Pickups...

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Re: Pickups...

Postby Hank2k » Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:12 am

sound great!
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Re: Pickups...

Postby Gruntfuttock » Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:42 am

The neck p/up certainly sounds very authentic!
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Re: Pickups...

Postby scouserjoe2 » Wed Sep 30, 2020 11:40 am

Hi,

A great sound indeed .. and noiseless too .. Well done Chris.

But I am confused !!

Over the years I have heard sounds from several different pick-ups relevant to the late '50s and early '60s era. There are the Fender Custom Shop CS54's, the Fender Custom 50's (which are installed on the 56 NOS Stratocaster) and the Fender Custom 60's (which are installed on the 60 NOS Stratocaster); the latter two 'supposedly' being identical to the pickups from the original guitars of that era. To the trained and sensitive ear they all sound very different and certainly the same number played on a 56 NOS Strat does sound different to it being played on a 60 NOS - particularly on the lower strings where to my ear the 60 NOS certainly has more 'grunt'. I experimented with this some years ago when I had both models and I certainly noticed a difference which, when the rest of my set up was the same, was more likely to be attributable to the pickups rather than the configuration of the neck.

From Paul Rossiter's own documentation, and probably most people would concur, Dance on was played on the 60's Stratocaster (the one with the Rosewood fingerboard) .. so why are we comparing the new Kinman pickups with the CS54's ??

Surely any comparison should be with the Classic 60's pickups as are installed on the 60 NOS shouldn't it ?

With that in mind, surely much of the character of the sound and the now unwanted 'Torn Cone Syndrome' is just part of the make up and character of the 60's pickups as heard on Dance On, is it not ?

Is eliminating 'TCS' simply removing part of the 'colour' and character of the pick-ups that made the sound that many of us looked for when when we tried to copy the original recordings ?

I am impressed with the work Chris has done in producing such excellent noiseless pick-ups to replicate the sound of the era, and he should be congratulated. But I do wonder if we are not just 'splitting hairs'' here; this really is a complex issue and a large proportion of us really won't be able to hear the benefit of any difference - or will we?

On a personal level my many nights spent chasing 'That Sound' are long gone. As my fingers slowly stiffen with the passing years I am just happy to be able to play reasonably well and produce a good generic sound, concentrating simply on enjoying the music. However .. each to his own ... so good luck to those who continue the search !

Cheers,

Ian
Last edited by scouserjoe2 on Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Pickups...

Postby dave robinson » Wed Sep 30, 2020 3:57 pm

I think you have your wires crossed a little Ian, it's torn cone syndrome not 'tone cone' as you believe. I understand what a torn cone sounds like so I'm cool with that.
What I'm not convinced about is that all Fender pickups suffer from this, I've never noticed it on my guitars and it certainly wasn't apparent on Hank's sound either, enough to warrant spending two years designing a new pickup. Hank played Dance On on his rosewood board Strat and it sounds great. I agree that Gary's version does also, so that's not in doubt.
The first set of Kinman pickups I bought were horrible, they lost all the character of my Strat and they were supposedly the Vintage style at that time. I was so disappointed that I took them back for a full refund and the shop suggested I try the normal Avn set which I did and they were OK and I still have them on one of my Strats.
I've tried many pickups over the years and have guitars with Seymour Alnico Pro IIs, ToneRider Vintage, Amilfitano, Sliders, Fender 57/62, as well as Fender Strat '62 USA Reissue, USA DeLuxe with Fender Noiseless and many with the original equipment still fitted as well as a G&L S-500 that has got probably the best sound of all of them all round. Bottom line is they all sound well in the ball park and adjustment to my rig is always enough to get MY Shadows tone, whichever guitar I play, even if I take the Brian May with Burns Tri Sonics. Pickups are magnets & wire, nothing more, nothing less and there are a lot of people having other peoples pants down over it with some 'new pickups'.
Bottom line, there's nowt wrong with the pickups that came on most guitars in the first place - and more and more people are realising it. :|
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Re: Pickups...

Postby fenderplucker » Thu Oct 01, 2020 4:28 am

Wow, this thread has had a long life!

