Pickup Modeling

C

codeman555

Member
Anyone else think itd be awesome if fractal audio could make pickups that could be programed to model various famous pickups of today. You could call it pickup modeling technology. I guess itd be sort of like the james variax guitars, but much more customizable. Maybe you could take is a step further and make it so the pickups could be programed to make the guitar to sound as though it was made out of different woods etc..
 
As long as it could have the tech confined within the pickup itself. Otherwise you would need to have work done to fit the electronics in which case your right back to Line 6 and Roland V guitar.
 
Sixstring said:
As long as it could have the tech confined within the pickup itself. Otherwise you would need to have work done to fit the electronics in which case your right back to Line 6 and Roland V guitar.
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Thats a good point. Do the line 6 and roland v guitars allow you to customize the eq of your pickups and whatever else makes pickups sound the way they do, or are you more or less stuck with the 4 or 5 pickup types that they comes with? Itd be cool if they are customizable as they could have forums where different pickup settings are exchanged and what not, just like we exchange rig presets on the axe fx forums.
 
It´s not entirely impossible that Cliff could include a block called pickup, so that if your guitar had a high quality polyphonic piezo pick up the pickup modeling could be done within the Axe II as your first block, thus your patch change would include pickup selection - that could potentially be very useful and if the X/Y feature was added to that block that would be even more cool. I guess that it might eat a huge lump of CPU power though (?)
 
codeman555 said:
Thats a good point. Do the line 6 and roland v guitars allow you to customize the eq of your pickups and whatever else makes pickups sound the way they do, or are you more or less stuck with the 4 or 5 pickup types that they comes with? Itd be cool if they are customizable as they could have forums where different pickup settings are exchanged and what not, just like we exchange rig presets on the axe fx forums.
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Let me search Line6.com for you ....it's easy - you should try it sometime ,-)

The overview

Overview | JTV-69 | Line 6

And specifically the Workbench that enables you to do quite amazing thing

Features | JTV-69 | Line 6

RB
 
Far more than 4-5 types on the Variaxes and some kind off EQing is also possible. You can turn the pickups and move their positions, that changes the sound and you know where it goes after some tries.
But yes, they could have added a GEC to it, that would make it a bit easier.
 
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of pickup modeling, I’ve played on a Variax once, and it was able to do reasonable approximations of the various pickup models. However, I don’t think an Axe-Fx implementation would work very well. Not all piezo’s are created equal, nor does the same piezo yield the exact same response on different guitars. The models in the Variax probably sound okay because they were tailored to the Variax. If I were somehow able to process the piezo signal from my Les Paul through them, my guess is they would sound terrible.

Not to mention, all of the magnetic push-pull between the pickup and the strings is lost without an actual magnetic pickup. Some might find this desirable, but it means you’ll never be able to capture the true vibe of a pickup like you can with an amp.
 
I know that there are some people that will probably disagree with me about this, but I just can't deal with the issues that surround all of the specialized pickups be it piezo or the the individual types like the Roland GK series use. They either have issues with string muting correctly in the case of saddle mounted piezos or they don't have enough string energy as in the case of the GK's. These aren't deal breakers for everyone, but I simply choose to not deal with it. They feel and react differently and not in a good way for me.

Now with all of that said there is one alternative that doesn't do pitch shifting or acoustic tones or anything, but if you don't need a specific model of a guitar you can go with the MusicMan Gamechanger. It uses passive pickups, but has a ridiculous wiring and routing system inside that is programmable and basically you can choose any combination of series, parallel, in/out of phase, coil splits etc and then store them into separate presets on a 5 way switch that has 2 banks. So basically you could 'wire' it up for your standard 5 position HH type guitar and then you could have the other bank be all the crazy off the wall sounds you may want to use. Its fully programmable via a USB cable and an application and you can even download or upload presets to their website.

I haven't played one in person and I'm not really looking at one right now, but it's a pretty damn brilliant idea and implementation. I mean we're talking about something that is essentially a programmable digital switcher that uses an entirely analog signal path. Its the best of both worlds in terms of flexibility and control combined with the response and feel of a real analog set of pickups.
 
shasha said:
I know that there are some people that will probably disagree with me about this, but I just can't deal with the issues that surround all of the specialized pickups be it piezo or the the individual types like the Roland GK series use. They either have issues with string muting correctly in the case of saddle mounted piezos or they don't have enough string energy as in the case of the GK's. These aren't deal breakers for everyone, but I simply choose to not deal with it. They feel and react differently and not in a good way for me.
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These are definitely issues with the MIDI side of piezos. I've never used mine for that purpose, and I don't think the pickup modeling in the Variax involved MIDI of any kind. I think it's more like a specialized EQ curve or IR of the magnetic pickup that the piezo signal runs through: no detectable latency.

As far as the triggering stuff goes, it's all pretty uninteresting and gimicky from what I've seen. Who the hell cares if you can trigger drum or piano sounds from your guitar? :roll
 
Yeah, I tried the MIDI triggering thing a few years ago and it was really fun for that evening to be able to 'play' the drums from the guitar, but the tracking was horrific. I play with a lot of vibrato which just confuses the hell out of the receiver and it turns into a mess of glitched up crap. I've heard some people do amazing things with it, but its not what I'm looking for.

AFAIK the Variax and even the GK strat use analog signals that go into DSP's that model the sound; almost like a mini-AxeFX would do, but to be the most effective it has to pick up the signal from the strings individually and that entails the specialized pickups which is where I think the weak link resides.

I really do like the idea of the Gamechanger and think that it could be great for all kinds of stuff, but you aren't going to get it to sound like a tele or a gretsch or something....perhaps similar, but it won't be the same thing. Heck I love the idea behind the Variax stuff too, but the small issues I've noticed from demos and reading on it are deal breakers for me personally.
 
shemihazazel said:
As far as the triggering stuff goes, it's all pretty uninteresting and gimicky from what I've seen. Who the hell cares if you can trigger drum or piano sounds from your guitar? :roll
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I see it as a way to be more creative & expressive with the instrument I know how to play.
 
shasha said:
Now with all of that said there is one alternative that doesn't do pitch shifting or acoustic tones or anything, but if you don't need a specific model of a guitar you can go with the MusicMan Gamechanger. It uses passive pickups, but has a ridiculous wiring and routing system inside that is programmable and basically you can choose any combination of series, parallel, in/out of phase, coil splits etc and then store them into separate presets on a 5 way switch that has 2 banks. So basically you could 'wire' it up for your standard 5 position HH type guitar and then you could have the other bank be all the crazy off the wall sounds you may want to use. Its fully programmable via a USB cable and an application and you can even download or upload presets to their website.
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It sounds like they've put the Guitar Max system into it. The guy who runs Guitar Parts & Wiring Diagrams-FREE Shipping Over $49 came up with it a few years back & the last time I talked to him, he has talking with some guitar manufacturers about selling or licensing the product. I hope he got the deal.

Guitar Max-Pickup Control System
 
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