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Zeyphr silver?

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rapfohl09

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So my friends, Seymour duncan has decided to flip the B.S. switch and see who they can lure in with it.

http://www.themusiczoo.com/free-gear-giveaway.php

Seriously? 1200$ a set? These pickups better make a 3 year old hitting the guitar with a teddy bear sound like Van Halen!

Any other opinions? In all honesty I haven't even youtubed them yet, but damn that whole thing seems like alot of B.S. fluff.
 
Yeah, these turned up a few months ago and the SD forums turned into quite a mess because of them. Even the most die-hard Seymour Duncan users can't work out why they cost so much or who would ever pay that much for a set of pickups. That $1200 price tag is new though, the initial figure was $1500 for Tele and Humbucker sets, $1600 for a Strat set.

Apparently they actually sound almost exactly like EMG 81s with the 18v mod. Which makes sense since they're meant to give a wider frequency response range, be more sensitive to picking dynamics and harmonics and be capable of a better output:noise ratio - all things which the EMG 81 is built for. Obviously I've not tested them myself let alone done an A/B against the EMGs but if it's true that they're the same (or even just fairly close) then I really do not see why anyone would even think about buying these (not that there's much justification either way).
 
although silver is expensive and the best conductor of heat and electricity there is no logical reason it should sound better. this is more for the prs and vintage lespaul elite crowds. the people with cash to burn. i am sure they sound ok and im sure the wire effcts the Q factor and reduces the resistence. maybe they can do some of what they claim but im sure that bill lawrence and lollar and kinman and others are laughing it up. my lawrence noiseless singles can sound a bit like emg 81's as well.

maybe duncan should try some advanced design and subjust the results to trial by respected artists and let those opinions speak for themselves instead of trowing expensive wire at a 60 year old design and throwing some marketing at it. oh i know why, the market isn't ready for advanced designs. too many atempts were failures. you couldn't sell a $1500 pickup to a lespaul lover if it didn't look like a paf.
 
Yeah I know what your saying. I couldnt find anything else about them other than a 5 minutes video of a guy going on about the extended frequency range. Seems like these are going to be the Hummers of the pickup world, just a status symbol. Just showing off that you can afford a set.
 
rapfohl09 said:
So my friends, Seymour duncan has decided to flip the B.S. switch and see who they can lure in with it.

http://www.themusiczoo.com/free-gear-giveaway.php

Seriously? 1200$ a set? These pickups better make a 3 year old hitting the guitar with a teddy bear sound like Van Halen!

Any other opinions? In all honesty I haven't even youtubed them yet, but damn that whole thing seems like alot of B.S. fluff.
Click to expand...

We were forced to use these pitiful things when we were kids. Then my dad got a job <grin>

This is just marketing hubris taken to a ridiculous extreme. I'm sure they sound ok for some things, but anybody who'd feel they need something like that to be "just right" is kidding themselves.

And yes, silver is a better conductor than copper, but to think it would make a difference in this application is probably like checking the barometric pressure before you jump off the roof of a 40 story building to make sure the atmosphere isn't having too much of an impact on your trip to the ground.
 
Ace Flibble said:
Yeah, these turned up a few months ago and the SD forums turned into quite a mess because of them. Even the most die-hard Seymour Duncan users can't work out why they cost so much or who would ever pay that much for a set of pickups. That $1200 price tag is new though, the initial figure was $1500 for Tele and Humbucker sets, $1600 for a Strat set.

Apparently they actually sound almost exactly like EMG 81s with the 18v mod. Which makes sense since they're meant to give a wider frequency response range, be more sensitive to picking dynamics and harmonics and be capable of a better output:noise ratio - all things which the EMG 81 is built for. Obviously I've not tested them myself let alone done an A/B against the EMGs but if it's true that they're the same (or even just fairly close) then I really do not see why anyone would even think about buying these (not that there's much justification either way).
Click to expand...

I have a guitar with 2x EMG 89s with the 18v mod, and in all seriousness there's a little bit of improvement to the dynamic headroom, but not something that is warranted of a massive price increase. I can't see the 81s being much better than the 89s in achieving that dynamic headroom space. $1200 is pretty rich........you could buy yourself a decent pair of usual humbuckers and tune them in with something a bit fancy like Bill Lawrence's Q Filter as an EQ sweep pot, so you CAN use all the sweep of the tone pot for more dynamics, and still have enough money left over to do another guitar the same! Or just buy an EMG 81 & 85 with some of their EQ pots?  :doh:
 
if you're spending over $1000 to sound like EMGs, why wouldn't you just buy EMGs?
 
AutoBat said:
if you're spending over $1000 to sound like EMGs, why wouldn't you just buy EMGs?
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STOP MAKING SENSE!

Although, to be fair, if these really do sound like EMGs and you happen to like that sound, you wouldn't need to have batteries on board.
 
