Official Luthiers Forum!

Welcome DTAR

As many of you know the “T” in DTAR is our very own Rick Turner. DTAR has elected to join the OLF as our latest sponsor and we are very excited to have them come aboard.

For those of you who are not aware, D-TAR is the unified effort of Seymour Duncan Pickups and Rick Turner to provide the highest quality, best value acoustic amplification products to consumers and guitar-builders everywhere. These ultra high audio quality products are used by performers such as Lindsey Buckingham, Graham Nash, Muriel Anderson, Jackson Browne and a host of other renowned musicians.

Please (re) welcome Rick and the whole DTAR gang (and stop by their web site to check out their products).

http://www.dtar.com

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Welcome Rick & Co.!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Thanks, Rick and company, for pitching in. And welcome DTAR!

Thanks folks.

When my D-TAR partners get back from the Frankfurt Musik Messe we're going to put together a "wicked good deal" introductory package for OLF members to get pickups or any of our preamps at a very nice price. At our annual business planning meeting last week, Seymour and I were talking about just how important luthier/repair techs are to the success of any pickup company...you, we, are the folks who have the greatest influence over pickup choices, even more so than the end user. So we want to make it easy for you to try and hopefully like our products.

Very cool Rick - welcome aboard in your new, additional capacity.

Welcome, Rick and Co..... I posted this earlier, when I saw the ad at the top of the page.

"And another fine company adds their name to the list of great sponsors at OLF. We all really appreciate what you guys are doing to support this forum, and hope we support you to the levels necessary to keep you here. Everyone should be treated as well as we are generally treated by our sponsors. I think we are so fortunate to have such a Great and Honorable list at the top of our page. "

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

What Waddy said... Thank you again, Rick.

Darren

Sweet! I've been wanting to try out some DTAR stuff and possibly get a Mamma Bear for a while now...better start saving up!

We'll make it pretty easy for you...

I havent used any seymore Duncan pickups since the 70's but I'm willing to put a few bucks aside to try out a DTar. I'll look forward to seeing your offerings in the near future.

Thanks for supporting the Forum Rick!

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Reguards,

Ken H

Welcome!!

I am a big Duncan fan as I use them in my hand crafted solid body. I was looking into a pickup for my acoustic as well, so GOOD TIMIMG!! I will wait and see what you have to offer, I am confident it will "blow away" the others!!!

So here I am.......waiting

-Rick

Y'all should hear the Timberline and the Mama Bear.

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jw ( o)===:::

Rock you Rick! No wait I mean Rick you Rock! I am sure i will order some stuff for my shop.
Best, Evan

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http://www.NewYorkGuitarRepair.com

Way cool!

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Greg
http://garibaldiinstruments.com/

Cool!

I've heard of Rick Turner, but who are them other dudes? They must be tryin' a get famous or somethin' by hangin' with RT.

Must be somethin' to them D-TARs, I'll have to get me one fer my G-TAR.

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

Welcome, D-Tar!

Hey Rick, what's on the horizon? As more luthiers evolve to using 1/4" (6mm) wide saddles, will D-Tar offer a wide version of the Timber-Line, or Wave-Length, or Sadducer?

I have read the info on the D-Tar site about those three different undersaddle pickups, but maybe you could provide some off-the-cuff feedback describing the more subtle differences between the three models and in what circumstance each might me the right choice.

-Dennis


Timber-Line: _____________________

Wave-Length: ____________________

Sadducer: _______________________

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Welcome D-TAR...looking forward to it!

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Dennis...a few answers...

No plans for a 1/4" pickup at this time, though I'm working on an even wider one...one that may be a replacement for Ovation and Gibson Chet Atkins nylon string pickups. We're really not hearing/seeing a major need for 1/4" saddles, and in my experience, a 1/8" saddle give me as much intonation adjustment as I need. Most guitarists I know would look kind of askance at a 1/4" saddle as being too massive. I know, I know, it really isn't, but we're selling to perception, not always reality...

Timberline...I like them a lot, and it's what I use in all my Renaissance acoustic-electrics.

Pros: Being a coaxial type pickup, it gets a bit more of a complex signal as it is picking up from more directions than a flat pickup. High headroom with an 18 volt power source achieved by using a voltage multiplier on two AA cells.

Cons: To really hear it sing, you should have a curved bottom saddle slot, so it's a more difficult aftermarket installation.

Wavelength...My fave for retro-fitting...

Pros: Easy installation, plug-in volume and tone control system, high headroom (as per Timberline), more top sensitivity than most USTs. Load'n'Lock version has very easy battery access.

Cons: Very few other than the Load'n'Lock version requires a 7/8" hole in the butt of the guitar.

Sadducer: Really best option for "passive" UST

Pros: Can work passively with reasonable length cable. Can drive medium-high impedance...1 to 3 Meg Ohms. Very good sounding piezo ceramic design.

Cons: Won't drive long cable lengths. Can sound a bit more brittle unless using high headroom preamp.


All the above said, I think that all of our pickups are world class devices for their various types. We (DTAR partners) all play guitar, and we use our own products when we play in public, not because we own them, but because we really like what we make. There are plusses and minuses to every pickup design, and you need to take into account feedback threshold, tone desired, ease of installation, ease of balancing and voicing the pickup, etc. We work hard to deliver the goods in every situation.

