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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 5, 2020 17:47:03 GMT
The real difference about Hendrix is that he had a guitar tech and they fooled around with pick-ups in addition to using effect pedals. He was the new guitar god, so he got to experiment for the sake of being unique.
Watch this:
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 5, 2020 17:59:06 GMT
What they failed to mention in the little article link on the Hendrix model, santos , is the flipped bridge pickup with its treble side further from the bridge than the bass side. This will certainly have a tonal effect. Oh, and another thing is the strings he used, He would use extra light gauge on the bass side, down to 38. Fender are selling a set of Hendrix strings, of course. As to the inverted pick-up, I wouldn't bet on much of a difference. I have a bass with an inverted P and I can say that my other two PJ basses sound drastically different from it also when just on the J pick-up, so… I think people like to speculate on small things being big but, no, they aren't. Hey, there are Hendrix straps too. Too bad I play seated…
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 2:10:48 GMT
As for 'Hendrix this' and 'Hendrix that' it's interesting to see Seymour Duncan are selling a Hendrix pickup set whilst Mayer says they were happy with the ones Fender made! Oh well So pick-up upgraditis is mostly peer pressure. It looks like you're a bum if you give yourself satisfied with unbranded stock pick-ups, no matter who makes the guitar. This is why a brand like Ibanez is now installing foreign pick-ups in their top models, which also implies that their own aren't good enough. Salesman's tricks to sheer the customer base. A bass player with Nordstrand pick-ups is like the cleaning lady with lipstick from Cardin.
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 2:20:36 GMT
Oh, and he says the lights threw the guitar out of tune! I never heard of that. Wonder how that works. On the Winterland recordings, Hendrix tells the audience they're going to be tuning up all the time… Today's pressured little fools buy roasted maple necks, locking tuners and special branded bridges to alleviate the anxiety of it all.
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 2:41:24 GMT
Interesting stuff about string gauge and output balance. A lot of care is given to balancing string tension in sets but output ought to be the more important parameter. Then you get staggered pole pieces on an ST-62 and the highest one is below the G string. Talk about getting it all wrong,
Hendrix: .010, .013, .015, .026w, .032w, .038w.
Harley Benton strings: 009, 011, 016, 024w, 032w, 042w 010, 013, 017, 026w, 036w, 046w 011, 014, 018, 030w, 042w, 052w (heavy bass on this set)
Fender (same 9s and 10s) 011, 014, 018, 028w, 038w, 049w 012, 016, 024w, 032w, 042w, 052w
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 2:59:15 GMT
Then you get staggered pole pieces on an ST-62 and the highest one is below the G string. Talk about getting it all wrong, I have a set of 9s on this one (009, 011, 016, 024w, 032w, 042w). I guess it explains the angles:
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 4:56:46 GMT
My last choice I settled on was FENDER JIMI HENDRIX STRATOCASTER. I like that its sound is unique in its way, Jimi Hendrix Strat is a little different from other Strats. And this is an incredible inverted tuning with a shorter string on high strings. You get this on any guitar with a reverse headstock. There is a phenomenon of travelling vibration along the string past the nut which has an effect on tone. The same thing happens on Jazzmasters and Jaguars through the length of string past the bridge and weak break angle. I suppose moving this from the treble to the bass side can change things. The Harley Benton TE-90 FLT comes to mind but for a Strat', besides the Chapman ML1, there is the Squier Contemporary Active: I would actually like the white one and the pick-ups sound good, from demos I have heard, clear and dynamic.
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 5:02:22 GMT
Nah, the Contemporary Active has a locking nut. I suppose it kills the effect on the bass but then this should apply to the treble strings of any guitar with a Floyd or any other double locking system.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Mar 6, 2020 11:39:23 GMT
Oh, and he says the lights threw the guitar out of tune! I never heard of that. Wonder how that works. On the Winterland recordings, Hendrix tells the audience they're going to be tuning up all the time… Today's pressured little fools buy roasted maple necks, locking tuners and special branded bridges to alleviate the anxiety of it all. It's surely the heat of the light. It's like when you play guitar outdoors in the summer. It takes very little time for it all to go out. Not sure if it's the body and neck expanding and contracting or the strings heating up: most likely I suppose as they are very conductive. Probably a bit of all of it.
