Gear is good

[tot_Ou_tard]

& better gear is better :.

Ain't gonna get no arguments there .




(hoping to split yin from yang & gear from fingers .)

[Tone2TheBone]

So...whaddya get?

[tot_Ou_tard]

So...whaddya get?

Nuttin'...Justa bought it all already .

[Spudman***]

Toaster? They're great.

[Tone2TheBone]

Ha we'll see.

[oldguy]

Toaster? They're great.

I like toast........

[tot_Ou_tard]

Need some jelly with that?

[Brian Krashpad]

Toaster? They're great.

Agreed.

I have 'em on my T-60.



Each one on my Brownsville can do three slices at a time!

[tot_Ou_tard]

I'm glad that the toaster pups "popped up", because I've been trying to figure out what they are. I know that they are a Ric thing, but how are they constructed? What are their tonal properties? The original design for the pups in Godin Radiators looked like toasters. I heard that they were told to cease & desist. The pups in mine don't have the slices, but I think (don't know) that the design of the actual pup is the same.

[Brian Krashpad]

I'm glad that the toaster pups "popped up", because I've been trying to figure out what they are. I know that they are a Ric thing, but how are they constructed? What are their tonal properties? The original design for the pups in Godin Radiators looked like toasters. I heard that they were told to cease & desist. The pups in mine don't have the slices, but I think (don't know) that the design of the actual pup is the same.

The thing about "toasters" is that at this point it's kinda like the word "Kleenex," or how some American Southerners call all soda a "Coke." Toasters were originally a Ric thing, used to describe Ric's pickups that look like this:



I'd thought that Ric toasters were small humbuckers, but the description of the Ric 325C64 at musiciansfriend.com refers to them as "vintage single-coil pickups." Based on this pic, Ric toasters should be singles:



At least one Ric purist says even current Ric toasters don't sound like the old ones and have to be "unwound" to make them less high-output than they otherwise are:

http://users.adelphia.net/~cygnusx_1/toasters.html

He also advises adding a capacitor to the circuit that Ric took out, and using flatwounds, so obviously he's pretty anal about the whole thing, but his point about them currently being overwound seems to have validity on its face.

As my half-facetious previous post shows, the term "toaster" has, post-Ric, been applied to various and sundry pickups based solely on their outward appearance. T-60 toasters are just a regular-sized humbucker in a different looking cover, and where Ric toasters are known for their "jangle" T-60 ones are actually "warmer" than the "blade" humbucking pickups which came on later T-60's. So, though I'm guessing, I doubt they sound anything alike.

The "toasters" on my Brownsville are actually big single coils, and they're low-output alnico magnet pickups, so they might sound something like Ric toasters, but I honestly have no idea. Same goes for your singles in the Godin Radiator.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Wow! Thanks Brian.

So any idea what makes the toaster sound, other than wide aperture low output alnico single coils?

Loudboy on the Gear Page claims that Godin changed the design due to Ric's insistence.

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/sho...d.php?t=151099

[Brian Krashpad]

Wow! Thanks Brian.

Sure, no worries. I love this stuff, could yack about it all day!

So any idea what makes the toaster sound, other than wide aperture low output alnico single coils?

Haha. no, I'm pretty terrible at the tech side of things. In fact, your above description is more succinct than I coulda put it.

With that proviso, though, I will posit that it's my theory that the jangly Ric sound is only partially based on toasters, and that the guitar's composition and construction play equal parts in the jangle sound. Note that modern Rics are still pretty dang jangly, but at this point it's only a very distinct minority of their models that have toasters. A much larger portion of the line now comes with the hotter "High-Gain" singles, including the Ric 620 I own (the lead singer in the HotHeads has a matching one in blue to mine in red, and his is his main guitar used at virtually every show at this point) and the 430 I owned back in the 80's (kicks self for selling).

