mounting flange would be sticking out of the cutaways, outside of the wood. To fit under a standard pickguard, it would need to be almost an inch down from the fretboard.

As for the bridge pickup, I'm not sure how close you would want to route in right in front of the bridge posts, but with the bridge pretty high I guess it wouldn't need to be routed very deep. You might even have a problem raising the pickup high enough before the mounting bits hit the back of the pickguard, if it's too close to the bridge.

It might be worth a try anyway, if you push the pickups a little closer together. I'm undecided on this one, but I'd still consider it.

oh I was not at all serious. just riffing on that photo of her.

[øøøøøøø]

FWIW, BH mostly plays an old Teisco live these days

She sounds fantastic on anything though.

[epizootics]

How about...We all pool our money together, buy one and perform an autopsy?
I am only half-joking. With 20 of us, that would work out at $25 per head. We can then organize a raffle of sorts to decide which member inherits it.