Strat PUP cover ?

[Madison]

My dumb question of the day.
Why aren't Strat P-Up covers metal?

[rafe]

My dumb answer of the day.
Because they are plastic....


I tried to fight the temptation but it won    probably just design and cost

[Madison]

Doh!
 
Ask a stupid question and get........

[tubesornothing]

I have looked around and don't see much of any being produced.
I almost want some chrome ones now!(if there is such a thing)

Try googling "chrome strat cover",  quite a few hits:

http://www.warmoth.com/Stratreg-Pickup-Cover-Chrome-P859C73.aspx


and this:

http://www.greasygroove.com/fenderpickupcovers.php


and this:

http://phousemusic.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=20&products_id=231

[Madison]

Interesting.
Will have to write to them.
I am still wondering if it changes the tone or gets ride of some of the buzz from single coils.
Sort of the original question.

[stingray_65]

Undoubtedly it will change the tone. (IMHO)

If you've ever heard a Tele neck Pup with and without the lipstick tube cover, you might be inclined to thinks so too.

Ray

[G._Hoffman]

Interesting.
Will have to write to them.
I am still wondering if it changes the tone or gets ride of some of the buzz from single coils.
Sort of the original question.

They are plastic because Leo Fender was trying to make an instrument as cheaply as possible while making a workable instrument.  Shaping metal is more expensive than shaping plastic.

I seriously doubt you would hear a difference between metal and plastic.  People always say they can tell the difference between humbuckers with and without covers, but I've never seen actual evidence of it.  I don't know if I could actually tell the difference in a real back to back test, but I do know that your ability to remember sonic details is shorter than the time it takes to change covers.  I sure couldn't tell you the difference, and I've tried hundreds (if not thousands) of pickups.


Gabriel

[Madison]

Thanks guys for all the input and info.

[tubesornothing]

People always say they can tell the difference between humbuckers with and without covers, but I've never seen actual evidence of it. 

Yeah there is a difference, for sure.  It is a subjective thing, perhaps your ears are not as acute.

[bigsbybender]

Why aren't Strat P-Up covers metal?

In 1954 the white plastic would have looked pretty futuristic to go along with the revolutionary design of the rest of the guitar.  Metal covers would have appeared very conventional. That was the jet age where technology and design changed pretty drastically in a short period of time.

It reminds me of when I was a kid. I remember my grandmother throwing out the family heirloom furniture when I was a kid, because she preferred the chrome, plastic and formica furniture of the 50's over well-kept 19th century joinery of old growth wood. To her the antiques were a symbol of the depression when she couldn't afford new, but the plastic 50's stuff was "New and futuristic looking" to her and thus a symbol of prosperity.

j.

[G._Hoffman]

People always say they can tell the difference between humbuckers with and without covers, but I've never seen actual evidence of it.

Yeah there is a difference, for sure.  It is a subjective thing, perhaps your ears are not as acute.

Not one person I know who has ears worth mentioning has ever actually been able to hear a difference.  And I promise you, my ears are just fine.  

As far as it being a "subjective" thing, that is usually another way of saying imaginary.  Your ability to hear fine differences in sound lasts about 2-3 minutes.  It takes at least 3-4 times that to remove a pickup cover.  How can you possibly make any kind of valid assessment?  People always want to believe that something makes a change, and so they assume they hear it, but as often as not they are just imagining it.  


Gabriel

[bigdaddy]

True metal covers will sound different then plastic. Same as different materials for the pickup ring sound different. Same as whether the pup mounts in a ring, in a pickguard or into the wood it will sound different.

I tried taking copper foil tape and wrapping some strat pups to kill some noise and the sound change was drastic.These wer higher output single coil Duncan 1/4 pounders. Of course unbeknownst to some part of the low powered single coil sound/tone is from the nosie(think about that).

After experiemnting with many things and reading so many books of which mostly I did not understand all I can go by is my ears. A metal cover will change the sound, how much depends on many other factors.

[G._Hoffman]

True metal covers will sound different then plastic. Same as different materials for the pickup ring sound different. Same as whether the pup mounts in a ring, in a pickguard or into the wood it will sound different.

Prove it.  I've never seen or heard any evidence that convinces me.


