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pick up mounting system

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I have just ordered all of my parts needed for a telecaster build from warmoth (boy, was that expensive...). I was going for a jazzy sounding tele and aiming for the warmest, hollow body type of sound, so dual humbuckers, mahogany body and neck on rosewood fingerboard among other things. I chose to have warmoth route woodmount routing for the pick-ups, and not having any experience changing or mounting pick-ups before, I've been trying to do some research on the net and on this forum on how to woodmount humbuckers and I stumbled upon FU-tone pickup mounting system.They were quite expensive and I thought after paying for the product online.."Did I just throw over $100 for 2 sets of pickup mounting system? Every review I've read on the net says this product is good. Has anyone tried it? What do you guys think of this product?
 
Hi, and welcome.


My instinct - and I have nothing but a general understanding of  how pickups work to back it up - is that the fu-tone thing is snake oil.  Perhaps not mailiciously-marketed snake-oil, but nevertheless the product is sold as achieving a result that it is unlikely to achieve.


Magnetic pickups work thusly, in very broad terms:


The metal guitar string vibrates within a magnetic field supplied by the pickup.  This vibration excites the field to the extent that it generates an electrical signal, which is in turn amplified.  This signal is NOT the result of the guitar body, nor the neck, nor any other part of the guitar but the string and the pickup -- except in an attenuated way.  Various neck and body and bridge and nut and tuner materials will absorb/deaden certain frequencies, which will change the way the vibrating string sounds in the pickup's field.  Because the body is essentially a dead mass, i.e., as a thick hunk of solid wood that is intended not to absorb much of the string's vibrational energy, it will tend to contribute less than any other factor to how your guitar sounds.  The neck, as a long slender piece of lumber, will tend to absorb more energy in various segments of the audible spectrum, and thus have a greater effect on your sound.  But as long as your pickup is securely mounted on your axe, and the string's vibration is not damped by some defect in the axe, you should expect pretty much the same sonic result from guitars made of similar materials, and employing similar construction methods and similar quality hardware, and played in a similar style.  The fact that the pickup is securely mounted via directly screwing into the wood, or being suspended in a pickguard or pickup ring, or being held in place with a strip of duct tape should make little if any detectable difference in the guitar's sonic characteristics.


Now here's where it seems possible that this particular mounting system MIGHT result in a change to the tone (note I don't say "improvement," because all this crap is totally subjective along the good vs. bad tone axis):  The Fu-Tone system is a slab of milled metal that serves as a bracket to hold your pickup in place.  A big chunk of metal placed within the pickup's magnetic field could have some effect on how it responds to the string's vibration from an electrical standpoint, as opposed to a mechanical one.  I am frankly too ignorant of the underlying electronic theory to offer any more complete guesses.  But to summarize, it seems unlikely to me, a half-ignorant layman, that this product will make an appreciable difference.


Leaving my half-baked understanding of electronics aside, consider this: 


There are thousands upon thousands of examples of very good guitar tones (again, subjectively) coming from the same floating-pickup arrangement that's been in use since the dawn of the electric guitar era.  The only way to successfully market a new guitar doodad like this is to implicitly assert that all that has gone before is insufficient - a position that is, I'm sure you'll agree, unalloyed bovine excrement. 


We got to move these microwave ovens, we got to move these color TV's - into a market that is already well supplied with same.



 
Solidly mounting the pickups is of questionable value for the reasons Bagman already pointed out, and is almost always a mechanical pain in the shorts that in many cases leaves a guitar looking unfinished. In that respect, this device is a good idea because it solves a number of solid mounting problems if you feel you must go that route.

However, I suspect the supplier is gilding the lily somewhat with the tone change claims in order to justify the high price for a small chunk of bar stock with three tapped holes in it. Some guys will pay anything in the almighty pursuit of "tone", whether there's any return on investment or not. The power of suggestion is tremendous.

Normally, solid mounting is done with some variation of wood screws and spacers or foam, or if you wanna get fancy, you can install threaded inserts and use springs or foam for the standoff spacing. Neither way is much fun, and either way is less robust than the traditional trapeze mount. This guy's idea is clever, but I imagine you could get some aluminum bar stock from Lowe's or someplace like that and make your own little mounting block for a couple/few bucks. Just don't try selling them, because he says his part is patented.