I think it is worth remembering that pickups are just one link in a long chain in creating a sound and probably shouldn’t be judged without consideration of the other components. For example string material and construction can change the tone from mellow to bright, and pickup height also influences the tone. Similarly a thin pick will produce a bright attack but less weight in the mids and bass, whereas a thick pick like the Dunlop XL Jazz 3’s and George Dennis 1.3 favoured by Hank will have a much less pronounced attack and more solid mids and bottom end. Then there is the echo, amplifier and speaker, all of which will further modify the tone and dynamic of the sound. Finally, there is the playing style: up or down picking, how hard etc., and I think back to that early video of Cliff using Hank’s rig to play Apache with the rest of The Shadows and the tone was nothing like Hanks!

That said, I think that there are some generalisations that can be made. As Dave said above, most single coils with alnico magnets should be in the general ballpark and can get close to the original sound with a bit of experimenting with strings, picks and tweaking amplifier and/or equaliser settings (assuming of course that the rest of the chain is not too far off). The question then is how close is close enough and this will be a personal decision. For some players, just sounding similar is all they are after, whereas for others it is getting as close as possible to the original sound and both are equally valid approaches. I started out with a 2004 American Strat but found that the pickups lacked the scooped sound of Hank’s original recordings. At the time, the only Fender options were the CS54’s and 57/62’s and, with the strings I was using (DR’ s and Elixier’s, both 11 or 12 – 52), the CS54’s came closer. A number of other players have also used these with good success, and Hank chose them to get a more vintage sound for the 2009 Reunited tour after trying out a number of others. So they have been our reference pickups in any comparison, though now Fender market a whole range of “vintage” options. However, just how close any of these reproduce the tone of the originals of the same time period is open to question, and there is also the problem of variability in the originals where, due to different winding techniques and variability in the pole magnets, their sound could vary considerably. Finally, somewhere earlier in this thread, Stephane (jetblack) comments on the qualities of the different grades of Alnico and also single coils with ceramic magnets and I agree with his overall assessment that the latter are a bit less ideal for getting the clean tones of The Shadows.

Humbuckers are traditionally in a totally different sound group and are not as well suited to the Shadows clean tones.

This brings us to the noise cancelling range of pickups such as the Kinmans, Fender noiseless, and various pickups where one coil is stacked over the top of another and which attempted to get the same sound as the single coils but with the benefits of being noiseless like the humbuckers. Going right back to the top of this thread, David Martin commented in 2009:

I have personally used Kinmans (of two types), Fender Noiseless and Hot Noiseless pickups. Clearly, Hank likes his signature Kinman set, and they will certainly give you his modern tone (you can hear my use of them in the Sound Files section with Janine). But they won't give you the old classic "bark" and twang (and neither will the now discontinued Hank CV set) or the in-between sounds of two pickups combined. The Fenders are OK for general use fitted to Clapton and Beck Strats respectively, but when compared A to B with traditionally made pickups they just don’t have the authentic basic tone for Shads music...

Many would agree with this sentiment and indeed it is what drove Chris Kinman to develop the concept further to get even closer to the true 50's Stratocaster sound, hopefully for Hank to use on the 2009 Reunited tour. However, it turned out to be more difficult than anticipated and none were ready for the tour and that is when Hank decided to go with the CS54’s. Nevertheless, Chris persevered and after a couple of years came up with the Impersonator range that made a significant step in sounding just like Strat pickups. I’ll leave it to Chris to explain the nomenclature used (Impersonator 54, 56 and 69), but I found the E69’s to be closest to the CS54’s used as a reference, with the Impersonator E56 and Impersonator 54 progressively less bright but probably preferred by many. Hank went with the Impersonator 54’s as the best compromise between his vintage and modern sound and currently has them fitted to the 3 Strats he uses on stage. I posted some demo sound files on these sites showing how close they came to the tones of the original recordings.

However, when doing some more demos we found that with some very heavy picking on the low strings (e.g. the intro to Dance On and the middle section of Peace Pipe) it was possible to promote an unpleasant form of distortion that has become known as the “torn cone syndrome”. This is an issue to a greater or less degree with all Strat pickups and extreme string motion (particularly if the pickups are mounted close to the strings) but most players would probably seldom experience it with typical set up and picking technique, and it is hardly noticeable on the original recording of these tunes as mentioned above by Dave. Nevertheless it remained a niggling issue and was clearly apparent when Gary Taylor (using a fairly aggressive picking technique) tried the Impersonator 69’s on these tunes. More grey hairs for Chris Kinman but a solution was finally found with the new Magnum Opus series.

