Lunch Report Thursday December 19

[DanDoulogos]

Today's lunch, a fine beef broth (from powder) along with a protein shake, and perhaps a Christmas cookie.

General guitar Topic: If G&L offered silver-wound versions of any of their pickups, How likely would it be that you would purchase one or more?

For myself, I wouldn't buy one. I began studying electronics and digital circuits in college. My original plan was to become a chip designer. But you can't get to chip designing until you understand a whole lot about electronic circuits - so I studied circuits, and in order to study circuits you must begin by studying the basics of electronics - current, voltage, resistance, inductance, capacitance etc. To make sense of how electricity works in a circuit.

Silver is more conductive or said another way, less resistive than copper. Less resistive means that you can push more electrons through a silver wire than through a copper wire of the same size. Given the conductive (or resistive) properties of each material, one could say that copper wire "filters out" some of the signal that Silver would allow to pass. In this way, we might say that if you used silver in your pickup coils instead of copper - the output signal would have more tonal "information" in a silver coiled pickup than a copper-coiled pickup of the same dimensions.

So the ide of making a silver wound MFD pickup might seem like the Holy Grail of tone monsters! The Epic apex of tone!

But in practice that's all BS.

First of all, the frequencies that silver would add to the signal wouldn't even register in your dog's ears, let alone a human's ears. Secondly the vibrations of the strings transfer the signal to the coil via the magnetic field via inductance. Silver is more diamagnetic than copper. diamagnetism "affects inductance by causing a change in the orbits of electrons around the nucleus of an atom. This change in electron orbits results in an antiparallel magnetic moment" - in human speech that means that diamagnetic conductors like copper and silver actually resist the process of induction (resist receiving the signal from the strings) - and silver is more diamagnetic than copper. Yes it has better conductivity - but it 'resists' the induction process more so than copper does.

That isn't to say that a silver-wound MFD wouldn't sound any different than a copper-wound MFD - there will be some tonal differences, but the effect has far more to do with the magnetic field than the conductivity of the silver. I don't think they would necessarily cancel each other out - but the effect of having a silver wound pickup would hardly make a noticeable difference for the +500% (or more) increase in price. I wouldn't turn one down, but I don't think I'd ever buy one, even if they made some.

What d'yall think? Gimmick, or Awesome Candy dream? I'm more on the gimmick side of the opinion fence.

G&L Related - well more like G&L Forum related. We've had the new look for a while now. What are your opinions?

First let me say that Craig is a kind of unsung hero (hats off to Craig!) keeping the board up and running while dealing with service provision and various other behind-the-scenes upkeep and -work-. It is not a trivial thing to reconfigure and re-set a BB- forum. I would just like to take a moment to say how much I appreciate the (ongoing) effort. I like the look o the new board. Great work Craig! You are duh man!

Whimsical topic Penmanship. I suppose being a pastor for several years (not currently pastoring) I may have engaged in handwriting more than is average for men my age. Growing up my penmanship was (without exaggeration) the worst in my family, and in my class - and so it remained until around grade 10 - where I was required to hand in 'legible' work (this was before computers were household items). At that time I simply switched to printing rather than cursive, and I began to write "better" - my cursive continued to suggest to the reader (or maybe "interpreter" that English was never my first (and only) language but rather that I must be some sort of handicapped, ham fisted illiterate, who only played at cursive writing.

My mother was the youngest of 10 children. When I was 15 (in '81), my mom's father (my Grandpa) was 85. He was in his early 20's when we volunteered in WWI. I recall as a child seeing in his "whatnot drawer" (I drawer we weren't allowed to even open, let alone peruse) where he kept his lifetime's most precious mementos. I hadn't opened the drawer myself - that would have been a faux pas. But he was looking for some of his medals from WWI that were in very old, but neatly folded paper bag - in which also was a small notepad the size of a small pack of cigarettes. In it he had kept a diary of his experiences during WWI - it was all written in french - so I couldn't understand it - but what was plain to me was how beautiful his hand writing was. Full of flourish and very round, almost feminine. Radically superior to my horrid little chicken scratches that I could barely decipher (let alone another reader).

Over the years the memory of that script - chastised me. Here I was now, a full grown adult, remembering the delicate artistry that was my Grandfather's handwriting - him, an uneducated farmer - able not only to write with a beautiful hand, but also (as I learned from his written discourse) a great and intelligent communicator. He died when I was 15, so I never really had an opportunity to engage him intellectually as a young man. It would have been nice to have had that opportunity to know the man for the man's sake as opposed to knowing the Grandpa that didn't much discuss such things with one of his (literally) dozens of grand children.

So about 15 or 20 years ago I set myself to learn to write (cursively) better. Now I find myself writing often, and always with an eye to improving my penmanship. I still don't believe I am able - even with years of practice to challenge his writing which now only remains in my memory.

What say the rest of you? They no long teach cursive to children where I live. The Internet (and computers in general) have made cursive writing not only redundant - but something to make fun of if your young and want to portray older people as out-of-touch and in love with bygone eras. Do you practice your penmanship, or some other skill that isn't really needed anymore?

A good story makes for easy reading.

