Friday, August 08, 2008

Is this the future of Pickup design?

Posted by Jon in • Guitar Accessories

q-tuner pickup
Pickup design hasn’t really changed much over the years, sure there have been developments such as active pickups and the likes of Seymour Duncan and Larry DiMarzio have sonically shaped the tone of many a guitarist but the formula has always remained the same for passive and active pickups as far as I know. For a great description of how traditional pickups are created, check out this site.

Enter Q-tuner with their Neodymium magnets! In case you can’t be bothered to check the wikipedia link Neodymium magnets are the strongest known and are used in Microphones, Headphones, Hard Drives, Speakers etc. however Q-Tuners are the first pickups to use neodymium magnets which have superior sound reproduction. They are designed to be more responsive than passive and active pickups and allow the subtle harmonics in the upper frequency ranges.

“We’ve invested over 25 years perfecting our patented symmetrical electromagnetic circuit to make Q-Tuners the best pickups available.

Our proprietary computer aided guidance system allows for perfect side-by-side alignment of the windings creating physically as well as electrically identical coils. These coils are then baked, permanently “thermofusing” the wires producing two solid self-carrying “air” coils. One neodymium bar magnet is placed in each aircoil before both are sealed in epoxy resin. This Q-Tuner “powerhouse” is insusceptible to feedback and 100% humbucking action is ensured.

We top it off by feeding this pure signal out through two 999 silver coil lead-outs, the best electrical conductor available.“

And it doesn’t stop there, these pickups have 3 sets of adjustable pole pieces. These can be configured to create different magnetic and sonic variations by lowering a whole row using an allan key. Now whatever I say here simply won’t make sense, you should head over to the explanation for a comprehensive explanation from Q-Tuner.

So what do they sound like? Well there are a few examples available on the site which I recommend you have a listen to, no not the bass examples, the guitar! The first example of the clean guitar really shows how well these pickups accentuate harmonics, they achieve an incredibly bright and singing tone, although there is no information on what guitar was used which would have been helpful. The overdriven track also showcases the clarity of the pickups, the sound reminded me a little of Mattias IA Eklnudh who seems to get the cleanest distortion tones I’ve ever heard. The neck pickup demo is really nice, great tone that sounds like a single coil (it could actually be a single coil, check the GS model) but when it is overdriven it crunches up nicely. These pickups are a little more expensive than your average set of Seymours, well actually about double, you can get a matched pair for $280 but if you are a tone connoisseur than what is an extra $140? They also come in a direct mount version which have an “extremely linear frequency response”. Both varieties come in 7 string versions too.

Q-Tuner site.

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on 08/09 at 05:26 AM

I will diffently be checking these out.
Thanks for bringing them to our attention
Rock-on-RixzRax

Robert Fisher on 08/20 at 12:43 AM

I suspect conventional passive magnetic pick-ups (imitating the vintage pick-ups) will remain dominant for a long time. There have been a lot of interesting developments, however, and more coming. The hexaphonic pick-ups, EMG actives, Lace Sensors, Lace Alumitones, optical pick-ups, etc.

Somehow I’d missed the Q-tuners. Thanks for pointing them out.

on 08/20 at 03:49 PM

Hexaphonic? Optical? Wow I had no idea, thanks Robert I’ll look into these!

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