Would you find a modeling pickup useful?

plexi59 said:
I don't even understand how one would play the guitar after an "on the fly tuning change" unless it's something simple like dropping everything down a couple of semitones, or dropping the low E to D. Do people legit do this during performances?
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Yes. People have been doing this for decades. Usually, the tuning change is achieved by swapping guitars during the performance. More recently, some are doing it the Variax way, or some similar way.
 
I line the idea but other than being able to put it in any guitar, I don't really see a difference in the idea and what line 6 did within the variax
 
Instead of trying to model other pickups (boring), how about some new sounds? If I want a <pickup model>, it's simpler for me to grab a guitar with <pickup model> installed. Practically speaking, there just aren't that many different types of pickups. Sure there's a lot of variants within those types but in all reality they're not that far apart.

I'd be much more interested in a pickup that can do something new. Per-string filters. Controllable ADSR (ideally this could control the sustain and/or the filters). The Moog guitar had some interesting things - the mute and sustain modes were cool. Harmonics control could be cool (I think the Moog did something like that too).
 
hippietim said:
Instead of trying to model other pickups (boring), how about some new sounds? If I want a <pickup model>, it's simpler for me to grab a guitar with <pickup model> installed. Practically speaking, there just aren't that many different types of pickups. Sure there's a lot of variants within those types but in all reality they're not that far apart.

I'd be much more interested in a pickup that can do something new. Per-string filters. Controllable ADSR (ideally this could control the sustain and/or the filters). The Moog guitar had some interesting things - the mute and sustain modes were cool. Harmonics control could be cool (I think the Moog did something like that too).
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Those are great ideas, but i'm not sure the pickup is the right place for them. That sounds like things you'd want to do downstream, on a per-preset basis.
 
Rex said:
Those are great ideas, but i'm not sure the pickup is the right place for them. That sounds like things you'd want to do downstream, on a per-preset basis.
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I think it’s a hybrid. You want a divided pickup to do these things on a per string basis. And you need the processing downstream to process the strings and control the magnetic behaviors (for mute and sustain). Imagine Travis picking and have the 5th and 6th string muted with the top four strings sustaining. Add an ADSR filter to those low notes to shape the bass notes. Or vice versa - sustaining bass notes with pizzicato high strings. Of course you want mono, stereo, and divided outs. And with divided outs, you’ll want 6 instances of a lot of blocks in the Axe3 :)
 
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hippietim said:
I think it’s a hybrid. You want a divided pickup to do these things on a per string basis. And you need the processing downstream to process the strings and control the magnetic behaviors (for mute and sustain). Imagine Travis picking and have the 5th and 6th string muted with the top four strings sustaining. Add an ADSR filter to those low notes to shape the bass notes. Or vice versa - sustaining bass notes with pizzicato high strings. Of course you want mono, stereo, and divided outs. And with divided outs, you’ll want 6 instances of a lot of blocks in the Axe3 :)
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I hear you, but give me the divided pickup with minimal controls onboard the guitar, and maximum flexibility in the outboard unit.

I think. I can see it both ways.
 
hippietim said:
I think it’s a hybrid. You want a divided pickup to do these things on a per string basis. And you need the processing downstream to process the strings and control the magnetic behaviors (for mute and sustain). Imagine Travis picking and have the 5th and 6th string muted with the top four strings sustaining. Add an ADSR filter to those low notes to shape the bass notes. Or vice versa - sustaining bass notes with pizzicato high strings. Of course you want mono, stereo, and divided outs. And with divided outs, you’ll want 6 instances of a lot of blocks in the Axe3 :)
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This is exactly what Joel De Guzman at Cycfi has been working on for several years with his "Infinity" project using the Nu pickups. He says he is very close.
 
plexi59 said:
I don't even understand how one would play the guitar after an "on the fly tuning change" unless it's something simple like dropping everything down a couple of semitones, or dropping the low E to D. Do people legit do this during performances?
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Yes. Besides guitar swaps, sometimes with the guitar on a stand ready to play, people have also been playing double and triple neck guitars for decades, plus pedal steel guitars which are the essence of tuning changes on the fly. One of Jimmy Pages guitars had several strings that could be retuned instantly if I remember correctly.

In my case I often play bass on the bottom two strings, which the VG-99 emulates really well actually. The biggest problem is bleed but again that has more to do with pickups. I play solo/finger style and sing as well so a lot of what I do is accompaniment but I am not bad/working on my simultaneous soloing and bass playing a la Charlie Hunter. It also works great doing a "power duo" thing just a drummer or with a keyboard player and drummer. And it is great to have when writing songs.

Then there are the pedal steel string tuning changes using midi CC pedals and all kinds of other stuff you either couldn't do on any guitar or would need a huge collection to achieve. I used to have guitars hanging all over that were tuned differently. Now it is just a pedal click away with one.

The most fun comes from the sounds you couldn't get any other way though. Like an Em9 tuning electric sitar mixed with a Resonator, or an electric 12 string, or a Les Paul tone, played with a slide, with two pedals steel effects that retune the third up to a major and the 9 down to the octave. All that over bass root and 5th on the bottom strings. That is before running it into the Axe FX III with all those amazing effects. It sounds complicated but really it is just an open tuning that you can play both minor and major chords on.
 
Rex said:
I hear you, but give me the divided pickup with minimal controls onboard the guitar, and maximum flexibility in the outboard unit.

I think. I can see it both ways.
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Absolutely. I wouldn’t want to limit this to what can be jammed into a guitar. The Cycfi stuff is headed in the right direction. That system is basically a robust hex pickup (as-in not some crappy microphonic thing like a GK) with a basic board to get the signals to the output. They’ve got a much better connector than the 13-pin thing that Roland uses. They connect to an external box which has various modules. What I’d want would be some additional electronics on-board the guitar for controlling the magnetic features (mute, sustain, harmonics). Things like the filters and such could be in the box. It’d be cool to add distortion like the 6Appeal pedal as well.

