Optical Pickup

I have a Lightwave bass that uses the optical pickup a few years well now....it's a very nice sound, very piano like....but it's very prone to subtle string noise that you won't really hear otherwise - little plinks and stuff like that, as the string vibrates and touches the neighboring fret slightly......even with a straight neck or with slight relief.......now you won't notice this with a regular pickup though, and it took me some time to finally figure out what it was. It's not a del breaker but it drove me nuts trying to figure out what was causing it when recording. Live should be no issue though, or even when the other tracks are laid down....but tracking by itself drove me nuts

I never tried it with a guitar though, but I suspect the bassier wound strings may have a bit of that happening too
 
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The ideal solution to a problem few will care about. Kind of like guitars with hot-swap pickups.

I assume, one practical benefit is resistance to EMI/RF interference.
 
The ideal solution to a problem few will care about. Kind of like guitars with hot-swap pickups.

I assume, one practical benefit is resistance to EMI/RF interference.
A totally standardized hot swap system I can totally get behind. What a world it would be if I could walk into a guitar shop with my guitar and try out a half dozen different pickups. A quick disconnect design that somehow preserves whatever coil tapping you have already established would be the cat’s ass.

BTW soldering is a skill many think they have but few outside the trades where it has been taught and learned well actually possess.
 
There IS such a solution actually - the relish guitars, you can literally swap pickups as you PLAY!! It's THAT fast! Been thinking about getting one for a while.....check out this video:





A totally standardized hot swap system I can totally get behind. What a world it would be if I could walk into a guitar shop with my guitar and try out a half dozen different pickups. A quick disconnect design that somehow preserves whatever coil tapping you have already established would be the cat’s ass.

BTW soldering is a skill many think they have but few outside the trades where it has been taught and learned well actually possess.
 
Does this go directly from optical to analog or is there DSP processing in-between? If at some point there is DSP processing, then the potential is very high and most problems associated with "stray noise" can be easily eliminated while optimizing and customizing the response to mimic an unlimited number of pick-ups both real and custom designed by the player. Just think about how Digital Modelling in general has advanced over the years, would imagine that pickups can follow the same path even using a "Pick-Up Edit" along the lines of "Axe-Edit" to program the beasts with pickup presets and pickup scenes.
 
There IS such a solution actually - the relish guitars, you can literally swap pickups as you PLAY!! It's THAT fast! Been thinking about getting one for a while.....check out this video:


The idea is not to buy a new guitar.
 
Thing is man, what about the guitar

Like my cousin who is a “professional,” and i put in quotes in case he’s reading to irritate him (you know who you are Jerry ;) ) would rather buy a $300 Ibanez and throw in $400 Suhr pickups, rather than spend $900 on, IDK, lets just say a schecter [medium range quality guitars]......

I personally much rather, now, prefer a SERIOUS PLAYER, with decent pickups, like Dimarzio New Customs, rather than fishman fluence in a cheap guitar, i mean the “playability:” is more important than the “pickups” because i have an axe 3
 
This could be a really cool setup if you could get the capabilities of hex pickup systems without the need for the 13 pin connectors. If they can adjust single string volume, I would want to try to do alternate tuning, etc. as well. Maybe they tried it and couldn't reduce the latency of the Blue Tooth connection to be usable.
 
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