A Tour of the Ron Ellis Pickup Workshop - Ask Zac 129

 well hello friends and welcome to a very
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special Ask Zach today we are taking a field trip down to sunny California and we are going to visit the pickup winding
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workshop of Ron Ellis now Ron Ellis has been a good friend of mine for 20 years we met years ago when
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i was a guitar tech for brad paisley and since then he's become one of the premier pickup winders in the
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world and i of course have a a bunch of his pickups in various guitars he
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rewound the bridge pickup on this 57 esquire he even did a crazy craigslist deal for
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me where i wired him money i had found this guitar in san Diego and i wired him
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cash because the buyer insisted on cash and and he he did that for me he bought
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this guitar and and shipped it to me so he's he's a real mensch so
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uh here's the important part about this video lot of you you know they've been aware
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of Ron know that he's had this crazy long wait list and and such well that was because he was working out of his
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garage in this v by himself in this video you're gonna see that he now has his own
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winding facility and he has a whole team of guys working for him that are well trained and very serious about their
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craft and Ron himself is going to take you through the process he's going to show you bobbins how the magnets are put in
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the bobbins how they're wound how uh you know the attention that they put to the you know the testing that
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they do on magnets the testing that they do on the wire and then the wax potting and lacquer potting and all these
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various things and the testing that they do to keep a really high you know
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high level product and to keep you know consistency from pickup to pick up so i hope you enjoy this and i hope for
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those of you that have been paying those outrageous prices on reverb and such we'll just go ahead and order a set from
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Ron and those of you that have thought there's some crazy wait list you just go ahead and contact him
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all right well i hope you enjoy this and also if you do i really appreciate you
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supporting my work and the best way to do that is patreon so the uh there's a link to it below there's multiple levels
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there that you can check out also there's good old tip jar information in the description and also
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there is a merch that you can see below or at askzak.com alright thank you so much
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and enjoy your very unique opportunity to to see inside the pickup winding
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workshop of Ron Ellis well good morning Zac it's nice to have you here in the shop
Tour
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we can just do a walk through and just you know show you our little recipe
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parts of it of what we do here Ron Ellis pickup so um it all starts here basically we
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manufacture um our bobbins from start to finish um
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starts with this four bond material uh vulcanized paper
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that's been used since the 30s and
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so we have different thicknesses for different pickups um different types you can get it in
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different colors typically it's in black and anyway we've we've got a bunch of this
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and then what we do is we have our laser over here programmed and we
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like right now we have some of our hello sonic pickups uh bobbins in here that we're doing
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and uh so again we've got this program to do you know our illasonics p90s uh all of
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our single coil stuff our telecaster stratocasters a lot
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a lot of my time back in the garage or over here the first couple months was me
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literally signing these and i had to sit here with a paint pen and and the paint pin would spit
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it's half the time i couldn't even sign my name and i spent tons of time um doing that so then what we did is we
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developed a way that my signature that i signed here is actually on here it's programmed in so i don't have to do that
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anymore so um the pickups are exactly the same there's no change from the personally signed
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to the the laser sign versions so um because i know some people say that well
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the early ones you know were the good pickups because they were done in the grudge they're exactly the same
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so anyway so the bobbins are made here uh we have to clean them up because when you when
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you laser cut this material it has a sticky residue so we have to clean that off and we let that dry and then
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um we've got all of our different magnet materials that we buy from various
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places um from different manufacturers for different reasons um
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so we've got you know our bar magnets that we use for p90s humbuckers
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um again there's there's all different types there's you know we use a 3
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a5 sometimes a2 and there's various types within that
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range of magnets depending on what you want in sound um
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and then i test these a lot of these um when we get new batches of magnets in
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i have access to a spectrometer at work that i take these and i sample these and run these and see what the
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consistency is and there's a lot of times we have to return these or we set them aside for different
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reasons because unless the ratio is right of that magnet it's not consistent then the
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sound changes so we have to watch that you have to you have to control the quality of your ingredients well you do it it's like a recipe i mean this isn't
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rocket science you know it's it's a it it's a recipe it's it's like cooking food and you know you have to to keep
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everything consistent everything has to be fresh like in a recipe and you can't vary it and that's because these
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materials vary a lot and that's the thing you have to do is you have to go through and you have to check and test
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these materials and also the feedback to the manufacturers is helpful you know and i test a lot of materials
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in the spectrometer um and send that data back to the manufacturers actually which is helpful
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so um so i mean this is our magnets and then you know again we make telecaster
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stratocaster p90s humbuckers the elesonics
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you'll see that we're getting into master pickups bass pickups um we huge requests for that
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so these are all things that we're working on and trying to develop and again as you know each time you come
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up with something like that like i'm not a bass player so we have to send these up to good bass players and people are
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familiar with vintage pickups and get their feedback and work with us and it just takes time takes a lot of time
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so um anyway so I'll show you here my Calvin here is now assembling
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you know various right now he's working on sonic necks so these are all sonic necks
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and this is literally like the old school way i mean this is uh the way that fender did it in the early
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days and we still do the same way and obviously as we go there's different
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fixtures you can make up to make it easier but i just like doing it this way because it's the raw way and it's the
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way we've done it and it's a lot slower than you know a fixture where you can just
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drop an end to one press and I'm not saying that we won't go to that but right now this is how we do it
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so it's exactly the way that i did it starting 14 15 years ago
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but um but there's our different magnets different bobbins for the different runs pickups that we
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do [Music] this is an elesonic
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there's an l sonic here that you know again we make in the laser and then we have to bond it together
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there's variations of the magnets that we use there's a3 a5 that we use and we do
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a different stagger and um and sometimes depending on the model
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that we do sometimes there's there's a3 and a5 within the same pickup like my 5060s like in the stratocaster pickups
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or tell these two that we do um again these are just examples of uh
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here's a 50 60 neck uh pickup for strap
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and then each one of the different models we have different staggers and we have different magnets and there's different wire and
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and again it's been it was developing that recipe that took years to develop that and
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and then now the important thing is that we again you make it exactly and you don't change it you know so again everything
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that comes in uh all the materials it just changes i mean this is what
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pickup makers deal with you know and and it's it's a struggle at times and then also the whole coveting hit and then the
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material hold up um you know waiting on a lot of stuff we've been pretty fortunate it hasn't been that bad for us
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but um it's getting a lot better so but yeah so this is uh and then here's for instance we're doing
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these are alisonic p90s and we're trying just different prototypes different ways
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uh this is like a dog ear and then we have our dog ear covers custom made so we're trying different
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things there these are all protos that we're working on right now the yellow sonics like in the julian
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guitar the colleen's jail you know we're doing that in uh p90 style now size and soap bar or
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and dog ear and also some other custom work that we're doing for a guitar manufacturer that we're working
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on so um it's fun you know it's it's and that's that's the thing that i've always liked
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doing is i mean we have to manufacture these and we have to keep everything going out the door but my deal is is trying new
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pickups and and you know that's what i do at my day job my engineering job is test materials design new things and
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that's kind of what makes me tick so so it's fun all this is really good um
Winding
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so anyway we take the bobbins um some of these we glue in
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um we have to clean these up let them cure and then from there then they would go over to one of our
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winders and and here's my son alan hello
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who does the great majority of the winding of the pickups um this is one of our new larger
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windings we just got the green monster you call it yep it's been here for about a year now
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right we've had it about a year and it's a big industrial winder we also have smaller
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smaller winders like bench top winders that we still use but depending on the the pickups here
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and these are what these are tele that's a jl so it's a jail
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uh neck pickup and so you have different fixtures of course
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per the model that you're doing and uh you know we're continuing to
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develop new fixtures and and faster more secures ways of holding the
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bottoms but this is what's worked for us from day one it's still the same thing so we got the j all all wound up um
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i tend to use tao powder yeah powder use that a lot seems like there's
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a different technique for everyone my technique gets powder everywhere
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and then you really just kind of let it rip we already have it fastened and everything
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and everybody kind of has their own technique with this
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this is the way we've been doing it uh that's the garage especially
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so there's a definite there's a definite pattern that we use for different pickups each pickup style
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is different you know some are scatter wound and and then some are more layer wound
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everything we do is hand winding we don't do any auto winding and it's not to say that we want in the future
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there's definitely when you get into like the the later 60s uh into the 70s pickups those were all
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out of line you know and then then you get into the whole humbucker thing those were all machine wound
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but there were so many inconsistencies in the winders it's almost like they were hand wound so each one was very
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different that's why they all sound different but there's definitely a pattern that you have to keep
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and but that changes because
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the white and then we'll see with the wire here we'll show you that the wire when you get it in the wire varies a lot
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form bar wire is pretty consistent polysalt wire is pretty consistent um but when you get into the enamel
