Lollar or Zoller floater?

[Max405]

Wow what a player.
Thanks jbucklin.
JD

[jbucklin]

Yeah, when I first stumbled onto that clip a few years ago I was clueless about Zoller floating pickups, although I knew he made the pickup for Jim Hall's 175. Incidentally, I ordered the Zoller from Amazon.after doing that I put the TIs on the Jazzica and it was a definite improvement--- not 100% but much, much better. Will go ahead and get the Zoller pup with hopes that I'll sound like Jimmy Raney!

[Jabberwocky]

Read that Attila Zöller had the AZ48 balanced for the heavy gauge La Bella strings that he liked.

[neatomic]

ti's will be better than fine


cheers

[Cunamara]

Yeah, when I first stumbled onto that clip a few years ago I was clueless about Zoller floating pickups, although I knew he made the pickup for Jim Hall's 175.

The humbucker on Jim Hall's ES-175 was IIRC a Guild pickup. There is one clip I have seen of a Zoller pickup in Jim's D'Aquisto (a duet with Bob Brookmeyer). Huh, I am not finding it on YouTube right now. The pickup was really evident.

[neatomic]

if i remember the story...jim brought his 175 (which started out with a single dogear p90) to jimmy d'aquisto for repairs and upkeep...jimmy D used guild hb1 pickups..they are slightly larger than a standard gibby sized humbucker..will not fit in gibby humbucker ring..remember back in those days, guitar parts were not all over the place...jimmy D probably had an in at guild and was able to source his pickups..and at a good $$$ pricepoint...

halls d'aquisto started out with a hb1



cheers

[silverfoxx]

Joe, you are so right with that opinion, I reiterate, I first heard Jimmy Raney when I was a youngster
all other music became irrelevant,from then on, hearing him with Stan Getz /or Bob Brookmeyer , I was
enthralled by this music , Too advanced for many at that time and a very long time before I could own
an instrument, and so glad that Jimmy's and Joe;s arrangements are now available to us, I just still wish
I could play them well.
Tal came a bit later, had the good fortune to see him live here, and met briefly through my tutor later.
Don't think Jimmy visited the UK , he usually hung out in Paris where he was regarded as a God by the
French fans, we can all learn much from these masters and originators of Be-Bop, Stan Getz admitted that
he learned much from JR, my all time favourite player in tandem with JP. Cunamara here is spot on
also that JR definitely improved with age , listen to his later recordings despite suffering with Miniere's
disease for 30 years. he produced some of his best work later. ( although his early work is a series of
Be-Bop Masterclasses in phrasing, space, and timing, )



Alan

[WillMbCdn5]

Not sure if this helps but I just put a floating Zollar AZ48 from Shadow on a Godin 5th Ave and and to my ear it sounds transparent which is what I was hoping for ). The guitar amplified sounds like the guitar acoustically just louder and with the option to now color the sound with the controls available on an amp/para eq etc .

Will

[Greentone]

I agree with WillMbCdn5. My Zoller Shadow 48 makes the guitar sound like a louder version of itself.

[NSJ]

Jimmy was a friend of my teacher's, Who considered Jimmy to be the finest bebop guitar player ever. Right before Jimmy died, he sent him a copy of a one of his CDs called "the Master".

I got to hear it, and I was floored by the tone: it was the finest sounding jazz guitar tone I've ever heard. As far as I'm concerned, that's the holy Grail of guitar tones right there.

All the stuff he did in the 80s on crisscross and steeplechase is incredible .

[jbucklin]

Jimmy was a friend of my teacher's, Who considered Jimmy to be the finest bebop guitar player ever. Right before Jimmy died, he sent him a copy of a one of his CDs called "the Master".

I just listened to samples of that album and you're right, amazing tone and playing. So I bought it!

[lawson-stone]

Jimmy Raney in my opinion is one of the greatest improvisors of all time.

He is who I will listen to Extensively in order to become more creative on the neck.

Thanks for bringing him up.

JD

There is a Jimmy Raney study group over in the "Improvisation" area. We are taking the solos by Jimmy in the Aebersold play-a-long set (Vol. 20) and learning them, 4 measures a week. It's a chance to get under the hood and think about how JR constructed solos, how to lay out the fingering, and to be involved in a thread that is focused on playing. We each post our work for the week on Mondays.

Check it out!

[lawson-stone]

Jimmy was a friend of my teacher's, Who considered Jimmy to be the finest bebop guitar player ever. Right before Jimmy died, he sent him a copy of a one of his CDs called "the Master".

I got to hear it, and I was floored by the tone: it was the finest sounding jazz guitar tone I've ever heard. As far as I'm concerned, that's the holy Grail of guitar tones right there.

