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Lace Alumitone pickups??


tobereeno

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just discovered these last night. These are some very COOL looking pickups!!!

Has anyone tried these? While they are very cool looking and the idea behind them is interesting, I'm hesitant to buy a couple sets to try out. I spent untold amounts of time and money trying out virtually the entire Duncan catalog, getting a feel for which pickup goes with which body wood and the sound that goes along with it.

Will they help bring out more of the natural sound of a Hamer? Or will they sterilize the mojo....??

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very flat response.

reminiscent of the ole ultra reference pickups

back in the hairband Bradshaw rack era...

Not much "soul" to them.

The GCS, when I was there, had a bunch of them

to try out in guitars... they just sat there collecting dust

after installs. no attempts to steal them, they just sat there.

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Never tried them. I'd guess they sound the same no matter what kind of guitar you put them in. I thought they were marketed for pedals to get the true sound of the pedal and not the guitar.

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there are a couple foreign-made guitars I have an eye on: a couple Epiphones, and for Californian lovers, the most recent Ibanez RGA72...a setneck Californian clone. Since such guitars would be for the style and not the tone quality of the wood, they might be good candidates for these new Lace pickups.

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I tried some guitars with them at the Montreal Guitar Show this year. Cannot say I hated them, but I didn't feel anything special about them.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 years later...

ok, a few years later...I've installed a set. The design of these things is super innovative and very, very, VERY cool. They weigh nothing.

and, very first sound impression was good! super clear, super quiet, super crisp. Crisp. Did I say crisp? Because they're really crisp. They feel like an EMG 85 in a way, but crisper.

And after playing for awhile I found its Achilles heel. Distorted, they feel weird. They don't respond the way normal pickups do, so they end up feeling kind of numb.

Bottom line: they sound amazing clean with lush reverb. They're good in drop-D tuning for articulate chugga-chugga. They're ok playing crunchy chords. They SUCK for lead.

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Thanks for the follow-up. Unless the Alumitones are radically different in design than the original Lace sensors, I think you have discovered the traits common to all sensors. The have some nice qualities when played through brightly-voiced clean amps and low-gain applications, however they tend to compress to an extreme when used to play distorted leads (think late 80s/early 90s Clapton).

I gigged a red/silver/blue set for about six months and eventually switched to a set of Bill Lawrence twin blades. That Lace set still sits in a box 23 years later.

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Very nice design. I had checked a couple of vids and think this one is quite objective.

The pickups seem to deliver a wide frequency range. That's different to the usual pickup design. Therefore, the pickups require a different handling and many pedals seem not to work with them since made and trickled for usual pickup frequency ranges.

I think they are very interesting. As always, put in the right and matching setup they would sure satisfy and make a guitarist happy. Woodwise, I would think they would shine in alder based guitars, taking off a bit of crispiness if you like. The Newport could be a great candidate too.

ETA: I would not setup the guitar with plain steel strings.

ETA: Another video

ETA: The principle.

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that sounds about right - both in the feel that they compress too much and lose dynamic feel when distorted, and also that that might be the case since the gear I'm running through isn't designed for such pickups.

I'm open the the idea of a better mousetrap though, which is why I bought the (expensive) set to play with. If pedals or amps were EQ'ed or otherwise designed to work synergistically with this type of pickup, there could be potential there.

But I will say this - it's a simpler and much lighter way to get EMG-esque performance. They're quieter than EMGs too (if memory serves).

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I was reading the Lace site and apparently the Alumitones have nothing in common with the Sensors, or really any other pickup.

"This radical departure from electric guitar pickup design is aluminum based, rather than copper. Result: less resistance, higher output coupled to a "current driven design" as opposed to conventional voltage based guitar pickups.

The aluminum water jet cut exoskeleton is then matted to a micro winding using 90% less fine copper wire, a low impedance/high impedance pickup is then created."

Bless 'em for trying to do something different. I happen to really like my Blue/Silver/Red Sensors in my Strat Plus. They are not very Stratty sounding but are dead quiet, even, clear, and are fantastic clean and play well with my ZVex fuzz and with my Valvetech.

I can definitely understand why someone would not like them, as we all have different reference tones in our heads. I happen to love Sugar and early Smashing Pumpkins, and I got this Strat not even knowing Mould and Corgan both used Lace Sensors. So I dig 'em.

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