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wires it's all over the map the diameter changes so you have to check that
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as you go through the process of winding every couple pickups you have to check
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the tolerance is what that wire diameter is because it'll change the output of the pickup it'll change
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the sound of the pickup the fuel to pick up and all that so um so anyway this is the winding technique
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or winding process and
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again this is one of the winders and then we have a winder over here couple winders
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so here's two other winders these are real common with like you know uh smaller winders or a lot of the the
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larger winders too seymour duncan this is one of the winders that he uses
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and i've got one of these at home one of the old analog style that i use and so there's different again there's
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different fixtures this is a p90 fixture
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um and this we're doing some prototype stuff here um the different wires that we use
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um here's formbar this is 42 gauge heavy form bar um
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and then there's 42 gauge plain enamel we buy this from like four or five
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different manufacturers and some of the wire have specially drawn to our specifications
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um so what we go through with with all of these suppliers is for instance you know
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you get 10 rolls of this six pound rolls each and it's specified to be a specific
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diameter that is supposed to be a min nom and but as you go through the spool
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that'll change it goes out of tolerance so then you have to compensate for that because if the wire gets thin
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and you put on the same amount of wire it winds um that pickup will be hotter because
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when the wire gets thinner it's like trying to shove high pressure water through a pipe if you go through a smaller pipe pressure
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goes up larger pipe pressure goes down it's kind of a similar thing with this um
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so you have to work with the wire manufacturers and let them know because they think that that tolerance the min numb is within this
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range and it's not it varies so we package this stuff up we send it back to him
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um and what is the just the the layman's you know kind of version of
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enamel versus you know form bar so i mean there's definitely a tonal
Polysaul
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difference so for instance here's here's polysaul down here um and so this is wire that's coated in
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some type of uh you know poly type of it's a cladding basically yeah so the
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wire is all copper yeah and you know the wire back in the 50s if you look at the impurities the impurities were much
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greater you know so the the copper back then was you know 97.5 pure copper um
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the wire of today is very very pure copper it's like 99.995 pure copper
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so you have to compensate for that to get that old sound you can't you can't wind it exactly the way
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that the old wire you hear these guys that say i've got this old stash of wire well some of that's true and some of
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it's not because most the old wire that you use is bad i mean it'll break the cladding has dried it'll flake off
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but there's ways that you can get around that where you don't have to use the old wire but you have to experiment you have to
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come up with a recipe that replicates that sound because the wire does sound different when it has a higher impurity
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level in it but in general polycell wire that came along because it's much more
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durable it's much more consistent i mean the min knob on this it's it stays pretty accurate
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um the the wire changed in color over the years like uh
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you know the poly wire can be a reddish to even like a purple kind of a color
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and sometimes it can actually look like some of the enamel some of the enamel was like a dark brown to a reddish brown
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to kind of a purple looking hue um formvar pretty much stayed the same it
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can be a little bit darker or brighter so there's a misconception sometimes on old pickups what the wire really was and
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um and i think that they're you know we we still deal with the same problem
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with with enamel you would think in this day and age that you could make it to where it's absolutely consistent but it's not it varies a lot
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but the polysaul is consistent i would say tonally um if you do the same exact pickup in form
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bar it tends to have a little more presence it's a little bit brighter on the initial attack
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um to where enamel is like a i would say that if you look at like a sine wave polysol would be like that
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i would say that that formvar would be like that and enamel is a broader
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it's a little bit darker it's got a little bit more oomph on the on the node but that's generalizing because that'll
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change it changes within the set of pickups it changes depending on the guitar it changes the player's hands your attack
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and so about the time you make that statement and you generalize that this wire sounds like this because we get
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that all the time aj deals with that that i would like you to make me a set where i want you to use
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polysol on the neck form vora on the metal and enamel well then you ask them why why do you say that
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so they've read on the forums that well that's what you that you generalize on that and it's
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okay we kind of have to do that but in reality it depends on so many different factors
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you know um and what i always do when i talk to somebody and that's why i like to call people a lot of times because well what
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kind of a player are you i mean do you have a light touch do you have a heavy touch because you know getting the right set of
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pickups in that particular guitar for them what string gauge what kind of amp you use i mean it all
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as you know it all has a lot to do with it so so everything we're talking about here
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we're kind of generalizing but um but typically like i say that that's the
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the performer is a little more present you know you can get this in like a lighter gauge heavier gauge form bar you can get
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it in different gauges and all these and that changes everything so
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and you know we're constantly experimenting too i mean i'm always i'll think of something in the middle of the night and then either have one of the
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guys wind it or all wind it up and try it and and trying to come up with these recipes
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i can't tell you how many times it was like midnight or one o'clock on a friday night after working all week and i had
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this great idea about these new pickups you put them in the guitar and it's a complete failure they sound like crap
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but the thing is you've now set a parameter you know what you do is you try to find the sweet spot you go too far to the left and then you
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go too far to the right and you experience with that wire those magnets and that guitar what that range is right because you're
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continually narrowing the parameters because you're learning from your mistakes exactly and and you have to do
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that and and the thing is it's time it's time in i mean you have to put them in guitars you have to try this different
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stuff my interpretation of what it is compared to you or another guy or one of these
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pro players i mean i've sent off pickups that i think sound great you know to a
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pro player and they're like yeah they sound okay you know i like your other pickups better or vice versa i've sent
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pickups off to somebody that i think well these sound okay but they probably won't like them and they flip over
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because in that guitar in that situation it just hits you know so
Feedback
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you always gotta vary all the time and again it kind of equates and goes back to um
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cooking i guess you know a little pinch of this little pinch of that you know and each
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chef has their own flavor that they've developed and that's why people come to the restaurant i always say like in the whole pickup thing
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it's kind of like we make ice cream you know a million people make ice cream and but what brings you back to that ice
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cream parlor they just like your ice cream so it's like some of those weird pickup sets that we get um requested
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they end up working really great we had a really fat wound form bar pickup that came out um the guy loved it
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so it's like hey that's a variation that we can maybe utilize down the road yeah um
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it's a bouncing act between that and then offering just a select few amount of pickups so that you get the full
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range of um what there was to offer and how fender switched up the styles over the years you know yeah yeah i mean and
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everything you know everything is feedback i mean you know working fortunately you know we've had a chance
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to work with a lot of pro players over the years and i become friends with a lot of those guys and their feedback is
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huge because the pro players they just want something that works for them they're not reading a bunch of
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stuff on forums they're not reading into anything it's like hey these either work or they don't for me
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so that's huge but it's also huge from because the majority of our our customers are not pro players on some
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giant stage you know they're they're bedroom players they they gig you know in local gigs and
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stuff well that's that's just as important you know getting their feedback because that's actually the majority of people you deal with
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and then you know a lot of people who have vintage guitars and equipment you know their input is huge because they
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have those so i'm always very open-minded my ears are wide open to anybody
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and i always say when we send off the pickups please let me know how these work in your guitar you know don't just buy the
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pickup say thanks we never hear from him we want a relationship you know and so uh
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yeah it's all good um so over here uh so this is grant
Grant
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um france comes with us for uh around three years now uh two years two years okay
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um so at this workstation um so grant's working on a uh
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f-space humbucker right now amongst some other stuff here and uh
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so this is kind of the assembly area for well for all pickups i mean for single coils and all that but again we do
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everything in batches so um so that's what he's working on right now and then the next
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flow of pickups will come through so and then uh and then the cheez-its those
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are very important part of uh production here yeah i think that's what
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that's what the company runs on that's right and and just you know and you can if you
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if you can pay in cash or cheez-its yeah maybe that would work actually would that work graham jesus
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i'll accept that okay i think we've already done that on camera
Hunter
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hunter is now working on telecaster bridge pickups um
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so these are what hunter these are some 52 ts so these are 52 ts again
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we do everything in batches because that way you can like we talked about earlier you can stay
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more consistent we qc all these so what we try to do is
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when the bobbin comes over from say calvin and they come to aj aj then inspects each thing before he
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puts a bunch of wines on it because we make mistakes and you'll find a completely finished up pickup
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that you get to the very end and it's screwed up well it could have been caught by maybe aj missed that or something so now
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it basically you have to cut the wire off or just even throw the pickup away so every step that we take the qc
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everything to make sure that you don't go through that next phase next step and it's a waste of
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doing that so um so up to this point so like you can see here again this is
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like an old neanderthal way of doing this just stripping wax i prefer candle wax under the bridge
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plate it's always worked you want to make sure that you get a really good seal of wax
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between the plate and the bottom of the bobbin if you get any kind of air gap at all it's going to squeal
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so we take great care in making sure when the plates go on
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in fact we'll even watch how hunter does that and even when they go into the potting