Sounds Great Rick!

Having recently purchased a variety of D-Tar pickups for my builds via help from Mr.” T” (Thank You Rick!), I can say this is some well thought out solutions for amplifying our acoustic instruments. Both on the mechanical side (batteries etc..) and “with respect to Acoustic tone”.
I got a Mama bear too and it is amazing the variety of tone this device can add to any stringed instrument.


Wade

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Wade
Nashua, NH
http://www.wadefx.com

Thanks, Rick

I'm just a beginner, but did a bit of scouting around and noted that Mike Doolin and Ervin Somogyi (among others) were using 1/4" wide saddles - and not just to make it easier to nail the intonation, but to drive more string energy into the top. I'll let it go at that (no intention of anything controversial), and I do understand that D-Tar has to look at projected sales volume.

How wide is the Ovation & Gibson Chet Atkins nylon saddle? This may be a really dumb question, but can the film on your pickups be trimmed to size?

I appreciate the additional info on the current lineup of pickups.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Welcome DTAR!
Great DEAL?? Awesome!!!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Slightly off topic, but Dennis, how does a wider saddle drive more energy into the top? I would think that if anything, it would reduce the energy by putting more mass right there under the strings. This may be one of those things that some folks do without really understanding the results... I could see it affecting tonal balance, but not volume. I'm not totally against wider saddles, mind you; I just don't necessarily see the logic when it comes to energy transfer from strings to top. Strings to a pickup, however...that I do have experience with, and wide pickups do sound very nice...warm and even.

Anyway, no, our pickups cannot be trimmed in width, though the Timberline can be trimmed in length.

That said, wide pickups could become a D-TAR Custom Shop option at some point.

Not to hijack this thread... but as an aside...

I am no engineer, but Ervin wrote a paper about this (I think it was published in AL) .. and as his theory goes the wider saddle give you more surface area for the string to make contact and thus a greater efficiency of energy transfer.

I started using it after Ervin's class and immediatly noticed a richer sound.

As I said... I can't really defend the why's from an engineering perspective. It seemed to make sense when I read his article, I tried it, and I thought it made a difference in the sound so I stuck with it.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Not to high-jack either and I read Ervin's article too and I have a physics question.

Provided that the intonation points are correct and distributed as close to the center of the saddles as possible would a wider saddle lessen the rotational forces on a wider saddle because of the broader/wider base? Not unlike slanting a saddle slightly back? And if this holds true, and I don't know that it does this is why I am asking, would this not also lessen the possibility, provided that the bridge mass/material in front of both the thinner saddle and the wider saddle is the same, of splitting/cracking a bridge?

Thanks.

Thanks Rick.

Again I'm a beginner, and an experimenter, and someone who relies on gut instinct to make at least an initial "stab" at an engineering issue rather than taking my physics computations and making a physical model. I also admit to being affected by anecdotal "evidence", so for example I am somewhat relying on those who have reported on their past experiments to surmise that bone, ivory, (and now jade!) make *better* saddle material than wood or metal, in a steelstring acoustic guitar. Since the saddle is inserted pretty tightly into the bridge, I see it as part of the bridge (albeit a bridge system of varying density.) The bridge in turn is described as really an external soundboard brace. The overall bridge/saddle system probably has some minimum and maximum sizes and densities and damping characteristics, as a unit, that will provide the string energy transfer to the rest of the soundboard, and will generally be regarded by players with good ears as being *acceptable* or *good* or even *great*. I would expect the same to be true of the saddle itself: some minimum and maximum size (especially width) of the saddle that will be effective within a bridge system.

We know the minimum width of saddles is adequate at transferring the string energy, but it presents the luthier with the very difficult (maybe even impossible) task of correctly intonating ALL of the strings. A little wider saddle gives the luthier some breathing room in the saddle intonation task, and if there is a perceptable difference in sound (tone, sustain, timbre) of the instrument compared to the narrowest saddle, it is probably minor.

So, what happens when the saddle width is increased even more? I do not know of anyone that has presented extremely wide (say, 1/2" wide) saddles as a *better* alternative, but I do know that at least two prominent and highly regarded luthiers (Doolin and Somogyi) did experiment with 1/4" wide saddles and found them to be successful. Mike simply states on his website that it allows for "correct string compensation", whereas Ervin states his belief that more string energy is transferred in wider saddles. Even if Ervin is wrong, the net result of a wider saddle on the sound (tone, sustain, timbre) of the instrument is evidently not a negative impact, and the luthier gets the bonus of excellent string to saddle contact (no knife edges) and a relatively huge zone for adjusting the intonation. In other words, for me, I cannot think of any reason not to use 1/4" wide saddles.

Yes, this is a tangent to the "Welcome D-Tar" thread, but it did give you a chance to mention that D-Tar may consider wide versions of some under saddle pickups in the future, and that you even have a Custom Shop. Cool! Maybe start another thread, and with a show of hands, find out how many luthiers would be interested in a 1/4" wide version of Timber-Line or Wave-Length. A little Research before Development. I'll start working on the press release: "D-Tar announced today yet another industry first: 1/4" wide under-saddle transducers to meet the growing demand..."

Until then, I guess I could consider making a dual-channel under-saddle transducer from a pair of Timber-Lines. Hmmmm, maybe that and a Solstice, tweaked just so for each channel...

Thanks,

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia