ShortScale.org

UK luthier Doug Wilkes makes guitars with pickups that slide to different positions on rails. From what I remember, he thinks the ideal position for "neck" single coils is actually a little lower than you'd normally find on strats and teles and so on. Plus, his guitars are all wired with a series option, so you can roll the neck pickup down to sit next to the bridge pickup for a more traditional humbucker sound.

http://www.wilkesguitars.co.uk/pages/the_answer.htm

I guess it totally depends on the pickups, though.

I never had much of an issue with the pickup placement on my Dano. I always liked the fact that it was a bit different. The pickups sitting in a slightly odd position to other guitars just makes them look more oddball and basic, which I love.

yeah sounds good. i love the dc12 and would love a dc59 too but one dano is unique enough

ekwatts wrote:UK luthier Doug Wilkes makes guitars with pickups that slide to different positions on rails. From what I remember, he thinks the ideal position for "neck" single coils is actually a little lower than you'd normally find on strats and teles and so on. Plus, his guitars are all wired with a series option, so you can roll the neck pickup down to sit next to the bridge pickup for a more traditional humbucker sound.

http://www.wilkesguitars.co.uk/pages/the_answer.htm

I always through that was neat, like on those Dan Armstrongs. It's a bit like having every phase, coilsplit and coiltap option on your guitar though; you invariably end up using just a tiny selection.. but still super cool, being able to split a humbucker all over the shop.

I think they were originally supposed to be closer to the middle then neck, my silvertone sounds more like a middle pup then a neck pup.

One would think that if you ever use the frets on your guitar, the relative placement of the neck PUP would be moving with each chord played. If selected alone, the neck PUP position on the body probably does not matter to much as long is it is in a place where the strings have good movement. The strings are very constricted by the bridge and there the placement would probably give more varied results. Strats probably get their unique sound because of the placement of the middle pup with the other pups when played in combination.

I could be wrong, but that's how it seems it should work.

cur wrote:One would think that if you ever use the frets on your guitar, the relative placement of the neck PUP would be moving with each chord played. If selected alone, the neck PUP position on the body probably does not matter to much as long is it is in a place where the strings have good movement. The strings are very constricted by the bridge and there the placement would probably give more varied results. Strats probably get their unique sound because of the placement of the middle pup with the other pups when played in combination.

I could be wrong, but that's how it seems it should work.

yeah but if im playing 1 or 2 frets higher at the lower end of the neck i don't have to adjust where im playing by the same distance because of the way the harmonics work around the pickup. its a fractional difference but yeah, timbre is fucked up and happens.

also i know what a strat pickup sounds like and a dc12 pickup sounds like. the voicing will always sound different on each because of how i play on them and the playing areas i use and exploit. you can adjust where you're playing to get round that but im not that good on guitar or patient enough

cur wrote:One would think that if you ever use the frets on your guitar, the relative placement of the neck PUP would be moving with each chord played. If selected alone, the neck PUP position on the body probably does not matter to much as long is it is in a place where the strings have good movement. The strings are very constricted by the bridge and there the placement would probably give more varied results. Strats probably get their unique sound because of the placement of the middle pup with the other pups when played in combination.

I could be wrong, but that's how it seems it should work.

Aye. This chat about "under where the 24th fret should be" assumes that you're always playing an open string. That node will move with the note.

We need to hook up with Doug Wilkes to make a guitar that moves the neck pickup to the relevant 2 octave position, wherever you're playing, for TRUE HARMONIC PURNESS.

Worryingly, I think I actually could do that with an Arduino, a few servos, a webcam and openFrameworks.

FUCKIN NERD

Doog wrote:We need to hook up with Doug Wilkes to make a guitar that moves the neck pickup to the relevant 2 octave position, wherever you're playing, for TRUE HARMONIC PURNESS.

Worryingly, I think I actually could do that with an Arduino, a few servos, a webcam and openFrameworks.

FUCKIN NERD

I expect to see you on Dragon's Den then.

"Much like yer intonation, I'M OWT"

Doog wrote:We need to hook up with Doug Wilkes to make a guitar that moves the neck pickup to the relevant 2 octave position, wherever you're playing, for TRUE HARMONIC PURNESS.

Worryingly, I think I actually could do that with an Arduino, a few servos, a webcam and openFrameworks.

FUCKIN NERD

Sounds like a job for the Gibson robot pickup. You could sell it to them, they'll probably buy it. You could call it the Grabber Robot guitar and base it on the Grabber bass they put out. (by the way, I can't believe I posted this because I hit enter 1 second before power went out for 20 seconds)

you just change where you're picking

With auto-tuning guitars it's not long until we just get robots to play them, with us just shouting out the notes we want played.

it seems weird people are saying in a roundabout way that pickup positions and their concurrent voicings don't matter because of frets. the timbre of an electric guitar utterly depends on it.

you're obviously not going to get the doorbell chime tone of striking the string above the 12th fret on an open string everywhere across the neck, but the tonal implications of a pickup above the 24th fret position are obvious compared to the middle pickup position.

again, not a deal breaker on the dano (which actually falls somewhere between neck and middle position), but it's just not what i would consider optimum for my needs

George wrote:you just change where you're picking

Did I miss a meeting? Are you saying you change where on the string you pick/strum based on where you are fretting?

I am, admittedly, a fucking hack but I pick/strum wherever feels comfortable (although I do sometimes pick closer to the bridge to get a different sound but generally I sort of thrash about around the same sort of place regardless of what my left hand is doing).

BearBoy wrote:

George wrote:you just change where you're picking

Did I miss a meeting? Are you saying you change where on the string you pick/strum based on where you are fretting?

I am, admittedly, a fucking hack but I pick/strum wherever feels comfortable (although I do sometimes pick closer to the bridge to get a different sound but generally I sort of thrash about around the same sort of place regardless of what my left hand is doing).

yeah if i care that much about doorbell tones using the neck pickup, which isn't often. lets say its a fairly slow lick or riff moving up and down the neck i'd simply play 'above that fret plus 12 frets'

so for fret 3 i'd play above 15, 5 above 17 etc. i might sweep diagonally across a certain shapes or just "in the middle" of a barre chord.

and by the way, this can be done with the 24th fret position too and the distance needed to move where you strike becomes even smaller, though the effect not as pronounced i guess, but an easier thing to do

if you play on the bridge pickup a lot the effect doesn't really matter much but it is fundamentally more pronounced on a neck pickup, which is why i don't get this whole line of thinking about positions not being that important when frets are considered

Wow. Genuinely never knew people did that.

BearBoy wrote:Are you saying you change where on the string you pick/strum based on where you are fretting?

How else are you going to get those pinch harmonics?

Fakir Mustache wrote:

Doog wrote:We need to hook up with Doug Wilkes to make a guitar that moves the neck pickup to the relevant 2 octave position, wherever you're playing, for TRUE HARMONIC PURNESS.

Worryingly, I think I actually could do that with an Arduino, a few servos, a webcam and openFrameworks.

FUCKIN NERD

Sounds like a job for the Gibson robot pickup. You could sell it to them, they'll probably buy it. You could call it the Grabber Robot guitar and base it on the Grabber bass they put out. (by the way, I can't believe I posted this because I hit enter 1 second before power went out for 20 seconds)

Sounds like big guitarma is onto us, man!

#steeltrussrodsdontjustmeltguys