Gabriel

[bigdaddy]

Oh your one of those contrary types Gabriela Hoffman, huh. I see you had something to say about everything I posted.....

Prove it, how could I to someone who can't hear the difference? Although my winder says that Tele neck pups don't sound different with or without the cover, I disagree with him too but at least he has a body of work to support his opinion.

I'll tell ya what, prove to me you're a good guitar player......do you have any recordings of yourself? If you are a good guitar player I would think your opinion would hold more weight even if it wrong.

But I expect that you are probably not a very good guitar player at all. You just like to mouth off to support a shallow ego. A very common issue on the internet were everybody can become someone important to themselves and a legend in their own mind. Have you done numerous experiments testing this like I have over the last almost 40 years?

It's opinion and I have removed many covers off pickups and heard a difference, some more then others. By removing the cover you can get the pickup closer to the strings for more output. Even Clapton did that and said it on an interview circa about 1970 that he removes the covers on his humbuckers to get more of everything sound wise and more output.

I have 18 guitar I built from Warmoth and USACG bodies and necks and I speak with Tommy Rosamond all the time at USACG so you disagree with him too hmmm. I built so many more though, maybe 20 others that I traded or sold the bodies or necks for one reason or another. All different pickups, different woods, different sounds.

Are you going to argue with Eric Clapton too? There used to be a guy like you on Ted Weber's forum, Adams, what an A hole he was. Where's your web site for building and repairing guitars or music that you recorded?

[simonallaway]

"you can get the pickup closer to the strings for more output"

That's the ONLY part of this argument that makes any sense. Removal of the cover alone isn't going to make a difference.

And using an "appeal to authority"...especially Clapton, doesn't hold any water.

[rafe]

Well I tried an experiment with the cover on my tele and with the cover off my tele. I got an independent
observer with ears that are 100 times better than my own, now if i can only teach my dog to talk                                                                                   

[bigdaddy]

It has something to do with eddy currents. But there are other issues too. Like I said some people can hear things others can't, like some people have perfect pitch and most people do not. Some people are tone deaf and some people can't play guitar very well but are like really into it.....just because some people don't play very well it doesn't stop them from offering their opinion.

I hate to say this but I go on a lot of pickup winders and amp makers web sites and hear THEM do their own audio clips, mostly they really can't play very well. Some can hardly play more then a few barre chords and a lick or two. It doesn't mean they don't make good pickups or amps, pickups are not like a guitar they are more kind of mechanical devices. Tom Holmes who makes the best PAFs does not even play guitar, I talked with him many times years ago when he would talk with people. He's a tool and dye guy and doesn't play a lick at all.

I guess if you don't get it, you don't get it. Like politics and religion.

[simonallaway]

 

[G._Hoffman]

Oh your one of those contrary types Gabriela Hoffman, huh. I see you had something to say about everything I posted.....

Prove it, how could I to someone who can't hear the difference? Although my winder says that Tele neck pups don't sound different with or without the cover, I disagree with him too but at least he has a body of work to support his opinion.

Hardly, but I've been building electric guitars and replacing pickups for 23 years.  I'd say that I have a pretty good basis for comparison.  Our shop manager has been doing this stuff for 30 years, and he agrees with me.  One of the best guitarists I know is a good friend, and has better ears than any single individual I have ever met.  He agrees with me.  In fact, I don't know one person who has ears I trust (and I know a LOT of guys with great ears) who can come up with any consistent difference between with or without covers.  Which means whatever they are hearing isn't about the covers.

Like I said, the only valid comparison would involve being able to unsolder and remove covers in about 1-2 minutes - including the unstringing and restringing of the guitar -  so that you can actually remember what you heard, and how you were playing.  Which is impossible.  You simply can't remember fine detail in sound any longer than that.

This is one of those audiofool - err, audiophile things.  The best example was the two guys who were fighting over which $1,000 plus speaker cable was better, so they had a third friend run a blind test.  Both the audiofools agreed - the $0.50 wire coat hangers were the best speaker cables!  

