Floating Pickups

[christianm77]

BTW this video gives a very good idea of how the pickup sounds, obviously not the same style of music though...

[christianm77]

Sorry (it goes on) if you want a floating pickup, then you have the option between something quite transparent and almost acoustic sounding (such as the KA slimbuckers) or something more electric (such as the Atilla Zoller I have on my Loar.) But I would recommend giving the K&K a try as it doesn't require guitar surgery and might do the trick (if you can risk £120 or so.)

[BeBopBeCool]

Here I am!

I choosed Benedetto S-6. I'm trying my updated godin in this days a,d up to now I'm very happy.

Here is audio.
Godin, Benedetto pickup, Peavey Classic 30, shure SM57, m-audio fast track pro, Reaper on Macbook pro.

[ruger9]

Very nice tone and playing!!! I'm a little surprised that's a Peavey Classic 30....

[jorgemg1984]

Hi there!

A friend of mine is going to install a floating pickup on his Zeidler. He's considering Kent Armstrong or Pete Biltfolt (Vintage Vibe).

Does anyone has links for clips of solid wood archtops with a floating pickup with an amp? So he gets an idea.

Thanks in advance!

[wintermoon]

just check out Pete Bernstein on youtube

[jorgemg1984]

Bernstein has a regular humbucker...

[Para]

It's still a floater though.

[jorgemg1984]

Ok - solid wood archtop with floater MINI humbucker.

Something like these clips

[IbanezAS100]

Oh, and since Peter Bernstein was mentioned, here's a lovely player (with a strong Bernstein vibe) with an Elferink (single coil). Not sure if Franz sells these separately, but worth asking.

[JPMike]

Bernstein himself told me, that the pickup on his Zeidler is a Gibson one. Not sure, which Gibson though.

[jorgemg1984]

Bernstein himself told me, that the pickup on his Zeidler is a Gibson one. Not sure, which Gibson though.

Mike I believe Steve Berg removed one from a Gibson Howard Roberts - it's just a Classic 57 "cut" to fit in an archtop, I believe.

[medblues]

[Frank67]

that Stuart Day archtop had one of the nicest sounds I heard in a long time. It didn't hurt of course that she played it so well but I was awestruck by that tone - so clean and rich, yet warm, just lovely.

[Jabberwocky]

Graham Dechter with a floating John Carruthers-custom-made single-coil mounted on his Andersen Streamline:

Ron Eschete, EMG 91 on Mapson:

Haussel floating pickup:

Kent Armstrong floating PAF

I found this comparison fairly interesting:

2014 Gibson LeGrand with BJB through a Deluxe Reverb RI:

[Frank67]

Interesting comparison. To me the Haussel pickup sounds more true to the sound of the guitar, more open and clean and, well, flat in a good sense. The Bartolini sounds nice and mellow, more like your usual jazz hum bucking pickup. What do you guys think? I like both, but to me, if the goal is a fairly acoustic tone, the Hauessel wins.

[fritz jones]

here's KB and GG playing with floating pickups.

[ESCC]

Fun post - comparison. Have not heard one that I don't like, each has it's strengths and weaknesses but all good, all jazz.

I have been trying to find a sound bite of a Kent Armstrong floating HGJS6 versus the 12 pole - apples to apples, no luck so far hoping one shows up on this post.

[BigToe]

Ok - solid wood archtop with floater MINI humbucker.

Something like these clips

not to put too fine a point on it, but I don't think he's playing a mini humbucker. Looks Like a Kent Armstrong full size floater to me. I actually like this sound better than most of the vids above. Kind of a cross between a mini floater and a routed HB.

[wintermoon]

just a note, Zeidler was installing floating Kent Armstrong pickups on his archtops late in his career.

he used to use Dimarzio's, then Bartolini's, but put an old Guild on mine @ my request as I had heard another of his archtops w/one and liked it. [I think Jimmy D'Aquisto was using them for awhile as well]

but to install a Guild p.u. required cutting down the depth of the pickup to accommodate his guitars, which he did.

[feet]

Interesting comparison. To me the Haussel pickup sounds more true to the sound of the guitar, more open and clean and, well, flat in a good sense. The Bartolini sounds nice and mellow, more like your usual jazz hum bucking pickup. What do you guys think? I like both, but to me, if the goal is a fairly acoustic tone, the Hauessel wins.

though its hard to tell with such a low quality clip, it also sounds like the haussel was recorded a little better than the bartolini. it sounded a little louder, fuller and clearer. that could just be the pickup, but i can't be sure. it didn't sound bad at all, but i'm a little skeptical based on that one clip.

[jorgemg1984]

I would love a comparison between Jaen and Kent Armstrong pickups.

[disco~juice]

This guy plays a zeidler with a floater, I can't remember which one.