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that we inspect it very closely to make sure there's no gaps you know that are between the plate and that
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sometimes that squeal can be like a tonal thing you know i mean let's face it roy buchanan you know you get the
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guys like danny gatton and roy buchanan the guys that control that on the verge of squealing that's some of the greatest
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tone of all time you know but we don't want to send them out like that you know so
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our plates we do a crazy thing where we do like an aging
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on these everyone's different and uh it's just kind of my signature thing that i developed a long time ago
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and then so the laser on the uh on the bobbins
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ironically when the laser prints on the black bobbins it's white so it's perfect for like the the signature and showing
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up for these on that particular laser we have to spray on uh it's like a black spray like
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a black paint and then when you laze onto it then it imprints onto this so
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um that's one of our things um again this will be set up where
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you know right now uh we're doing single coil stuff i think right now we're kind of in a single coil phase but then
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if you came here next week it would be nothing but either lsonics going to callings or
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humbuckers i think we have a i don't know do we have any humbuckers here hunter yeah
Back Sets
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so over here this is a run that that hunter finished up and these are
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some back sets so these are our betty's um you know so we do the uh the lrps
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which is the first humbucker that i did for the leroy parnell signature guitar back back in 2012.
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um but i've been testing humbuckers for probably three or four years before we did that deal with gibson
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um these are the betties named after my mom these are
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more more like the patent style of pickups from like the mid 60s
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on so different magnet different wire the way we wind them up
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is a little different from the lrps which are more paf like um
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and then and then the signature model that i do is
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there's actually a local guy here that has a 57 gold top and he brought
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that up and sounded absolutely fantastic so i'm always asking the guys look can i take the back plate off can i just put a
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meter on it and see what these read you know and i have another meter that i use that looks at inductance and all this you try
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to get as much information as you can so when i checked those pickups out the neck pickup was about 9k and the bridge
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pickup was nine and a half k well you would think in terms normally you'd say well those are super hot so
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they must have been overwhelmed or whatever well they weren't it's because of thin wire so because those sounded so good i
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started playing around with that because they were very single coil like you could go from playing a telecaster
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or a strap and into like a deluxe reverb and then when you plugged in that guitar you
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didn't have to eq anything and that was the thing that really was appealing about it because a lot of times with a humbucker
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you've got the amp set up a certain way you have to eq it a little bit you know
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and uh but this wasn't this was great so uh he let me keep the guitar for a couple days i was able to check it
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further and then came up with the signature line which is a different wire it's thinner gauge wire
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um wound completely different different magnets that i developed that are custom made
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and that's the signature set so those are cool because they're very single coil-like they're super
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clear great note separation um and they don't hit the amp too hard
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but if somebody's looking for you know like a traditional paf sound you know you want it to be a little more
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mid-range and drive the amp a little bit more so again it's just by application what the customer is looking for
Tele Pickups
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but that's the three models we make right now and then i'm working i work with bill frizzell
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uh on some pickups through callings guitars and so i've done you know some special neck pickup for bill because he
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plays a lot in the neck pickup and julian um you know and you can vary that you can
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change the output level you can do the offset of the coils to make them sound a certain way
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so but we're always always trying new stuff always working with you know pro players and and or guitar builders you
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know to fit their needs what they're looking for one of the common questions that uh i
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hear concerning like your telepickups is you know should i get the 52t or the broadcaster because they you know the
30:25
guys that are like convinced they need a flat pull pickup and then you know how do you push people one way or the other
30:30
on that pickup that's hard because you know it's like writing up our website is almost ready to launch now and trying to
30:37
write up how do you describe the difference again because a lot of these overlap and sound you
30:43
know you really the comparison is like if you want the roy buchanan sound if you want that more top end screening
30:49
sound probably the broadcaster you know again it's thinner wire it's wound up toward the output levels
30:55
up around 10k but in reality the thin wire at 10k is not really hotter than 7.2 k
31:03
with 42 gauge it's just it's just different because of the the uh the thickness of the wire so
31:10
but when you do that with the thinner wire and you wind it up to where i've set on and the magnets that i use
31:15
um you get a more peaky or top end kind of a sound but it's not spiky it's not too
31:22
bright or in your face it's an appealing sound and but i would say if you're looking for more of that
31:28
bright spanky uh top end sound the broadcaster but the cool thing about the broadcaster is if
31:33
you just roll your tone down to about seven it kind of sounds like the 52t
31:39
so it's the broadcaster is a pretty versatile pickup really and that's what when i first met you
31:44
that's what brad i think had in uh i think it was water yeah i tried to remember what we did with
31:51
brad um and there were also some some um you know some mongrel 50s tellies that
31:58
he had that he had uh he had put some pickups in yeah but i think the 52t was one yeah and then brad
32:04
and because of you working with you that's where the 5060 idea came from yeah because you know brad i remember i
32:11
was working through you where brad had a guitar i think it was an old telly where the tracking on the bass strings
32:17
was a little flabby and brad because he walks those bass strings all the time thought well
32:23
let's go ahead and put like eight fives on the bridge side or on the the bass string ground strings and then go with
32:28
