Lace Alumitone Pickups
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You might be wondering, “What do pickups have to do with ergonomic guitars?” In the case of the radically different Alumitone pickups, the answer is “Potentially quite a bit.”
When planning guitar build #1, one of my goals was a reduction in the instrument’s weight. So I started with a thinner than standard guitar body blank (1.5″ instead of 1.75″) and minimized hardware where possible. However, it hadn’t initially occurred to me just how much pickups might contribute to the weight of an electric guitar. This is where the Alumitones show potential.
Conventional pickups are heavy by nature due to their use of copper wires and magnets to generate voltage as the string is picked. Humbuckers are even heavier because they use two coils in order to accomplish noise cancellation.
Contrast this with the noiseless Alumitones - a fundamentally different approach to pickup design in which an aluminum exoskeleton combines with 90% less wiring resulting in a much lighter pickup.
According to Jeff Lace, the difference is so significant that replacing two conventional humbuckers with his current driven Alumitone pickups results in a 1/2 lb less weight. And in the battle to protect your back, that’s no small improvement.
To learn more about the Alumitone pickup, here’s “Alumitone Design Secret Revealed”:
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April 11th, 2008
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These sound very interesting. I’d love to try them out. Perhaps I’ll get a pair for my Washburn Idol.
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@GLW - I’m thinking they have a place in a future guitar build. Besides the humbuckers, they’re also available as single coils and P90’s.
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Oh, yes, I already checked out the options. A nice pair of gold-plated humbuckers would do me.
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If I’m not mistaken, all 3 share the same technology. They say they’ve been “voiced” differently, but I’m not sure what that involves, compared to say, voicing traditional coils.
The larger ones seems to have the single-coil sized Alumitone flanked by “filler” metal to give it the right size. So I really do wonder what the “voicing” involves. I contacted Lace once upon a time with that very question but they didn’t have an answer for me. Either way, I’m thinking of a pair of P-90 sized ones for one of my workhorse guitars. They’ll probably look a bit out of place compared to plain ol’ black plastic, but there ya have it…
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As an interesting alternative to P90s, actually, Seymour Duncan has recently come out with something called P-rails. Intriguing.
Seymour Duncan P-Rail Pickups
Something a cross between P90 and a single coil “strat” rail all in one pickup. With two of those, it’s easy to get lost in all options and variations you can have, full humbucker, only P90, only strat rail sound, out of phase, in phase, pararell and serial switching. They’re as large as a regular humbucker so their P90 size isn’t like a traditional P90 sized pickup. Whether they’re heavy or not, I don’t know. The combinations makes it good for an “all around” guitar to bring out at gigs. Maybe “strat quack” being the only sound missing from it.
I think, for a Klein body this makes an interesting option, since you may very well get rid of any middle pickup, but gain the sound you get from a middle pickup, since it gets quite tight and crowded in there anyway, with a 24 fret neck.
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Robert Irizarry replied on Apr 19th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
@Mats - Nice find on those P-Rail pickups. Providing greater tonal variety while using fewer pickups is certainly another good approach to reducing weight.
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I just ordered a set of the gold Lace Alumitone humbuckers to compare to the Bardens that were originally going to be in the guitar that Rick Canton is building for me. I asked him to try both in the guitar before it is completed and ship it with whatever he thinks is best. That should be an interesting comparison.
I haven’t been able to find a good sound file that would help in getting a grip on the true sound of these pickups.
-Al
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Robert Irizarry replied on Apr 17th, 2008 at 9:43 am
@Al - I’m looking forward to your input on these. I’ve also been digging around trying to find sound samples for the Alumitones but not much luck yet.
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Robert, - I’ve read many comments on the web about these pickups and the opinions are all over the place. I have a feeling they will be too sharp/brittle/thin for the wood choices (purpleheart/bubinga) we have made for the guitar, but we’ll never know until we try. The Bardens could be quite similar. My original thought was going to be Lollar Imperials (low output).
-Al
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Robert, while doing research on pickups I also found these “Q-tuner” (http://www.q-tuner.com/)pickups and also ordered a matched set for Rick to check out when my guitar is ready:
The best pickup is the one you don’t hear
Q-Tuners are the leaders, being the first pickups to use neodymium magnets. Also known as “super-magnets”, their unique characteristics and high performance make them superior for sound reproduction applications.
We’ve invested over 25 years perfecting our patented symmetrical electromagnetic circuit to make Q-Tuners the best pickups available.
Our proprietary computer aided guidance system allows for perfect side-by-side alignment of the windings creating physically as well as electrically identical coils. These coils are then baked, permanently “thermofusing” the wires producing two solid self-carrying “air” coils. One neodymium bar magnet is placed in each aircoil before both are sealed in epoxy resin. This Q-Tuner “powerhouse” is insusceptible to feedback and 100% humbucking action is ensured.
We top it off by feeding this pure signal out through two 999 silver coil lead-outs, the best electrical conductor available.
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May 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 pm
[...] Lace Alumitone Pickups - This radically different pickup design results in pickups which are significantly lighter than conventional pickups. I know of several guitar builds that are considering them so there’ll be more to come. [...]