One of the most intelligent conversations
I had at the winter 2009 Winter NAMM show was with Matthew Larrivee about
the new proprietary pickups on the new line of Larrivee electric guitars.
This man REALLY knows his stuff when it comes to pickups!!! Matthew
was very generous with his time when I asked for an interview to publish
on our site regarding their new pickups ... and here it is!
D.W. Why did you start making your own pickups for
the RS-4?
M.L. The creation of the RS-4 grew from the experiences we
learned in the 1980’s. In 1984 when the acoustic market was depressed we
started making electric guitars, and for the next five years we learned
a lot about electric instruments. By the time the electric guitar market
bottomed out in 1989 we had just about perfected our design, but had to
discontinue the line due to the depressed market. In 2007 when we made
the decision to start making electrics again we looked back to what we
had learned from the 13,000 electrics we had previously made. We now had
the technology to build the perfect guitar.
We put a lot of research into the components of the
guitars, and chose the absolute best hardware possible: Tonepros, Luxe,
RS Guitar Works, CTS, Switch Craft, etc. But good hardware is nothing without
an exceptional guitar. Acoustically, the RS-4 is an amazing instrument.
The extra thick maple top, the light weight thin line mahogany body &
neck, and traditional long tenon create a really special instrument.
Initially we equipped the RS-4 with commercially available
boutique pickups but we had had a desire to have our own design that would
perfectly compliment the features of the RS-4.
D.W. How did you start the process of making pickups?
M.L. We actually made pickups in the 1980’s for about
7000 guitars. My dad had met a guitar and pickup maker named Glen McDougall
from Saskatoon. I think Glen and my dad got along really well because he
was a tinkerer as well – always fixing things that weren’t broken! Glen
gave my dad some parts to make a rather unique coil winding machine which
we used to make pickups in the mid to late 1980’s.
Jean and Wendy would wind the pickups at night
after dinner. The winder was set-up on our dining room table, with the
television behind it so they didn’t go bored out of their mind. I can remember
hearing the whip-whip-whip of the wire as I would play in the living room.
The pickups made were higher output designs for the rockers of the 1980’s.
It was the age of Day- Glow electrics and heavy metal. This history gave
us the basics for the future pickups, though this time around we would
take a different direction.
In 2008 when we made the decision to craft our
own pickups again, Jean was traveling in Europe visiting distributors and
he gave me a lot of leeway with this project. I normally give every project
my all, but for some reason I REALLY dug into this. Pickups became an obsession
for me. I decided to go down a different path than my father had mostly
because the RS-4 is a different instrument – It’s particularly efficient
at producing some classic rock tones, but it also has a strong modern rock
streak in it as well.
I started back at the drawing board and learned many of the
basics on my own – Basic items such as how much tension to use, what type
of wire, what type of magnets to use etc.… It was so challenging and so
much fun at the same time. I really started to do some heavy research.
D.W. What did you research, and what did you base
your design off of?
M.L. I think the first research we did was figuring
out what the sound was that we wanted to obtain. From there it was a matter
of working my way backwards to obtain it. The RS-4 naturally has a lot
of sustain so we wanted a pickup that highlighted this characteristic.
We use some pretty spectacular wood as well and we wanted a pickup that
had exceptional “clean” tone to highlight the natural tone of the instrument
without a lot of coloration. This led me to the very early Gibson PAF’s
– The original Humbucking pickup. There is a well known era of Gibson pickups
from 1957, to about 1963ish that are just amazing – inconsistently so –
but amazing none the less. Every pickup maker out there makes a PAF style
pickup, but there are very few who dive really deep into the PAF construction
to really understand what is happening.
My friend Tom and I were talking one Saturday afternoon
and I was telling him about my pickup work and he told me that he had a
broken PAF and that he wanted me to have it. I was floored. The pickup
had a shorted coil and no cover but was basically intact. I put aside a
weekend and started the process of de-constructing the pickup. We sent
all of the various metal parts out for analysis to find out the specific
alloys that were used
The research taught me really early on the importance
of different metal alloys in the pickup. Part of the PAF mystique is the
alloys. The pickup was made from materials there were off the shelf in
the 1950’s, but are not necessarily all that common today. Sourcing those
materials was often quite difficult. One of the alloys is not available
anymore unless you buy 10 tons of it from a smelter.
D.W. Tell us about the parts that make up the pickup
M.L. Each part of the pickup plays a role in its tone.