like an a3 and that's kind of where the whole idea of the 5060 came up and and you offer that on the
32:34
strat and also on the top and that became like our number one selling uh strap pickup was the 50 60 thing
32:40
and uh so again it's just by application you know it's i just look at the whole guitar thing
32:48
as you're trying to eq that guitar you're trying to to get the best out of because every guitar is an acoustic
32:53
guitar and i think the best sounding pickups are it's where you don't really hear the pickups you're just you're you're
33:00
hearing the acoustic properties because a good guitar is a good guitar unplugged and and if you can just
33:07
transpire that into a you know going through the amp and bring out all those acoustic properties of the
33:13
guitar i think that's a good set of pickups you know i don't like pickups i've never liked pickups that are
33:18
overwound or too mid-rangey and then when you plug in you don't even hear the guitar you're hearing the pickup and and
33:24
that can work in rock and roll and there's various you know reasons that can work but in general when you're
33:29
talking about like old vintage sound you're just hearing the guitar you know the good guitar so but on the tele
33:35
pickups you know there's the broadcaster the 52t is just your
33:40
your like standard wiry like bill hallett you know called it best that
33:45
smokey woody you know a telecaster sound although bill uses a 50b a broadcaster
33:51
in that that nacho caster that nacho made him years ago um but we make the 60 t
33:58
which is uh two raised poles in the in the middle um and that's the wines different on those
34:05
al niko 5 magnets and that's going to give you more of that snappier bass response more of the bakersfield
34:12
kind of 60s sound they work really good for rock and roll because it has that snappy bright sound
34:18
and you know that's what keith richards everybody thinks those old guitars of keys were old black guard they're not
34:24
they're like 60s pickups he likes that sound you know so yeah the also those uh the staggered
34:30
bull pole bridge pickups are also kind of the sound of r b records and all sorts of things because you think about
34:36
all those records that were made in the 60s a lot of times they were being made with you know relatively new guitars and
34:41
their guitars you know so when you think about wilson pickett or aretha franklin or merle haggard or buck owens i mean it
34:48
was all kind of the same era of guitar well it's the same with jimi hendrix when people talk about
34:53
jimmy i mean yeah jimmy played old guitars and he had old guitars but um
34:58
i met somebody that actually was a roadie for hendrix and he said that if you took one of his guitars and you
35:05
plugged into like a deluxe reverb it would rip your head off bright but because hendrix went through like a 60
35:10
foot long cable you know into those marshalls well that attenuated the top end you know
35:17
the coily chords yeah you know and and that all adds up and then hendricks had such a
35:22
light touch and so much like jeff becker the great players it's it's their fingers you know that gets that sound um
Magnetic Pickups
35:31
but yeah and then we also make a 50 60 uh style telecaster bridge pickup so
35:36
that's kind of the range of those um let's see
35:41
everything gets magnetized an old standard this is this has been used it's what fender used um we've got a couple
35:48
of these um so it completely you see a lot of a lot
35:53
of pickup manufacturers but a lot of hobbyists where they'll use a strong
35:58
magnet to magnetize the the magnets within the pickup and it will but it doesn't saturate you
36:06
need something like this that has thousands of gauss that completely saturates
36:12
and fully magnetizes uh very evenly and so you're taking the the bobbin with the
36:17
magnets are you putting with the wire on and everything yeah in fact we do it we do it actually uh
36:24
here's one here so this is a tele this is standard plus tilly neck
36:29
so you know we would just take it
36:35
just drop it in like that and all you need to do is that i mean you don't need to hold it in there very long because again you know you've got
36:42
thousands of gals that are hitting that and completely saturating those magnets and there are those antiqua fives you
36:48
know the aniko 5s are going to be around 550 600 gals so this is
36:54
20 times you know what the strength of this so this is fully
gauss
37:00
fully charged and you know that in just talking about magnetics you know you you hear a lot of people talk about
37:07
well you know if this pickup's 60 years old it's probably lost a little bit of gauss well that's completely untrue
37:12
magnets don't lose gauss i mean they can sit on a shelf for a thousand years and they're maybe after a thousand years
37:18
they'll lose a little bit but they don't just lose gout it has to be either knocked
37:23
high temperature which would be it would melt the pickup or it has to be another source up against it and over the years
37:31
like i found like there was a guy that that had a 59 um
37:37
beat to most beat to death shroud i've ever seen and
37:42
it was at my house for a couple of days and when i checked it with the gauss meter the neck pickup was decalsed about probably 30 percent
37:49
twenty thirty percent the middle was a little bit uh got degaussed a little bit and then the
37:55
breach pickup was full charge so the only thing that i could think of is think about how many times that was set against an amplifier
38:02
you know the face of the pickups set against it either the front of the amp or the back or loaded into a car
38:08
or whatever and you know if you get close enough to a strong magnet that's on the back of a speaker or the
38:13
transformers um that can over time you know possibly degauss it yeah but um
38:22
yeah so you know some of the some of the pickups i've done i have
38:28
done some degaussing on it and you can do that and make it work typically i just don't really care for that
38:33
i like to fully charge them you know if i get an old pickup in i'll always ask somebody like even with the stuff i've
38:38
done for you you know some people don't want that touched you know just rewind it and i'll
38:43
do that but um typically i like to recharge them okay full charge yeah and just briefly on the
38:52
because you kind of described the uh the tele bridge pickups on the neck pickups you have you know of course you the
38:58
standard plus and you have the tall and you have the the jl and and uh yeah so
39:05
in the mid tall so just kind of walk through the the differences are you know to me a lot of
39:11
it is the mid-range changes as you as you go through those different models right so on all the the
39:17
tele-neck pickups um so my standard plus and then there's a mid-tall and i used
39:24
to do a tall we still do on request but basically it's just going to longer magnets
39:29
you know the standard plus is your your standard style and that's a big misconception too
39:35
because a lot of times on a stock telecaster you know it's going through that circuit that makes it dark and kind
39:41
of gives it the bassy b3 sound and all that but if you actually take that off
39:46
those are some of the greatest sounding pickups of all time um so
39:51
but we do the regular standard plus size which i would say is it has a nice warmth to it
39:57
it's still clear and articulate the mid-tall is going to take like the mid-range and the upper end and extend it a little bit
40:04
and it gives you more of like a little bit brighter and then the tall i came up with because of the guys that
40:11
said look i want more of a strap sound i want to have a little bit of scoop and so that's the tall and i used to do
40:18
it where um you know i would make it to where it would fit within the bobbin the taller
40:23
magnet but then we had issues with the cover the tangs on the cover not being able to get those on
40:29
so i was cutting those off and i was having to solder on these pieces to make that work so what i did is i just went
40:35
with a longer magnet then i just extended it out the bottom a little bit right so that's the tall and then we
40:40
also do a 50 60 tall that actually aj came up with that it sounds really good also and then julian got a hold of me
40:47
and said hey i've got this 54 refin telly and i love the neck pickup on it i don't
40:55
think he really cares for the bridge pickup that much but um he loved the neck on it and he said and on the phone
41:00
he literally said listen to this and he was tapping with his fingernail and it was microphonic you know and he
41:07
said i love the openness and i love that it has a little bit of this scoop thing that i can really dig in
41:13
um and the way it integrates and works with the amp so uh he said would you mind trying to
41:18
recreate that well it turned out it was quite low output and very microphonic so we did some