Of course, it's so easy to get a patent these days, you could probably qualify for one of your own if you made it of aluminum instead of brass. Make some claim about magnetic permeability or weight or something and how that changes "tone", and viola! A new invention!
 
I hate to rub it in, but I read their product page and felt really embarrassed. I mean, $49.95 for one pickup-mounting thing meant to "increase resonance" and "add warmth and sustain"?

As already pointed out, the thing is a good idea functionally (if you don't want the look of pickup rings but want more adjustability than with direct mounting), it's just grossly overpriced. A scrap of aluminium and a tap, and you're set. There is nothing in their product that can possibly affect your tone. It's just the usual unicorn tear nonsense. I would have advised you to return it, but their return policy seems to be meant to discourage such attempts. Still, I'd do it.
 
Cagey said:
Of course, it's so easy to get a patent these days, you could probably qualify for one of your own if you made it of aluminum instead of brass. Make some claim about magnetic permeability or weight or something and how that changes "tone", and viola! A new invention!


"Throw it in the freezer, Sully, they LOVE that cryogenic stuff!"



 
Hehe! Yeah. I'll leave that ground-breaking innovation for you to get your own patent after I've gotten mine for using aluminum.  :laughing7:
 
Thanks for the replies Bagman, Cagey and Croquet. Forums like these are actually really helpful if you've got people willing to share good insight and information. Occasional trolls are also entertaining lol.

I must admit, ashamedly, it was an impulse buy on my part.

I've always prioritized function over form when I chose my parts for this build; rear route to eliminate need for pickguard (more screws to screw up), black instead of chrome hardware so it will not tarnish that easily, and wood mounted pickups to eliminate the need for pick-up rings (again more screws). I knew that whatever effect the FU-tone mounting system had on the guitar's tone will not be dramatic, if any, but I thought it'd be a neat way to mount the pick-ups with out using pick-up rings. Oh well, will make sure to consult the forum first before buying any other parts. (btw I'm from all year humid Singapore)

Bagman, you're saying the body will not have much effect on the guitar's tone once plugged in? I chose solid 1 pc mahogany as I thought I might get a warmer sounding guitar. Are you saying there wont be much difference whether I chose poplar are mahogany any other wood for the body?

p.s. do we really have to do gthis captcha thing everytime when posting? it's a pain in the behind.
 
If you were to play enough poplar bodies and enough mahogany bodies with otherwise similar appointments, and were thus able to really build up a fair supply of data points, you would  no doubt be able to describe general tendencies that each species has, sonically.  My point is not that there is no difference - there often is - it's just that among the numerous variables affecting the electric guitar's sound, body wood is likely to be less important than most of the others.


I wouldn't beat up on myself over an impulse purchase like this if I were you.  We've all blown dough on stupid stuff without thinking things through.  And if this makes direct-mounting the pickups easier, maybe you can replicate the design for your own purposes on future builds.


Once you've posted for a while, the captcha thing will go away.  It's just there to keep out the spam lords - once you've demonstrated that you're a human participant (probably through some minimum number of posts) you'll stop being prompted.













 
agree with bagman. if anything, at least it makes it easier to direct mount your pickups and change them in future. (speaking from experience as my direct mount humbuckers are ever so slightly misaligned and don't sit square in the cavity)
 
If FU Tone had existed when I was trying to work out an elegant way of direct-mounting some pickups, I probably would have bought it. In fact I even got as far as buying a sheet of aluminium to make something very similar myself. Didn't need it in the end as I worked something out.
 
It seems like a reasonably mechanically elegant way to mount pickups without rings. A tad on the costly side perhaps.

On the tone thing one theory I heard recently was with wood mount the pickup itself remains relatively static whilst the string vibrates above it, whereas when mounted on rings the pickup can vibrate in addition to the string so the way the string moves through the magnetic field is different.

Anyway tone is subjective, but this seems, tone improvement or different tone, either way an interesting mechanical solution.
 
Even if you were buying into the claims, why not just fabricate your own system, and save the $100? It's not that hard to do.
 
line6man said:
Even if you were buying into the claims, why not just fabricate your own system, and save the $100? It's not that hard to do.

That's a good point.  By the way on the tone thing my personal view is its questionable.
 
Save money
buy my pickup mounting system for 10 bucks and get all the benefits of those sold for 50 or better
just paypal me and I will send the info to you about where to buy the 2 screws and how to cut the padding off a sheet of padding
 
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