So this is pretty far off the OP regarding pickup modeling but it’s what I’d be interested in.
 
JAmatulli said:
This is exactly what Joel De Guzman at Cycfi has been working on for several years with his "Infinity" project using the Nu pickups. He says he is very close.
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I’ve been following this for a while. It’s defintiely the most interesting thing happening in this area. Roland has been clinging to the crappy 13-pin stuff with weak pickups for far too long. A hifi approach is very welcome.
 
So regarding tuning changes, then: how do you do chords? Learn fingerings for every tuning? That seems like it'd get very old very quickly. Or is there some system that simplifies this?
 
plexi59 said:
I don't even understand how one would play the guitar after an "on the fly tuning change" unless it's something simple like dropping everything down a couple of semitones, or dropping the low E to D. Do people legit do this during performances?
Click to expand...

Behold...

 
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plexi59 said:
So regarding tuning changes, then: how do you do chords? Learn fingerings for every tuning? That seems like it'd get very old very quickly. Or is there some system that simplifies this?
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Certain tunings actually share shapes pretty easily. For instance, there's open G (ala Keith Richards). Open G shares chord shapes with open E - they're just up a minor third and shifted up one string. I used to play in a Stones tribute band and we played Gimme Shelter which was originally played in open E but I played it in open G so I didn't have to retune or have another guitar around. DADGAD is another great tuning. One of the best known DADGAD tunes is Zeppelin's Kashmir. There's a whole bunch of tunes in the Zeppelin catalog that are in non-standard tuning - Rain Song, Going to California, When the Levee Breaks, In My Time of Dying, and many more.

There are some very interesting things you can do in non-standard tuning that you just can't do otherwise. After a while, these alternate tunings can become second nature.

Check out Vicki Genfan, she plays in dozens of non-standard tunings:

 
plexi59 said:
So regarding tuning changes, then: how do you do chords? Learn fingerings for every tuning? That seems like it'd get very old very quickly. Or is there some system that simplifies this?
Click to expand...
HippieTim is spot on. Common open tunings share half the same open strings or more with standard tuning.
Open G keeps the DGB strings in the middle so all those shapes on those strings apply and the other three are root and fifths.
Open A, same shape as open G only up a whole step so nothing new to learn, instead you tune the DGB up a whole step to EAC#.
Open E is just an E bar chord shape.
Open D is same as Open E but down a whole step
DADGAD keeps the ADG and is a essentially a Open Dsus4
Drop D is straight forward.
Double Drop D is another one you'll find sometimes that allows you to play things in sort of an Open D feel (drone) with standard tuning in the middle 4 strings.
Nashville Tuning and Gambale Tunings are also fun but take string changes.
All these and other tunings have songs written around them so you learn those and find out what the shapes sound like, hopefully what the particularly the minor, major chords shapes are with root on different strings.

Eventually one may make up their own tunings and occasionally experiment without even knowing what the actual chords are, which is a lot like when you first learn the guitar and come up with with things just listening and fiddling around. That is where the ability to just do things with a retuning system are a real blast. A lot of things you would need to change strings to get right tone, like Gambale, or are just way easier to click a button getting to the Bron-yr-aur/Friends Jimmy Page C6 tuning.
I happen to like Open Em7 or Open E7 which only take one or two strings to be retuned and have some songs I've written in those.
I also use and Open D minor tuning DADFAD. Then again I can use a midi pedal to make that Open D major instantly as well even when playing slide like a pedal steal.

Then three or four decades later you give up on all of it and just play three chord blues in standard tuning for a little while. But at some point everyone should learn some basic open tuning songs, they are a lot of fun.
 
Just found this thread now.

@Per have you made any progress with this project?

Some things worth considering...

All of the polyphonic products discussed above already achieve pickup modelling in that they all apply a match eq to each string. That's why when you play a COSM model on a VG-99, or even the monophonic SIM1 XT-1, through an overdriven channel, you hear that notchy hiss which is part of the snapshot of the match eq. Even though it's presented as instrument modelling, you simply can't
model the tonal characteristics of one scale length and apply those to another scale length, but you can take snapshots of a Tele pickup or a liptstick pickup or a PAF pickup for example.

The exact same thing happens if you try and eq match one guitar to another using the Tone Match block in the Axe Fx..you get that static snapshot with that hiss.

The VG99 and Variax also took the modelling further in that they allow you to simulate a sliding pickup anywhere between bridge and neck (or even further), again by sweeping through a series of eq matches that have been captured mm by mm under each string.

The actual physical pickups that would be good candidates for pickup modelling already exist..with Cycfi being the best quality.

So the best bet might be a processor that can take the signal from a multichannel Cycfi pickup and then apply the pickup modelling to that. Where the Roland and Variax fall short is that they are limited to 6 strings, so it would be great to see a processor that could be modular with the ability to add more strings.

I'm sure we'll see a completely modelled guitar at some point as @Admin M@ mentioned earlier, using a combination of optical pickups and digital strings of some kind.

Another idea would be to apply the modelling according to where on the guitar the physical pickup is placed. So the DSP would simply apply the correct set of eq matches according to how far from
the bridge the pickup is. You would then need a processor that could have the power to handle a really large amount of channels, and that would require more than a 13 pin output if you wanted to process two multichannel pickups from one guitar.
 
Perhaps I will live to see the day when pickup modeling sounds convincing. Same for a convincing doubler. I've seen artificial intelligence do some amazing things. Maybe it will play a role at some point.
 
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