41:24
techniques to it to come up with the jail and that's been a real successful a lot of the jazz guys like
41:30
that because it's real clear it's real articulate but it doesn't work for everything you
41:36
know i've got it i think i showed you on i've got a a black guard style telecaster i think it sounds good in that guitar but i
41:42
think it would sound better with the mid tall so i'll probably swap that out and again there you go because in
41:48
another telecaster i have another tele at home and it has a jail and it sounds absolutely fantastic so yeah there's
41:55
there's so many ingredients in the in the final recipe i mean there's so many ingredients in the
42:00
pickup and then when you get into the the guitar and the hardware and the strings and the pick and the wood and
42:05
the everything it all adds up so it does and that's
42:10
i'm certainly no expert i learn every day about this stuff every time i pull up a pick guard or i pull up a control plate
42:16
i'm like a sponge you know you learn from all this but the thing that we do learn after you've done this over the years is all that comes into
42:24
account and but it starts with these that's the thing is you have to look and
42:29
at how a player i mean i have i have friends who are super light players so if i work on
42:35
a guitar for them make pickups for them it's an entirely different mentality versus a guy that just digs in with his
42:40
right hand you know and so for someone with a lighter touch what would you do differently
42:45
so a lot of times uh like a really good friend of mine jeff ruiz you know he's got
42:51
a super light touch it's kind of like an eric johnson touch um and so you can he can literally go i
42:57
mean i can almost hand him anything and it sounds amazing but i can't really use jeff as
43:05
like an example because he's rare he's one of those guys you know and like i did a little work with eric
43:11
johnson and you know um in work with him i learned a lot about his style and the way he plays
43:17
and and all that but um but jeff you could hand him a like a
43:22
like a strat neck pickup of 4k and he'll come back oh my god this thing sounds amazing
43:27
but when you plug it into a regular guy it doesn't really sound that great but jeff knows how to to set up his amp get
43:34
the harmonics going and all that but it just sounds absolutely amazing under his fingers so everybody's different you
43:39
know and so you have to pay attention to that with your customers and that's why i think and as we grow here
43:46
you know you can't you can't be on the phone all day long with each customer but i like doing that i mean i like that
43:52
personal touch and to be able to and also you know i've always said every customer we have this is what i think in talking to you
43:59
will work but it might not so feel free that if you get it in your guitar and it doesn't work
44:05
let me know and and we'll maybe don't cut the leads on the pickups or whatever but we can send you another set in
44:10
exchange that may work better for that particular situation you know and because the bottom line is i mean i want
44:16
everybody to have the best possible tone they can and and like we've talked about so many times
44:22
the feel the feel of all these pickups no matter what you talk about if you pick up a guitar and it has feel
44:29
it's going to sound good because it feels more important than to me than uh it's everything in a guitar
44:35
but um but over here um we've got again these are the this is a batch of uh
covers
44:41
these are all standard pluses um that we're doing and you can see that you know after they're
44:47
wound some of these have a little potting inside the cover um all the telecaster neck pickups um
44:54
are not potted in wax they're potted in enamel and we thin the enamel down and we keep
45:00
men at a certain length of time some of the covers
45:06
you put lacquer in some you don't there's different techniques to getting the potting just right on these
45:11
um [Music] what about nickel silver covers versus like plated brass
45:18
so yeah so the in 50 i think in through like halfway
45:23
through 51 they were using brass covers and again everything from fender
45:29
there's a big overlap you know and i even uh rewound a 53
45:34
uh cover that was all brass and literally i mean it looked like brass it was completely worn off a little bit and it
45:41
was super thick that particular one so i've seen them where they're thick or they're thin you know it's all the map
45:47
but typically if you have a solid brass cover it kind of attenuates the top end a little bit
45:52
but but it sounds really good it's got a great sound to it and so if you can sacrifice a little bit of the top end um
46:00
it's beautiful but um but mostly what we do everything's nickel silver and so and that's where the whole
46:07
standard plus thing people laugh about this sometimes because they see the std
46:12
so it's like it's sorry these aren't disease people it's just but um
46:17
but the plus means nickel silver cover so if i do just a standard it's a it's a
46:23
copper cover you know brass cover yeah and um and we get requests for that
46:28
you know um some people some people really like you know that sound um like rick holmstrom
46:35
um he's a good friend of mine and rick and he has a couple pickups that i did for him where we put the either the
46:41
stock brass cover back on or i think i even put on a browse cover for him he loves that sound he's an amazing and
46:46
he's amazing yeah yeah so yeah yeah you get the interview with him yeah yeah and just
46:53
yeah yeah he's an amazing player and and you know and hardcore tone hound and uh he knows he knows what he wants and he
47:00
knows and he has to deal with the fly dates all the time you know so so much of the time and so he's really has his
47:07
guitar dialed in he's a good example i mean rick i've known him for years you know and and uh
47:13
i mean he'll say that you know while i think that that pickup sounds great that you do but this is what i'm looking for
47:19
yeah you know and he's real because he's been through it we've been over it and over it he knows what works
47:24
for him so um yeah rick's great guy um and then uh so these were getting these
47:31
packed up you know those are all these are all standard plus telling necks we typically put them
47:36
get them all together we qc everything as we go and then that way you have confidence
47:42
when you pull it out you put that in the packaging to ship it out it's qc and that's the thing with with all the
47:48
guys that we talk about all the time is qc and every you know we get stuff back i mean it just happens and uh
47:56
you know then we'll sit down what i typically do is get everybody together and say look this came back let's look at this why is that let's
48:02
learn from it so this doesn't happen again um but there's that the the potting
potting
48:09
this is you know we're definitely coming up with a little bit uh you know
48:14
larger potting but i've these are some of the same pots i've had i think for 10 years you know um and so you just get
48:20
the wax hot and dip them in there well it's a combination of wax you use it's a little ratio of uh
48:26
of uh of beeswax and uh and then we we have some that you put
48:32
the uh you know black uh soot in it to give it the black look and
48:38
so like these here these are uh these are jazz master pickups that
48:44
we're just starting to to you know grant's been working on those um
48:50
so again you know what you have to do with these is you have to you have to get them in the guitar and then you have to get
48:56
somebody who's very familiar who's like a pro or somebody that has a signature name
49:01
on these pickups to really approve them you know and and uh and again with with all the fender stuff
49:08
with all these different pickups there's so many variations over the years you can't you can generalize about what fender did
49:15
over the years with their staggers and their wire and all that but um
49:21
it varied a lot you know and uh same with jazzmaster pickups and all these bass pickups we're working on
49:28
p bass and jazz bass pickups and uh so and there's a couple of guys up in la
49:34
who are pro players that are going to test these for us and work with us on that um these are
49:40
so here's here's an example of uh tilley bridges these are
49:45
52 tees so what we do is you so as you saw
49:51
hunter put the wax on the bottom you lightly screw down the screws here
49:58
and then you dip it in the wax and we either hang them on or just hold them in there for a specific amount of time
50:06
and and then when you tighten this down you make sure that it gets full adhesion of wax between the plate
50:13
and the bobbin so these are taped so these were these were
50:21
dipped the first time and then we put the string around it and then these will go back in these