All the stuff he did in the 80s on crisscross and steeplechase is incredible .

"The Master" is an incredible album. It's towering. Authoritative.

[jbucklin]

Thanks, Lawson, for the heads-up on the Jimmy Raney thread. I do have the Aebersold material, so I'm good to go! Did you watch the YouTube clip I posted---where he's playing "There Will Never Be Another You"? His mastery of the fretboard is mind-boggling!

[Greentone]

I have been working with the Jimmy Raney solos on the Jamey Aebersold book/record for 30+ years. And, I would agree that Jimmy's tone in his Hofner years is sublime...probably the best archtop jazz tone that I am aware of.

I keep skimming the Internet for a Hofner AZ Award with the Shadow Zoller 48 floating pickup. I haven't seen one for sale in some time.

Meanwhile, I do believe that the Unity 100th Anniversary archtop guitar with Shadow 48 pickup has the best sound of any guitar I have ever personally played.

[jbucklin]

Who makes the Unity?

[Greentone]

Ordinarily, you will have to look hard to find a Unity. However, Patrick2's son, Chris, has a Unity--a gorgeous one that I almost bought--for sale right now.

Unity was one of the two names that the late Aaron Cowles sold guitars under. Cowles was the master builder at Gibson from the 60s through the 90s, until Gibson moved to Nashville. Along with J.P. Moats, Jim Duerloo, and Marv Lamb (the founders of Heritage Guitars), Cowles elected to stay behind in Kalamazoo. Wheres Moats, Duerloo and Lamb went on to found Heritage in the old Gibson Parsons Street factory, Cowles and J.P. Moats' son, Kevin Moats, founded Unity and Jubal Guitars and Mandolins in 1994.

Jim Duerloo and Aaron Cowles were the only two guys that carved the bodies of the top of the line guitars at Gibson, back in the day. The Citations, the Kalamazoo Awards, and--to a large extent--the Super 400 and L-5 guitars--were guitars that came off of the stations of Duerloo and Cowles. Aaron Cowles was the only guy, so far as I know, who was permitted to carve the bodies of the resurrected F-5L mandolin line at Gibson Kalamazoo. Any tap tuning that was done at Gibson was done by Cowles. If you have a tap tuned Heritage guitar, it would have had the top and back plates sent over to Cowles shop in Vicksburg, Michigan (near Kalamazoo) to be done, then sent back to Heritage.

Being a two-man operation, the output of Unity was never that great. The 100th Anniversary Model, a custom archtop that celebrated the first hundred years of musical instrument production in Kalamazoo, reached seven or eight instruments. I own one. Cowles made other Unity guitars, of course. He played "red guitar," a Unity that he made to approximate the characteristics of his hero, Chet Atkins' Gretsch and Gibson Country Gentleman guitars. Cowles was an accomplished Atkins/Travis picker. Cowles made a copy of Merle Travis' Super-400 Special that Gibson made for Merle Travis that he called the Unity Special. Here is a picture of Travis' son, Thom Bresh, playing the Unity Special.

[ooglybong]

I love the sound of the stock pickup in mine. I talked to a guy who did testing and consultant for Hofner and he big fan of the Jazzica's. He said the pickups were made by two different people the one I can't remember the name of, but that's the one he said he didn't like. The others were made by Kent Armstrong for Hofner and he said that is the pickups you want.

Is there a way to tell if Kent made them?

[Hammertone]

I love the sound of the stock pickup in mine. I talked to a guy who did testing and consultant for Hofner and he big fan of the Jazzica's. He said the pickups were made by two different people the one I can't remember the name of, but that's the one he said he didn't like. The others were made by Kent Armstrong for Hofner and he said that is the pickups you want.

Is there a way to tell if Kent made them?

Kent Armstrong did not make pickups for Hofner.
He did consult to Hofner for a very brief time and provided recommendations for how to change the sound of the mini-humbucking pickups that Hofner was using.
The pickups were supplied by Schaller.

[GuyBoden]

I've had a Zoller floating pickup in my cupboard for over 20 years, it had been installed in an L4.

As an experiment, I've fitted the Zoller floating pickup to a spare butchered ebony pickguard with epoxy resin. I had to use some black filler for the large gaps.

It will be compared to a Kent Armstrong floating P90 on my archtop soon...........

It looks better than I expected, here it is:

[garybaldy]

I have a Zoller neck mount. It came on my Korean Fenix FAE8 in 1998. The high E string hardly sounded through the pickup and the tone was very upper mids focused, so quite horrible. I soon removed it and put on a cheap Asian mini humbucker that came off an Ibanez. It's so much better.
The Zoller has been in a drawer ever since.