So, to get to the points raised by Ian, I don’t think that the designation CS54, 56/72, 60, 69 etc. necessarily bears a lot of relation to the original pickups of the designated periods, and the CS54’s were simply the ones I used as a reference having found them to give the sound closest to Hank’s early period. Incidentally, I have also compared them directly to 34346 and the Oasis Strat and they were indeed very close. The final step of eliminating the TCS was not intended to change the “color and character” of the original pickups, but simply to preserve it even under extreme picking.
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Stratocaster pickups pefected

Postby Chris Kinman » Thu Oct 01, 2020 6:35 am

Thanks for your praise Ian, Roger and Iian. Yes, I am driven in my quest for improvement and that drive has culminated in my range of improved guitar pickup from Strat and Tele to Jazzmaster, P-90 and Humbuckers.

Now let me reply to your confusion and your questions Ian. Hanks original recordings of Dance On that he played on his original ’59 Stratocaster TCS is not so noticeable, listen carefully and you'll hear the fuzzy sounds of TCS attend by something of a 'fuzzy crack' at time stamps 1:17, 1:19 and 1:27 in this YouTube video


The Fender CS-54, for all it’s crude design and lack of sophistication, is a rarity among Strat pickups because it appears to be relatively immune to TCS. I suspect the folks at Fender these days have no understanding of TCS since all other fender models have it. I suspect the CS-54 some kind of happy accident. Thus, the CS-54 is the preferred modern pickup of Hank, Paul and Gary to achieve his 60’s Shadows sound. Those three fellas have the finest set of ears I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Their collective assertion is the CS-54 is the only modern pickup that captures that lush, fat but bitey sound of the uniquely fortunate 50’s pickups, including Hank’s ‘59 Fiesta Red Stratocaster given to him by Cliff. Read my next post addressed to Dave Robinson where I talk about how the 50’s era pickups were different to the 60’s era pickups. Leo chopped and changed elements of his pickups, often to cut costs or merely on a whim, and I suspect he made a lasting change circa 1960 that, unbeknownst to him, inadvertently impacted on their sonic performance in subtle ways. TCS is definitely not nice and, like hum, is considered annoying sonic pollution by those that fastidious players that care about their sound.

As for splitting hairs, perhaps you should consider Paul Rossiter and Gary Taylor since they are the players who insisted I solve the problem and that any sign of TCS was not acceptable to them. And I happen to agree with them to the point that I devoted 2 years of my life to engineer a solution, at significant monetary cost and many late nights I might add. Horses for courses though, not all players have such discerning hearing ability or the commercial need for eliminating TCS and for those there is probably no need to step up to the perfection of the Magnum Opus 59, my Impersonator E69 set will suffice … and do a darn good job of it too. After all, TCS is not apparent on all tunes, only a handful where a strong upstroke on the low E-6th is required. Here is an audio file provided by Paul Rossiter where TCS is undeniably audible https://kinman.com/mp3/dance-on-artifact-with-tcs.php Listen for the fuzzy sound of TCS at time stamp 0:05 right after the initial attack. Is that something you would enjoy in your sound?

CK
Last edited by Chris Kinman on Fri Oct 02, 2020 8:52 am, edited 9 times in total.
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Strat pickups perfected

Postby Chris Kinman » Thu Oct 01, 2020 6:37 am

Dave Robinson, like Hank Marvin himself, more and more players are realizing hum is a dissonant, un-harmonious and generally annoying noise that pollutes their sound. Kinman pickups provides a solution without sacrificing sonic character … and now we’ve gone one better in perfecting Hank’s 60’s sounds along with Zero-Hum. You obviously have no understanding of what it took to design a noiseless pickup that is this good, there is not another noiseless that even comes close to the Magnum Opus and even Fender’s CS-54 falls short. And be aware I am just one little bloke doing my RE&D, not part of a big company that has an R&D budget … and yet my products outshine theirs.

And contrary to your insinuation that I am peddling ordinary products to gullible people solely for profit I assure you that, given the technology and the 26 odd years of development that bought me to this high point, my products represent extreme value for money … in fact a bargain considering what goes into them. Should be twice the price.