50:26
will go into the black and dipped a second time so again different techniques for uh
50:33
for different pickups different amount of time they go into the the potting
50:39
like on telenex and there's some other proto stuff we're doing in other pickups where we use um
50:45
uh lacquer instead of the wax uh some of the stuff when it gets really
50:51
cold in here we have a pre-heater because one thing is if you
50:57
if you take like this pickup on a cold day when it's 50 degrees in here it's cold and if you
51:03
put it in the wax for the first minute you're just going to see it go pure white
51:08
because it just solidifies on there because this is cold so what we do is we regulate the temperature and make sure
51:14
everything goes in so the exposure to the wax potting is consistent
51:20
you know which is really important and again these are all like little things the little steps each step that
51:26
adds up to this little recipe we talk about and uh so
stock
51:32
these are actually some of these are getting ready to go out to a couple of dealers that we have
51:38
um and then we have a distributor that we're working with overseas so we're getting these ready so this is
51:44
our stock that's ready to go we're working right now on some new
51:49
designs for packaging this is kind of our old school you know packaging that we've had and i
51:55
mean it's not the most elaborate you know but um but it works
52:02
and uh but we're gonna come up with you know some different more custom packaging
52:10
but yeah so you know i mean in here you can see we have a lot of space above us this is like three stories high
52:17
um so we're probably going to put in a mezzanine you know down on that end
52:23
there's leroy up there that oversees everything we do that's leroy parnell everybody's a good friend of mine
52:29
um but yeah we'll probably put in a mezzanine up there that way we can put all our storage stuff up there and then
52:34
we can have more you know work space down here um over here is kind of our dirty part of
52:41
the shop you know we do our we hand grind all of the magnets literally each magnet
52:48
by hand um you know we we do a lot of hand work with the drill press um
52:56
when you say grind the magnets are you grinding like the ends or the other you know for what purpose yeah
53:02
calvin can actually absolutely i need to do this right now so these are elesonic stuff and
53:07
[Music] so and you know every manufacturer does this
53:13
but i mean that's what we're trying to get to so this is one here you know you get the right bevel on it
53:18
and it has to look consistent you know it's really easy to get like a you know kind of a fastening look on it
53:25
that doesn't look right so we try to get the you know the uh
53:30
so you're you're grinding for the bevel on the magnet oh absolutely okay and you know that bevel that's another thing too
53:36
you know so the bevel has a lot to do with how that interacts on the guitar also you know uh
53:43
i mean i think originally fender did it because a sharp edge of a magnet's brittle and
53:48
it can crack um and you know some of the players also you know you didn't want that sharp
53:54
magnet sticking up like on a strat set or whatever but it also changes the way the magnetic field lines come up i mean
54:00
the field lines come up through the top of the magnet and they come up you know like the earth like you see the
54:05
field lines coming around the earth north and south if you put a bevel on it what that does
54:12
because magnetics loves corners so if you look at this and it's perfectly square like at this end
54:19
you're going to get the field lines coming out like this and you're also going to have field lines that want to come out at 45 degrees
54:24
well if you get your e string and your b string together you're going to get magnetic interference between the e
54:29
string and the b string so if you bevel it the bevel beveling
54:35
will actually eliminate a lot of those field lines wanting to go over and you know it it's subtle between
54:42
all the strings but that is an effect and depending on where the string is
54:47
i think they call it the like magnetic crotch is where the field lines come up right where the string sits and that's
54:53
where you get your interaction it's basically inductor is all it is and uh
54:59
so anyway for the different pickups that we do some are beveled more than others for various reasons so um but yeah
55:07
here's just manually
55:40
so as you can see when you talk about like hand work i mean we're everything we do from from manufacturing from the
55:47
bobbins to grinding the magnets i mean we do everything pretty much in-house you know you can have the beveling done we could have it done
55:54
and they'd probably charge you i don't know 10 cents a magnet or whatever um i actually had a company that did that it
56:01
was terrible it looked like hell i mean they were all faceted and they just didn't look right so you just end up doing it yourself it's
56:06
you know you control it then you know so um
56:12
but no you know moving forward i mean that's our operation right now um the thing that's really important for for
56:18
all of us here is that you know how do you increase
56:24
you know your your sales the amount that you put out and then keep the quality you know it's
56:29
really hard i mean aj's been with me for uh i think he started working on pickups when he was
56:35
like 13 years old you know he's 32 now and um grant hunter have been on board for
56:42
it's going on three years um calvin came down from oregon um about
56:48
eight months ago and uh probably have to hire a couple more people on you know that can do things
56:54
like the grinding the manufacturing of of the bobbins but it's just trying to keep the
57:02
the qc level you know and just not change anything with a constant flow of
57:07
materials that you get that changes that's the that's the hardest thing you know and
57:13
um so it's a challenge i mean it's a challenge for every pickup maker guitar manufacturer amp maker
57:19
uh mike moody is a dear friend of mine with magic amplification and you know it's just it's amazing what you
57:24
have to put into an amplifier and the resistors that you used to get from that particular supplier you didn't have them
57:31
anymore so then you go to get another batch they're different you know and i've heard mike say that
57:37
i got in all these you know like allen bradley resistors and i can only use like 10 of them you know because they're
57:43
all out of spec and so i can't even imagine what like amplifier manufacturers deal with yeah
57:49
so it's a challenge but it's a fun challenge you know so
57:55
and then moving forward you know we're definitely going to expand on new custom pickups that we're doing and then expand
58:01
upon the like the vintage pickups we get requests all the time for you know gold foil pickups
58:07
which is kind of in the direction of what we're doing with ellisonix and and some of these other pickups but
58:12
um you know and everything we do we're going to prototype it and do it like we did from the start if it's a telecaster
58:18
pickup you have to do tons of research on it and you have to try it and you have to send it out
58:24
to the people you trust and like you and uh and develop it but nothing goes out
58:30
until there's a lot of feedback that it's right you know and it's worth releasing i mean
58:35
why why just release something that's been done over over and over again you know so
58:42
that the lsonics are a really really great pickup it's just the the openness of them and uh it's it's it's it's not
58:50
often that i get uh tempted by a pickup that's not uh what's normally used in the telecaster
58:55
yeah it's a great great design i think they're all versatile you know it's like julian you know uses it uh that guitar
59:02
primarily now and uh collings did a great job on the whole development of that
59:07
you know with those pickups in it i think maybe not in that guitar but like uh you
59:13
know i've had other guitars that i've put the lsonics in and it's kind of you get a little bit of telly you get a little bit of strap p90 humbucker
59:20
really it's kind of reminiscent of a lot of these mixed up into the same pickup it's kind of cool yeah so uh so we're
59:27
excited about that yeah but uh
59:32
that's what we do here well ron thank you so much for uh let
59:39
letting me come out to uh to see your uh your workshop here it's been a
59:45
very very cool process to get to see and to get to see how the pickups and my
59:51
guitars were actually made so uh thank you absolutely well it's it's always
59:56
as we said when you showed up i think it's been 10 years or something so we actually saw each other we've talked a lot on the
1:00:01
phone and interviews and stuff but no it's a pleasure it's been fun having you all right
1:00:07
thank you ron thank you