Considering how many batteries you could buy with that price difference, and how long batteries last and how easy they are to change, that's really not even a slight plus point.
 
Those are good good points, but batteries only die when you don't have spares, and they can't leak and wreck the cavity if they don't exist.
 
Can't say I've had either problem with any of my active guitars, ever. In fact I can't even recall the last time I had a battery leak on me in anything. I remember a battery leaked in my Game Boy and ruined that. That was 1993. That's about all I can recall.

To me the only problem with actives is that they're fairly limited in terms of how you can wire them up. I get pissed off having to install a phase switch into all of my active guitars just because that's a sound I use a lot and neither EMG nor Seymour Duncan could be bothered to allow you to wire pickups out of phase normally. That is the one area where I think these new SDs have an advantage in the relm of wide-response pickups. Still not worth over a grand though, not be a long way.

Besides, Q Tuners are also around and fill basically the same need for a passive pickup with ultra-wide and dynamic response.
 
Well anyone who doesn't want to drop a grand, the tele set is ONLY 900! :icon_jokercolor:

But yeah, I think it's just to show off a little, you know take all of the pickup B.S. we have and roll it all into one pickup, then make it cost more than a decent guitar.


BRILLIANT!!!
 
Cagey said:
Those are good good points, but batteries only die when you don't have spares, and they can't leak and wreck the cavity if they don't exist.
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That is the reason I don't do actives.  I can't depend on the function/disfunction on a battery, or the chance of it leaking.  I like my guitars operational as is.  I get the theory of these pickups, but in the realm of guitar electronics, copper is a pretty darn good conductor already.  Why couldn't they silver plate the copper wire instead? :icon_scratch:  A little bit of silver would go a long way.  Cool idea, but the price is a big turn-off.  You got to take out a loan just to buy these pickups. :doh:
 
Ace Flibble said:
Can't say I've had either problem with any of my active guitars, ever. In fact I can't even recall the last time I had a battery leak on me in anything. I remember a battery leaked in my Game Boy and ruined that. That was 1993. That's about all I can recall.
Click to expand...

You're right - if you have a good Copper Top Duracell leak, it's probably been installed for so long you don't care about what it's installed in anyway. But, they will do it, eventually. I'm probably just over-sensitive to it because I'm old enough to remember when batteries had the shelf life of unrefrigerated meat. I can't tell you how many toys, flashlights, radios, etc. I've seen ruined by leaky batteries.
 
The odd part of it to me is the "extended frequency range." I mean, the frequency of a low E string is 82 Hz, and I can hear that just fine. It can't GET any lower, and I can hear a bass at 41 Hz too, thanks. Even a 24th fret high E on the high E string is at 1,318 Hz, barely into the "midrange."  The highest sounds that make any difference in a guitar are the upper harmonics in the 5K or 6K range, BUT: nobody likes them too much, or we'd all be playing through cabinets with tweeters or horns. If you want to hear some "extended frequency range", just hook your mushy old regular pickup'd guitar into a nice power amp into some crossover PA speakers with horns and shatter some teeth, yeehaw dude. I've done it.... :o

LIMITING the frequency range by playing through speakers with around a 2.5K total-dive rolloff is how you make a listenable sound. Therefore, pickups that provide "extended frequency range" are just going to have all that "range" totally annihilated by speaker choice anyway - and it's a damn lucky thing. These pickups are designed for torturing dogs and tweety birds, and I can certainly think of cheaper ways to do that too.

JUST ANOTHER SCAM FOLKS KEEP MOVING ALONG NOW THERE'S NOTHING TO SEE HERE....

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/music/musical-note-frequencies.htm
 
rapfohl09 said:
So my friends, Seymour duncan has decided to flip the B.S. switch and see who they can lure in with it.

http://www.themusiczoo.com/free-gear-giveaway.php

Seriously? 1200$ a set? These pickups better make a 3 year old hitting the guitar with a teddy bear sound like Van Halen!

Any other opinions? In all honesty I haven't even youtubed them yet, but damn that whole thing seems like alot of B.S. fluff.
Click to expand...
That's some funny ass shyt rite thar....."These pickups better make a 3 year old hitting the guitar with a teddy bear sound like Van Halen!"
crackup.gif


But seriously, silver is the shyt for conductivity. But the oxidation issue out weighs the validation of it's use in electronics. Unless kept in a vaccum...$1200....paaaaleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease... :doh:
 
Max said:
Stubhead, have I ever told you I love you?  :icon_jokercolor:
Click to expand...

His posts are awesome.  After reading them, I don't know if I just learned something, was patronized, or prayed for.  I love his posts.

Now if those pickups used silver from coins recently found in an Illinois basement and thought to no longer be in circulation, these pickups would be much cheaper.
 
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