There are other benefits too,
-low string pull that minimizes that confounded Strat-itis.
-Optimized string-over-magnet alignment regardless of Vintage or Modern narrow bridges (there is more to that than simply arranging a closer magnet spread which buggers up the sound).
-Balanced G-3rd string output level.
-Beautiful pristine crystaline highs without the ragged ice pick of Fender pickups.
-Better clarity and transparency than Fender pickups which many customers testify sound veiled in side-by-side comparisons with the latest Gen-2 Kinmans.

The latter two being Paul Rossiter and Gary Taylors observations as well as a lot of my customers, they all can’t be wrong. But of course some players have wooden ears and can not discern the sonic flaws nearly as well as other players do ;)

I’m afraid you are displaying ignorance and lack of awareness with your simplistic assertion that “pickups are magnets & wire, nothing more, nothing less”. Kinman pickups are most certainly a hellava lot more than magnets and wire, there are 4 silicon steel core strips, 3 silicon steel magnetic shields, 2 types of steel core pins, wrap-around insulators that prevent short-circuiting between coil and core pins & magnets, 2 different coils wound with different turns count and different gauge wire, other stuff that grounds the magnets but not the magnetic shields and not the lower 11 steel core pins, embedded eyelets and printed circuitry that saves space by eliminating bulky hook-up wires and a few other things ... as well there are seven (7) Electrical Engineering Patents to prove it (and more coming soon). The new Magnum Opus pickups are packed with un-obvious technologies in order to solve the above-mentioned flaws with Fender pickups. These technologies are the fruits of a lifetime of dedication to improving the flaws that Leo failed to address and which, over time, became increasingly objectionable to discerning and fastidious players.

As with echo units, amplifiers, strings and indeed guitars and pickups there are good ones and there are bad ones and I'm happy to say more than one American guitar manufacturer report they have not heard a less-than-average Kinman yet, they all are outstanding.

I have found that practically all Fender type Stratocaster pickups produced after 1960 succumb to TCS. I have a set of Fender 1963 pickups and a bunch of others from later years and all of them have TCS, some are worse than others. Paul and Gary agree, they tested many. I believe Hanks original 1959 specimens are among the last pickups made that don’t easily succumb to TCS. Either that or his picking technique is so highly sophisticated and orchestrated as to avoid it.

However, one must invest in a high quality low capacitance lead. Read our Blog article “Any old cable won’t do” https://kinman.com/Bad-things-cables-can-do.php Maybe that’s the reason you had a bad experience a long time ago. Ordinary cables make good pickups sound dull and uninteresting.

CK
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Re: Pickups...

Postby scouserjoe2 » Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:09 am

Hi,

Are we missing a post here, or has something been deleted that we are no longer seeing in the chain of events ?

As the thread reads at the moment, and given the order of the posts, it would suggest that the last post and some of the criticism made by Chris Kinman dated 01 October at 5:37 am appears to be directed at me. However I would like to make it very clear that many of the comments to which Chris appears to be referring and quoting ( for example :- “pickups are magnets & wire, nothing more, nothing less” ) are definitely NOT attributable to me. Can we have some clarification here, please, as I do not want anyone to suggest or come away with the opinion that I am in any way critical of Chris's efforts or knowledge. Indeed I have been a repeat customer of Chris for many years. By the way, Dave, my 'Tone Cone' was a misspelling which I have corrected (put it down to the ageing process and brain-hand disconnect :))

Cheers,

Ian
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Re: Pickups...

Postby Chris Kinman » Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:51 am

Hi Ian (scouserjoe2), I certainly view you as a friend and I answered your benign comments in the post beginning with >>> Thanks for your praise Ian, Roger and Iian.

My other post beginning Dave Robinson, like Hank Marvin himself is intended for Dave Robinson. He wrote >>>“pickups are magnets & wire, nothing more, nothing less” I am not confused about who wrote what, am I?

And BTW thanks for being a satisfied repeat customer, send a message before you send payment next time you order something and I'll give you a nice discount. Feel better now? All the best, CK
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Re: Pickups...

Postby scouserjoe2 » Thu Oct 01, 2020 1:17 pm

Chris,

Many thanks indeed for clarifying the situation. What confused me was that your two posts were separated by only a few minutes and I read them as one. My original intervention was simply to ask why comparisons with your new pickups were done specifically with CS54's and it was certainly not to criticise any person or product. Thanks also for your kind offer of discount, I shall certainly check out your Magnum Opus pickups when they become available.

Cheers,

Ian
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