Axe-FX II + Fender Tele and Strat

I found a quote where Scotgt from Zexcoil said the Fralin's were closer to Fender's noiseless design in concept than his own. His is pretty unique, squeezing 6 coils into a strat pup form factor.

Some interesting quotes from him on his 'modeling' process, from the strat-talk.com forum:


I wouldn’t get too hung up on the absolute inductance values, my pickups have plenty of highs. That's one of the things people love about them. I know Bill has done some great work and has a definite perspective. I’ve also been doing quite a bit of focused, detailed research into material response and pickup design. Over the last several years, I’ve built a database of thousands of measurements of pickup and material response. As a result of studying the information embedded in these data, I’ve been able to pull out some of the basic relationships that drive tonal response and to construct a model that allows me to fingerprint, interpret, predict and target tonal response with a degree of subtlety that I don’t think anyone else has (if they do they’re not talking). Part of the reason I’ve been able to gain these insights is that the unique challenges of my design platform have forced me to look at things from a slightly different angle.

As an example, I can take an AlNiCo like tonal response and stretch it over a range of inductance values, or I can keep inductance and resonance constant and dial in the tonal signature from A5 to A3 to A2 or anywhere in between (there’s an example of this in my frequency response video on our YouTube channel). I feel strongly that the character of the signature tones is built into the pickup response, and I have quantitative data that illustrates this. My approach to date has been to use my understanding of the design variables to build these tones into the pickup in a controlled, targeted manner. So, while Bill’s approach (at least with the MicroCoils) seems to be to make the pickup a blank canvas and add the color further down the signal chain, my approach has been to add the color at the source. My database and models are the palette and brush that enable me to do this. I’ll be giving some examples going forward in dribs and drabs at the Zexcoil forum, but I do have some IP in process and as such I won’t be going into the details of the model for probably a couple of years or so.
 
funny_polymath said:
I’ve been able to pull out some of the basic relationships that drive tonal response and to construct a model that allows me to fingerprint, interpret, predict and target tonal response with a degree of subtlety that I don’t think anyone else has (if they do they’re not talking). Part of the reason I’ve been able to gain these insights is that the unique challenges of my design platform have forced me to look at things from a slightly different angle.
Click to expand...
Guys like this make me remember a conversation I had with my dad a few years ago. He argued that there won't be anymore Thomas Edisons or Jonas Salks; that the combination of 21st-century corporate structure and level of current technology makes it impossible for the garage inventor to one-up large companies that have massive R&D departments and millions of dollars worth of fabricating/testing equipment.

In some ways, he was right--it seems unlikely that anybody working on his own will beat the large pharmaceutical companies to an Alzheimer's cure or invent a better rocket engine than the aerospace conglomerates.

But he wasn't taking into account a solid truth of capitalism: the degree to which corporations will spend money on R&D will always be proportional to the level of potential profit. Building high-end music gear can be a profitable business, but it's not going to get a company into the Fortune 500 top ten. Case in point: Fender posted sales figures of $700 million last year, compared with $58.4 billion for Pfizer (#37 on the Forbes list), the maker of Viagra.

This leaves a niche for garage inventors in the world of high-end music equipment manufacturers, a place where the ceiling of potential profit is far below a level that would interest a mega-corporation (yes, Yamaha and Roland are large companies, but a few hours spent walking around at a NAMM show will convince anybody that there's obviously plenty of room for the little guys to compete).

I think it's great that word-of-mouth (or, at least, word-of-forum) exposure allows brilliant, farsighted guys like Scott Lawing (the Zexcoil guy) and--the best example I can think of--Cliff Chase to make a handsome living with their innovations.

So, Dad, the modern-day Thomas Edison does exist--he's just making music gear!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom