Post by daddyelmis (Greg) on Feb 11, 2023 14:29:03 GMT -7
saw this article today Organic Pickups, and it made think (again) that by 2023 I would have bet virtually all electric guitars would have some type of agreed "data bus" (for lack of a better term) that most, if not all, pickup makers would join so that you could easily swap out pickups of almost any type, from almost any manufacturer, with ease. Sort of like how hard drives do with computers.
Seems like the industry (via Guitar & Accessories Marketing Association (GAMA) or other) could agree on this, create specs/standards for the mounting system (since all humbucker and single coil routings are now the same, this wouldn't be a big deal), and specs for the pickups to interface with the mounting system (basically like SATA for hard drives, or the USB standards that Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel developed together). Users would buy the interface and could install it on their guitars, manufacturers could offer that on new guitars, and everybody gets to try any pick up they want ... easily.
This would have to increase sales of all pickups tremendously ... who wouldn't want to experiment if it was just "clicking" in a new set of pickups versus wiring and soldering? As it is, this sort of thing has been done only by a small number of companies, and is proprietary to their pickups.
Just another day of wonderment about opportunities passed by as I was adjusting a humbucker.
Edited to add: given that all manufacturers have agreed on what size and shape a humbucker is, and a single coil, and a P90, and how they are wired, this just seems a hop-skip-and jump to do.
Further edit: saw these pickups with a pretty simple solution, but of course you're locked into this brand: GFS Pickups
Seems like the industry (via Guitar & Accessories Marketing Association (GAMA) or other) could agree on this, create specs/standards for the mounting system (since all humbucker and single coil routings are now the same, this wouldn't be a big deal), and specs for the pickups to interface with the mounting system (basically like SATA for hard drives, or the USB standards that Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel developed together). Users would buy the interface and could install it on their guitars, manufacturers could offer that on new guitars, and everybody gets to try any pick up they want ... easily.
This would have to increase sales of all pickups tremendously ... who wouldn't want to experiment if it was just "clicking" in a new set of pickups versus wiring and soldering? As it is, this sort of thing has been done only by a small number of companies, and is proprietary to their pickups.
Just another day of wonderment about opportunities passed by as I was adjusting a humbucker.
Edited to add: given that all manufacturers have agreed on what size and shape a humbucker is, and a single coil, and a P90, and how they are wired, this just seems a hop-skip-and jump to do.
Further edit: saw these pickups with a pretty simple solution, but of course you're locked into this brand: GFS Pickups