Or the guys who send their expensive vintage Martin's to be "voiced" by some guy somewhere, who proceeds to remove required structural parts of the guitar, put on new strings, and then send it back.  The main difference the owner hears is the new strings, but six months down the line he can't figure out why his guitar is falling apart.  But he spent $1000+ on it, so it MUST sound better.  (Of course, he could have had the same sound improvement by spending $10 on new strings, and his guitar wouldn't be falling apart!)

You EXPECT to hear a difference, so you hear a difference.  Bone bridge pins?  Complete snake oil (though they do look kind of cool), but try convincing half the population of the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum of that!  Even if pickup covers do make a difference, could you honestly tell which was which if you didn't already know?  Not a chance.  There are too many other variables, from a players pick attack, the freshness of the strings, the ambient humidity, etc. for you to narrow it down to one thing.  Which, as far as I'm concerned, means it makes no difference.  


Gabriel

[bigdaddy]

Well that's your opinion and you stick to it by golly!!!!!!!! :laughing7:

I'd still like to hear you play or some of your friends.....any clips?....My friend plays with Blue Oyster Cult does that matter? Or actually my friends friend is David Bowie's Guitar player, Earl Slick, we're all from Staten Island.....Oh and um....another friend is Bob Dylan's guitar tech.......OH my other friend played with "the chambers brothers" on tour years ago.....I could go on of course and it really means nothing at all.

Because if you or anybody else doesn't hear it then it doesn't exist.....right.

But Gabe......were is your body of work and were exactly did you work doing repairs....hmmm. But that doesn't matter really.....does it? Some guy somewhere destroying Martin guitars, name names....please. I know of someone who does that to Fender amps his name is Gerald Weber who used to remove your vintage transformers and rip you off.....everybody knows that one or do they?

[G._Hoffman]

Well that's your opinion and you stick to it by golly!!!!!!!! :laughing7:

I'd still like to hear you play or some of your friends.....any clips?

Well, here is my Friend Dean.  I'll take his playing, and particularly his chops, over anyones.  And while Capt. Jack's B-3 was pretty loud, Dean's ears haven't been wreaked by years of playing through 100 Watt Marshalls at 10.  For myself, my hands haven't worked very well since I developed tendinitis at 18, so you'll have to excuse my lack of sound clips. 

As for where I'm building and doing repairs, look at my signature line.



Gabriel

[bigdaddy]

Well so you build some guitars.....wow....you and 1000 others, maybe 10,000.... . Just like Adams did....and he didn't know sheet.

Dean's pretty good, I wish I had his hands, great pinkie work, but he's boring. I know about 100 guys who play like that and 100 more that play better, sorry not impressed. I live in New York City, so many guys that will wipe the floors with him....I did sound, I owned my own sound company and I must have done 100 weddings with better guitar players in the band....not including the rock bands because the guitar players usually suck.. .

I'm totally disabled with spinal issues and arthritis in my hands from broken bones and from hitting a heavy bag.....and I play the crap out of a guitar and I will until my dying days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I lost more of my hearing driving M-113s in the Army then 100 watt Marshall stacks.... .

Why you picked me to go after I'll never know. Is that even your web site, how old are you? It says my son Gabriel, is that you or your son, I'm a little confused as to who the luthier is now.

I'm not impressed with your work sorry, I've seen a hundred like it, it looks nice but so do a lot of women who are totally crazy and terrible in the sack, but some times it's the crazy ones that are the best there  .

I know a lot of guys who can build guitars, one repairs Paul McCartney's stuff, Slash, George Benson and many others plus the professionals at a very well known store on Staten Island. Just because you have a web site with a few guitars on it does not make you a good luthier or even knowledgeable. Yes you know some stuff but for no reason feel the need to discredit what I said makes you an A Hole, at least to me. I don't do that to anybody unless they go after me first. Everybody has their opinion and I respect that unless it's just too far out there and giving totally erroneous information. I never do that.

I think you're a nut.

[rafe]

I lost track what round is this? :icon_joker: :icon_jokercolor:

Sorry guys but it's lost it's entertainment value and it's getting out of character for this forum no one can win and you both are going to look bad IMHO

[bigdaddy]

I don't care how I look, if I did I would have lost weight and been a rock star in the 1970s.

I care about right and wrong. I never said anything to this clown and never would have, everybody is entitled to his opinion yet he felt the need to come at me and discredit my posts which were viable and accurate.

