Official Luthiers Forum!

A previous discussion about charging magnets, and jokes of massive tesla
coils kind of led me to these videos. This man may seem a bit quirky and is
certainly not a luthier, but in some twisted sense seems to be someone I
may like to know.

"Guitar"

Tesla Coil

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

That's been done...it's a "string return" pickup, and each string is essentially a half moving coil.   I first saw this on a violin in about 1972, and then Lane Poor and Ron Armstrong, both of whom had worked for Alembic, developed it into a not-quite viable product.   Lane sold some as acoustic guitar pickups and they were a horrendous affair that looked like you had a bunch of popsicle sticks stuck into the sound hole...they were the magnet carriers.

This whole thing results in an extremely low impedance pickup...which is interesting...but you can have too much of a good thing.   Might be worth a re-look...and it might not.

Note that this guy's pickup is like the old Rickenbacher Barth/Beauchamp lap steel double horseshoe pickup in that it surrounds the string.   I make my own take on that pickup, and it does sound incredible.   There were a number of string surround pickups in those days...Supro/National, etc.

The Tesla Coil clip is pretty hilarious! You'd think they could market that
to really high energy rock bands with the finally being the lead guitarist
going up in a puff of smoke....... or at least giving them really great hair
styles.

Thanks,
Danny

I know the pickup isn't really worth anything, but it's just the whole quirky
semi-mad scientist persona that I find strangely appealing. For example,
Brock I think this guy may be in your neck of the woods. If you still need
help with your magnetic clamping system I'm sure this is a guy who could
hook up some microwave transformers and a knife switch and set you up
with some 4000v DC electromagnets capable of lifting a small car.

If nothing else, the pickup system in the video is as good an example of
the warbling "stratitis" from the string being in too strong of a field.

And Rick, I knew the idea was old, but I never knew anyone ever tried to
bring that theory of pickup design to market. I guess I'm not too
surprised that it never really took off. I think it could be a great teacher's
demo showing AC induction in a single straight wire early in the
electronics section of a high school physics class, then move on to coil
designs. I think things like this can be great to help keep the interest of a
few more students.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

With lower field strength and a good Jensen step-up transformer, the things aren't too bad...but they still have that thing that all mag pickups have...sensing the string at a fixed point along it's length which means the harmonic structure is ruled by nodes and antinodes as you play up and down the string.   In the end, it's like the LightWave optical pickups...a great science fair experiment that has no inherent advantages over other less expensive technologies. So give it a prize in the science fair and consign it to the dustbin of commerce.