Each piece of the puzzle had to be meticulously put together, and if it
didn’t sound right it was back to the drawing board. We use a very traditional
magnet wire which is VERY hard to get. It’s a 42 Gauge Plain enamel wire
which is made on a machine from the early 1960’s using the original Plain
Enamel formula. The original formula contains benzene and has an odor of
Magic Markers. It’s got that purple-brown hue that you see on the PAF’s.
Many makers out there use Plain Enamel Wire, but it’s a modern different
formula that doesn’t contain benzene. Others use Poly wire which is dyed
purple.
The magnets we use took ages to settle on. I auditioned
about 40 different magnets from about 10 different vendors. The original
PAF’s magnets are believed to be Alnico 2, Alnico 5, and an isotropic version
of Alnico 5. There is some debate in the pickup maker community as to whether
Alnico 4 was used. We use the “Long style” magnet as was used on the PAF,
but ours are polished and ground for consistency of tone. To make matters
more confusing, Alnico 2 from one vendor can sound totally different from
Alnico 2 from another vender. After many double blind listening tests we
settled on specialty Alnico 4 magnet in the neck position, and an Alnico
2 magnet in the bridge. Alnico 4 is a little less powerful than A5, but
more powerful than A2. It creates a beautiful modern rock sound in the
neck, while the A2 pickup give a really classic tone in the bridge.
The slugs for the slug coil are made in house in a VERY
slow process. They are made from PAF accurate alloy on our lathe. Our slugs
are actually quite unique and different from what other makers do. I created
a large diameter slug to distribute the magnetic flux more effectively,
reducing the pull on the strings and increasing the sustain of the instrument.
While at the same time, we maintain the exact mass of metal used in the
PAF slugs. This is achieved by partially hollowing out the slug on the
CNC machine.
The screws are a special non-heat treated alloy that
is not PAF accurate. The fillister screw we use is custom made with a large
head to focus the magnetic field toward the string. We chose an alloy that
had slightly less magnetic pull than the PAF screw, but which had an extremely
clear uncompressed sound. In the case of our guitar the PAF alloy screw
sounded a little muddy.
We even use the braided shielding cotton covered single
conductor wire that was used in the 1950’s. Though we have two custom colors
made for us - Green for the neck pickup and Red for the bridge (The green
matches the green strip on the neck capacitor, and the red matches the
red stripes on the bridge capacitor).
The pickup cover was actually one of the hardest parts
of the pickup to settle on. You have to tonally design your pickup around
the cover. The cover of the pickup tends to strip away some of the mid
range and high end from the pickup. You have to design the pickups with
extra mid’s and high’s knowing that the cover is going to take some away.
We use an ultra thin nickel silver cover plated in the same manner as the
PAF’s were. The pickup we make is really designed to have its cover on.
The cover is a meticulous replica of a 1958 PAF cover.
D.W. Is there anything special about that actual winding
of the pickup?
M.L. Absolutely! Each pickup is wound on an original
un-altered 1963 Leesona-Bachi Coil winder. This old mechanical gear winder
is setup to run at same speeds and settings that the PAF coils were created
with. When I took apart the PAF that Tom gave me I was able to record the
turns per layer of wire that was used. I was also able to find the speed
settings that were used on the original machine Gibson used through a copy
of an old Leesona 102 Manual. For the pairs of coils, I also mismatched
the wind slightly. This mismatch brings out a little extra chime and ads
a little more complexity to the tone. This is authentic to the original
PAF’s who’s coils were not wound to a specific number of turns, but rather
wound until the coil was full.
D.W. Do you wax pot the pickups?
M.L. Not unless requested. We wind the coils very tightly
like Gibson did, and seal the coil in a custom made paper tape. We don’t
wax-pot the coils to preserve that slightly honky microphonic quality that
you can hear in many vintage recordings.
D.W. Are the pickups high or low output?
M.L. This was a hard choice for us to make. Since the
1970’s it’s been drilled into people’s head that higher output = better.
In our mind this is a myth. Lower output pickups are a lot more versatile.
You can easily dirty up a lower output pickup, but you cannot easily clean
up an overpowered one. In today’s world, the reality is that most people
are using pedals to obtain particular tones. We make our neck pickup to
about 7.4K and the bridge to about 7.9K. For reference most PAF’s were
in the 7.2 to 8.0 range. Keeping the pickups in the 7 range allowed us
to have the high end shine without being shrill.
D.W. Where are the pickups made?
M.L. On a small bench right plunked in the middle of
the shipping department at the California shop. Every pickup we make is
hand made in America. |