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Mar 6, 2020 11:54:19 GMT
Probably differential movement due thermal expansion/contraction.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Mar 6, 2020 12:15:49 GMT
Regarding staggered pole pieces this article and diagram from Ironstone Pickups tries to explain the perceived effect: The use of staggered polepieces on pickups is surrounded by a lot of 'myth and magic' that it does not really deserve, though undoubtedly, a set of ‘vintage stagger’ polepiece pickups has great visual appeal at least. The concepts driving this are actually very simple, and this article seeks to illustrate that. Beginning with a definition; polepiece stagger is simply the relative heights of the 6 polepieces across the surface of a pickup (focussing here on standard Fender 6 string guitars). By altering the relative heights of the polepieces, the distance between them and the guitar strings is changed. The smaller the string-to-pole gap, the louder that string will sound in a strummed chord for example.
Pickup polepiece configurations fall into 2 basic groups; a ‘flat’ layout with no stagger, and then varying degrees of stagger normally with the D&G poles higher than the other 4 poles. The later is simply a ‘mechanical’ way of matching the string to polepiece distance against the string arc pattern that naturally forms when string 'action' is itself adjusted to follow the contour or radius of a fretboard.
Early Fender’s used 'low' radius fretboards, typically 7.5”. This makes them much more curved than typical modern 12” radius guitar fretboards, as will be the consequent arc the strings will be adjusted to.
Staggered polepieces on pickups were standard on Stratocasters when they were launched in 1954, and stayed that way until 1974 when flat profiles were introduced, only to revert to staggered designs in the early 80’s. The Telecaster has also had changes in this area, starting with a flat (and flush to the pickup top surface) polepiece profile, before receiving staggered polepieces in the 1960s.
The impacts of polepiece stagger, fretboard radius and string type are best visualised with the help of the diagrams below; In the diagram section 1, the impacts of the 2 differing fretboard radii are shown relative to a flat pole profile pickup (note the diagrams are illustrative, not accurately to scale). In diagram 1a), the distance between any pole and the string in the arc above it is not identical, but relatively constant. So if an E Major chord was strummed, the 6 strings (assuming they were all of the same construction) should sound similarly loud in the mix. But in 1b), the vintage radius means the D&G poles are much further away from the strings than the two E poles, illustrated by the different lengths of the blue and red arrows. So in that same E chord, the D&G strings would be at a lower relative volume in the mix compared to the treble and bass strings.
A simple way to mitigate against this is to alter the pole heights, and section 2 shows the impact of a doubling in height of the D&G poles. Against the modern radius fretboard, the poles are now getting very close to equi-distant from the strings. On the vintage layout, the distances between the two E strings and poles is now the same as the D&G pole-to-string gap (the four red arrows are all the same length). The term ‘Vintage Stagger’ is loosely accepted as meaning raised D&G poles.
So far so good, but all of the above assumes that the six strings are equal, i.e. for a given pluck they all produce the same vibration and thus pickup output. When the Stratocaster was introduced in 1954, light-gauge and round-wound guitar strings did not exist. At that time, the third string (G) was flat-wound like the E, A and D strings. The ability of a string to generate pickup volume is a complex blend of string mass and tension, but wound strings generally have a lower output than plain strings (the pickup reacts primarily to the core of the wound string). So the B&E poles, (whist still following the string arc), would be expected to be a fraction lower than the other (wound strings) poles for volume compensation. Over time, the G string more popularly became a (higher output) plain string, so the G pole was lowered to accommodate that. The final diagram 3b) illustrates a ‘hybrid’ of the original vintage stagger but with the G pole lowered for the modern plain G string (plain GBE strings). The B pole has also been lowered in this example (flush to the pickup cover as some Fender designs) as a way of ensuring it does not overpower the mix, and allows the treble E a little more presence (useful with higher resistance pickups that tend to ‘self-filter’ treble content).
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 6, 2020 15:48:38 GMT
Staggered polepieces on pickups were standard on Stratocasters when they were launched in 1954, and stayed that way until 1974 when flat profiles were introduced, only to revert to staggered designs in the early 80’s. The Telecaster has also had changes in this area, starting with a flat (and flush to the pickup top surface) polepiece profile, before receiving staggered polepieces in the 1960s.
The ST-62 has strongly staggered pole pieces together with a FLAT, 13.73" fingerboard radius. Nonsense.
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