The High-Gain'd Rics tend to come in two body types, and each type tends to contribute to "that great Ric sound" (as Ric promo stuff still says) in different ways. The solidbodies in the 600 series tend to be neck-throughs with rrrrrrrrrreally thin bodies, made of maple, with two models using walnut instead. I dunno about walnut, but maple is a very dense aurally very bright wood, and the combo of a thin body, bright wood, neck-though (for arguably a smidge more sustain), and single coil pups make up for a pretty jangly guitar.

The semi-hollow bodied 300 series with High Gains are maple too, so the brightness factor is there as well. Plus a semi-hollow has a slight acoustic "ring" or "chime" to it that's very difficult to accurately describe, but is nevertheless there.

Finally in the mix for almost all the semi's and slightly over half of the solidbodies (including my 620) is the tailpiece, versus the more common stoptail. Tailpiece guitars have a slightly more "acoustic" sound because they produce some very subtle overtones not present in stoptails, where the string vibration is directed down into the guitar straightaway. In contrast, a harp-type tailpiece will itself vibrate (as the top of a good acoustic will) since it "floats" above the guitar body held aloft only by string tension. I noticed this (after it was pointed out to me by the recording engineer on a Crash Pad CD) on a harp-tailed DeArmond M-75 I had several years ago.

Basically, if you have a bright-wood body (I bet alder, ash, and poplar would all be in the same group, though not as bright as maple) with single coils, you'll have something pretty jangly, even if the singles ain't toasters, and with the additional factors of neck-through construction and/or semi-hollow and/or harp tailpiece would only add to the mix.

Note that your Radiator is chambered maple, so the combo of it's singles with that type of body should put you into jangle territory!

[tot_Ou_tard]

Excellent discussion Brian!

As I understand it, low output usually means fewer windings & the latter emphasizes clarity & the high end. The wider aperture would tend to increase the harmonics as you are sampling a longer length of the string.
Am I correct?

Yes, my Godin Radiator does indeed get into jangle territory with the bridge pup, it can also do a nice hollow bluesy tone at the neck. I wonder what the tonal effects of having a toilet seat for a top are ?

If I want to emphasize the Ric-ishness & get even more jangle I use my Diamond comp (mine has the original spec, which has less compression on tap, but allows one to easily deal in very low compression levels: I got a good deal on it). It is an opto-based comp that is very transparent (ie tends to ring rather than squash), but the cool feature is the tilt-eq. This is one knob that shifts the whole frequency response rather than cutting or boosting particular frequencies.

Radiator bridge pup, a healthy portion of compression, & tilted toward the high end & you've got jangle & chime monsieur.

There is in fact a compressor designed for Rics to do this: The Janglebox.
From what I understand, the Diamond does a good job of mimicing the Janglebox with the settings as I described.

On the other hand, I've never played a Ric to compare it with.

Of course it'll still jangle & chime at the bridge w/o the comp treatment, but then it leans more toward spanky twangtown.

[Brian Krashpad]

Excellent discussion Brian!

As I understand it, low output usually means fewer windings & the latter emphasizes clarity & the high end. The wider aperture would tend to increase the harmonics as you are sampling a longer length of the string.

Am I correct?

Haha, probably, but I ain't the guy to ask! I just plug things with strings into boxes with little jewel lights on them and hope sound comes out!

Actually, as to the first half of your first sentence, yes fewer windings should generally equal lower output, as in that Ric guy's page on unwinding new toasters, since his directions are to unwind and check output until it's down into what he considers vintage specs. And since less hot pickups distort signal less, the clarity bit should be right too I think. The emphasizing of high end is also right, I believe, but more in a "preceived hearing" way then a scientific one. In other words, I would tend to think (though like everything else I say this is basically an uneducated guess) that whatever the low windings do to the signal they do it across the spectrum equally, but because of the way humans hear sound, such as treble being heard as more directional, etc., we perceive an emphasis on treble which probably isn't really "there" from a quantifiable scientific standpoint.

That second sentence of yours above is way beyond me! It looks right though. :