I will close this lunch report with something musical:

Here is Joe Bonamassa and Eric Gales~John Henry. This is the sort of "FUN" I love. When two players play - this is the best use of their time.

[sam]

Hi Dan and thank you sir for today’s Lunch Report!

Lunch looks like you’re keeping up with your diet plan, good for you. Can’t say I’ve been as dedicated as you.

Silver wound pickups are foreign to me. I am the farthest thing from an electrical minded person and as interesting as it sounds copper has been the gold standard so why change.
I’m sure if it was significantly better Leo would have done it or made an option. Now I’m off to look for YouTube comparisons.

Penmanship came up at my house the other day. My son’s birthday and a card from my father, his grandfather, who has terrible penmanship. There were moments of “what does this say?”. My mom on the other hand has excellent penmanship. Mine is between the two, but good when I really want it to be. My kids penmanship is questionable because like you said, it is not really required these days in school. Personally I think some writing proficiency should be required. When you can’t type on a computer or phone everyone should be able to effectively be able to communicate.

Great clip! They look like they are having a great time. Eric Gales does not get deserved credit IMHO.

[tomanche]

Thanks for the report, Dan!

Just finishing my cup of black tea (Sri Lankan, today) and browsing the forum. Lunch was leftover veggie jambalaya, and leftover veggie pizza that I made last night.

Major kudos to Craig for keeping the lights on here!!

I had never thought about any other wire for pickups. Cost would seem the big stumbling block for silver.

My cursive penmanship (trained in Catholic grade school) used to be neat, despite my left-handedness (I play righty). But once I started taking lecture notes in college, haste caused a rapid decline in legibility. I still use cursive today on checks and such, but that's about it. In those small doses, it's legible. I do know of a penmanship course (BFH Handwriting) that I bought for my then-spouse, for adults to learn/improve their cursive. The big advance is NOT connecting the letters.
[Forgot that I dabbled in calligraphy in my twenties. The challenge for me was not smearing with my left hand. I still use it on Xmas gift tags.]

Thanks for the clip! I have not heard Eric Gales before. Wowza.

[SUaPYG]

Lunch yesterday was special. My wife and I drove 3 -1/2 hours each way to have lunch with my 93-year-old mom at the assisted living facility she resides in. She had fried shrimp, french fries and iced tea, Linnea had a grilled cheese sandwich french fries and decaf coffee, I had a loaded cheeseburger, french fries and coffee. The food was actually pretty good. The time spent with mom was precious.

Craig's devotion to this site is without parallel!!

I agree that if silver wire would have been a significant improvement for pick ups, Leo would have produced them.

My handwriting has deteriorated over time in lock step with the deteriorating joints in my fingers. I am sure there is some causality there... I am defaulting to printing more and more.
My mother's parents immigrated from Canada and French was their native tongue. Grandpa had polio as a child and his right arm was severely compromised, never-the-less, he wrote right-handed in a most beautiful cursive writing. I never learned French so his early writing was beyond my comprehension.

I had the pleasure to be at a small club, (Vegetable Buddies, in South Bend, IN) when Eric Gales performed his first gig after rehab and going back out on tour. The club was packed and I was relegated to standing stage left, about twenty feet away from Eric the whole night. Watching him play left-handed on a right-handed guitar was an education. Coco Montoya was the only other artist I had seen in person who played like that. Had the pleasure to see Eric again at a blues festival the following summer. Such a talent.

[john o]

Hey Dan, and friends, sorry late to the party, been busy with usual holiday related activities.

last lunch i had was yesterday, a bowl of chili and an IPA at Stuart's Brewing Co.

I'll join you with a tip of the hat to Craig for his GbL site+ engineering, must be a labor of love to keep this going. I'm crossing my fingers for the gallery fix, as i post pics from there to the forum. Bravo, Craig, and thank you!

re: silver wire, sounds interesting, particularly if it created different sounding p'ups in a good way, sign me up. electricity stuff has alot of physics which i didn't like much in college. I was a chem major and my roommate was a physics major, and we would regularly debate how one explains most things in the universe from the perspective of our majors. we didn't agree much on things, but he turned me on to an expanded appreciation for the music of the Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa, so i appreciated that.

i'm concerned that writing proficiency of my grand children is in danger based on what is going on in school, and the general lack of opportunities and necessity of handwriting in life. gone are the days when you hand-wrote out the 1st couple drafts of a paper in school before typing out the final draft on a typewriter. my daughter is a school teacher and based on our discussions i have hope that educators will revive this necessary competence and make sure kids have this as a life skill.

I had the privilege to see (and meet) Eric Gales a couple of years ago at Reading Blues festival. He's an astounding guitarist/musician. His record," The Crown", was nominated for a Grammy 2 years ago for best blues album, is a regular listen for me and IMO was worthy of the nomination (Edgar Winter's "Johnny" won the Grammy in that category, also a great record). I like Joe B as well, also a great and renowned player, and got to see him at Peach festival back in 2017. People like to pick on him, but he has an interesting story, and is an expert on all things gibson, fender and marshall. He should try some G&L's!

Merry Christmas!