I'll go all day and night, it's tiresome but when it comes to a fight I'm on the side of right. Some people won't stand-up for themselves and allow people to bully them. When I was a kid growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn I was the kid sticking up for the weaker ones against the bullies. When I even feel a bully type personality coming through it sets off an alarm in me. I go a little ape shit man...... :munky2:

[G._Hoffman]

Not going after anybody, sorry if you felt that way.  I just don't like snake oil, even if you really believe in it.  I get really upset about all kinds of things.  Alternative medicine, creationism, all that kind of stuff.  Heck, you weren't even the first person I called out on it.

As I said, if you can't pick it out of a blind listening test, it really isn't likely to be real.  Things that small are impossible to remember for long enough for a scientific test - that is a simple fact.  Its so easy to be drawn in by all the audiofool type nonsense, particularly for people who have more love than knowledge about a subject. People who don't have the time to really learn what is what spend a lot of money on things they don't really need to, simply because someone else tells them to.  I don't like that.

But if you don't like what Dean does, I'm afraid I can't have much faith in your ears.  Dean's a top 1% player in my world.  Of course, its better with a band, but I don't know where you can find that right now.  (I'm also biased a bit by the fact that he is one of the funniest people on the planet, and a very good friend.)  I wish I could find some of his work with Capt. Jack McDuff - if you've ever liked organ trios, you'd love it.

I'd love to keep playing my guitar in spite of my hand problems, but when it is really bad I can play about 15 minutes before my hands are completely incapable of making a chord.  It isn't desire that is lacking, it is simply impossible much of the time.  I can't play my acoustics (my preferred instrument) at all, or at least not for more than about 10-15 minutes a week.  I simply can not do it.  I'm glad you can play through your injuries - that is not a road open to me.  


Gabriel

[bigdaddy]

Sounds like you got a man crush on Dean.... I said he's good but I know a lot of guys better, much better. Nice finger work but his solos are just OK and he's kind of boring to listen to, lack of emotional content, more technique driven. Plus that style of playing in some of the clips are off the beaten path.

Snake oil...one person's snake oil is another persons salvation. Stop judging people and anointing yourself the defender of rightousness.....you failed already on that.

Just because YOU do not hear something does not mean it does not exist. You cannot possibly tell me full sized humbuckers sound the same with and without covers. If you say that you are totally out of reality.

[simonallaway]

... cannot possibly tell me full sized humbuckers sound the same with and without covers.

It really depends on what actually changes when the cover is removed. I'm not buying that "It has something to do with eddy currents"... especially if the covers themselves are made of non-ferrous material.

I do accept that removing the cover allows you to adjust the pickups closer to the strings. But there you go, something other than the cover changed.

Perhaps the noise level changes due to the shielding properties of the cover. This is probably measurable without having to rely on anecdotal evidence.

[bigdaddy]

And Simon what makes you an expert too, or are you just another opinionated so and so....you guys tire me out. Go home and play your guitar, you should be practicing more instead of on the internet.

I had to train my ears to make MONEY.......as a sound tech running a board. I had to within milliseconds know what mic was doing what and adjust it so please those who think a person who does that does not have way superior hearing is just ignorant of what it takes to do that job. Like a recording engineer or sound engineer.....your ears are your life. If you aren't up to it you don't get work. I lived in the real world...

You cannot say by any means that a change in the mass, weight, material or composition of materials on a pickup will NOT change their sound. Please don't tell me potting a pickup doesn't change the sound drastically too... . If you can't hear it, your loss. Some changes make a huge difference some minuet. Better yet talk with people who wind transformers about it, not homegrown pickup winders, I have. Nobody truly understands magnetism or even gravity, just ask a physicist. Yet some people think they have discovered a graviton or some new particle that explains magnetism here.

Everything changes the sound, even the room temperature, even the bridge pickups output from the heat of you hand over it. If you ever played a whole night on a hot stage you would notice the bridge pickups output increase if you have your hand over that area when you pick. Please I have been doing this since I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I have done enough gigs, fixed enough guitars and so on to notice these things. I don't make stuff up.......try using a VOM and see how the DC resistance goes up as the pickup gets hotter from your hand.