[Cunamara]

I play two guitars with floaters: a 17" carvetop by Matt Cushman and an Ibanez GB10; I've had the former for about 10 years and the latter about 30. I've messed around with this a lot and have come to some conclusions that may or may not be BS.

For most of the history of jazz guitar, that sound has been an archtop with a set-in humbucker, P90 or "Charlie Christian" pickup or an added-on wide-aperture single coil pickup like a DeArmond with a neck bracket or a "monkey on a stick" string clamp and rod. There have of course been other arrangements, some set in single coils and there was a P90 type pickup integrated into the pickguard on some Gibson guitars for a while, for example, but there are a lot fewer of these and they tended not to be the ones we associated with the classic jazz guitar recordings.

These arrangements generally produced a sound with a lot of low fundamentals (low E = 82.41 Hz, high E = 329.6 Hz) which sound like a strong bassy quality with varying shades of higher overtones. The floating mini-humbucker (a la Johnny Smith) has been around for some 50 years now as well. More recently, I think largely under the influence of Benedetto, we have pickguard mounted pickups as the standard mounting system for floaters. Now, I need to expressed a prejudice or preference here. I find the floating pickup sound to basically be deficient as a jazz guitar tone. I have heard few that I like and mainly because of the lack of the strong fundamental. Floaters seem to pick up overtones more than they do the fundamental note.

When I got my 17" carvetop I had been under the spell of Benedetto's book and my old guitar teacher having a Johnny Smith- I though it was sacrilegious to cut a hole in the top of an archtop and "ruin" its acoustic properties. My carvetop came with an Allparts mini mounted to the pickguard; after a year or so I became tired of the shrill nasal electric quality and wanted something darker and richer. I added a tone control which helped very little- I could get thin and muddy rather than thin and shrill. I tried changing pots and caps without a lot of improvement. So I thought "it's the pickup that's the problem" and installed a Kent Armstrong PAF-0; initially I thought this was an improvement but the honeymoon wore off and I realized that on this guitar it was harsh and nasal and really didn't sound that much different. I again switched pots and caps and even corresponded with Kent for some suggestions on values (which did help). I was still very unhappy with the tone. What I couldn't figure out is that my GB10 had a fairly dark, rich tone even though it had a mini floater. My teacher's Johnny Smith was a bit brighter than that but still had much more fundamental to the tone than my guitar and that had a mini humbucker floater. Then I heard Peter Bernstein for the first time and he had a floater and a tone to kill for- I *really* wanted to get into that ballpark, tonally. What did they have in common? The pickup was mounted to the neck in all three of those cases.

The conclusion I drew is that mounting the pickup on the pickguard isolates the pickup too much. A pickup mounted in the top vibrates with the top and the vibrating pickup interacts with the vibrating string, adding something to the signal. A pickup mounted on the pickguard probably also vibrates but differently; maybe there is a phase issue and top mounted pickups are more in phase with the string and pickups on the pickguard are more out of phase (if you ever have an opportunity to use a DI box with a phase switch, you can hear some of the difference this causes and to my ear it has a lot of similarities with the "deficiencies" of the floater sound).

So I took a Gibson Classic 57 that I had in the parts box, modified it to be neck mounted and installed it on my carvetop. There is a thread with photos on the forum here somewhere detailing this. It sounds much better than any of my other pickup solutions. It does not sound like a set-in humbucker in a carvetop guitar and it still sounds "more acoustic" than that, but it has much stronger fundamentals and a much richer tone. It's not as dark or fat as my GB10 but it has its own charm and is now the guitar I play most for gigs. I don't sound like Pete Bernstein- no one does- but I am at least in the parking lot of the ballpark. I'd need to go to much heavier strings, get a Vibrolux and some talent...

There are very few full size humbuckers with a neck mount that you can buy. Shadow makes the Attila Zoller, the not-really-Bill Lawrence company makes the A400, EMG makes one designed for Ron Eschete, the 90 or 91 or something like that. John Moriarty in Ireland custom-made some for his guitars but I think he has stopped doing so (he was *very* helpful to me when I was working on my pickup, a very nice man who makes beautiful guitars). I would bet one could get Kent Armstrong to make one; he has seen mine as I sent it to him for repair and could certainly do a better job of it than I did. Probably a lot of custom pickup makers would give it a shot if you threw money at them.

So, maybe total BS but my conclusion is that the mounting method for the pickup is critical in the tone one achieves with a floater- maybe more important than the pickup itself.

[jorgemg1984]

Cunamara thanks a lot for your post and those are great news because

1) his guitar has no pickguard and mouting will be on neck

2) I am getting two custom archtops soon where full size humbuckers were modified to be used as floaters and, again, neck mount