People have to understand if they cannot see or hear something that does not mean it does not exist. A dog can smell things you can't, so I guess what he's smelling doesn't exist right....very foolish and immature to think like that.

[simonallaway]

Nothing makes me an expert. And I am not claiming that I am an expert.

When a claim such as "pickups sound different when you remove the cover" is made I am genuinely interested in what's actually happening. It's useful to know, right? So assuming there's no magic going on here, there must be something to it, something repeatable. But all I'm hearing from you is variations on "because some guy said so", which isn't enough for me.

[tubesornothing]

So assuming there's no magic going on here, there must be something to it, something repeatable.

Sure there is something going on.  And its repeatable - but subjective.  Some people can hear it; other people can hear it after its pointed out to them; and then other just cant hear it at all.   Some people have better eyesight than others (hence glasses); some people run faster than others;  Gee people are different and it affects hearing too.  Go figure.

PIA to prove - sure!  Especially to those that cant hear it.  And since we are talking nuances is sound, it is a total PIA to measure.

The part that is total crap is people who disguse their argument as pseudo scientific.  They say:  "Until you prove it, it does not exist".  Well thats just close minded crap.  Effective scientists remain open minded and neutral until a theory is proven or disproven.  In this case, we are in the neutral zone.

[Shrapnel]

The part that is total crap is people who disguse their argument as pseudo scientific.  They say:  "Until you prove it, it does not exist".  Well thats just close minded crap.  Effective scientists remain open minded and neutral until a theory is proven or disproven.  In this case, we are in the neutral zone.

People tend to use that excuse a lot for things they refuse to believe or accept... even in the scientific community... for centuries.

As far as tonal differences go, I know there are things I don't always pick up on... and like others, it is a case of I just can't, or don't want to.

[HotBluePlates]

Like I said, the only valid comparison would involve being able to unsolder and remove covers in about 1-2 minutes - including the unstringing and restringing of the guitar -  so that you can actually remember what you heard, and how you were playing.  Which is impossible.

I don't know if Gibson ever put it into production, or if it was just a silly idea that didn't go anywhere...

Once upon a time, when I worked in the Gibson Nashville plant, they had a Les Paul style guitar with large rectangular openings through the body where you would normally find routs for the pickups. Individual pickups were secured to a wood block (usually mahogany), which could then fit in the opening in the guitar body. They were inserted from the back of the guitar. There were quick-connect ends on the pickup wires and the normal control cavity wiring harness.

The idea was to have a guitar where the pickups could be quickly changed, without loosening the strings and without soldering, so that the sonic differences between pickups could be heard in the same actual guitar. The intent was that only dealers would have these guitars, and that they would be used for taste-testing pickups that the dealer would then sell to the customer, on the basis of the sonic difference heard in the quick-change guitar.

I can't say I've ever seen one of these outside the factory, though, and I doubt it was ever put into actual use. It would be the way to quickly hear the difference in pickup sound without your memory of detail vanishing. My guess is that even if it were available at the dealer's shop, most people wouldn't take the time, and instead buy on reputation or brand preference.

[rafe]

The Dan Armstrong plexi's have a similar feature. pretty cool for it's time

[Cork]

I hear that guitars sound different when you wear shoes as opposed to sneakers.

Did I say that?

[bigdaddy]

I've heard from my sources that guitars sound different when you actually know how to play them well. That makes all the difference. And if you don't you can't hear the difference between shoe types.

Gibson for a short period of time made some Les Paul's with cutouts from the back to demonstrate different pickups. I saw that at a Sam Ash store over 10 years ago. It was a beautiful Gold top and he was going from P-90s to different Brustbucker PAF type humbuckers.

I remember those Dan Armstrong Plexi guitars well. It was very hard finding pickups. People started buying them when If I am not mistaken Ronnie Wood used them for slide. But you were lucky to find pickups for it. I think they also made a bass version and a bass were the pickup slide on a rail from the bridge to the neck. I saw a guy named Buster Cherry use it while playing with Leslie West.

[FYL]

Rockinger (DE) uses custom guitars with quick change plates for their All Pickup Check CDs.

http://www.rockinger.com/index.php?cat=WG090&lang=ENG&product=CD001