Cryogenic Treatment

[Ben]

How about superconductive pickups?

You'd just need to top up the liquid helium tank every now and then, and as an added bonus you could have a 'gas release' button so you could extend your vocal range to reach higher pitches when needed.

[fryovanni]

(although I would ask you the same question with your obsession with genuine sounding PAF pickups!).

peace,

russ

See again you must not read before posting cause I am pushing for pickup builder to move on & try some new things , in fact a flickoflash model pickup may soon be available from a reputable builder which touches again on non same old same old line of thinking. Does wood of the same species sound different from guitar to guitar ... is it maybe something to do with it cells formations & alignments ?

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/

If you have access to LPF I did some research on microwaving & ultra sound waving raw wood a few years ago

There is nothing new or cutting edge about heat treating or "vibrating" wood. People have subjected acoustic soundboards to vibration to "break it in, or Age" it for at least decades(possibly centuries). How effective? Well lets just say the process becomes popular in small circles(or as a sales pitch), then is ignored until someone rediscovers it. Things that work tend to stick if you know what I mean(although, it may very well break in a soundboard as thought it had been used for a while, it does not seem to warrent using it as common building practice). Heat treating(be that baking, microwaving, forcing to 0 moisture and allowing wood to re-aclimatize) has also been around for decades if not centuries. There is different schools of thought on the benifits(subjecting to catastrofic conditions to better prepair wood to survive if it is accidentally left say in a hot car, some believe it cures the pitch, Some say it collapses cells that contain locked moisture, the list goes on). All that is refering to soundboards though. Performance may vary on electrics?

is it maybe something to do with it cells formations & alignments ?

. Something, but not limited to. Download the Wood Handbook(put out by the USFDS), you can learn all about the structure of wood, drying, structural properties and so on and so forth. Most of the info on the web is drawn from this source and repeated.

Peace,Rich

[GregP]

...[bunch of stuff about sustain, including how humbuckers do not actually "add sustain"]...To recap, I'm sure that cryogenics do SOMETHING to metal components. But I'm not sure that the "something" translates to what this person is claiming, and I'm absolutely positive that this person is using marketing-speak/blinders/pseudo-science in place of empirical tests.

a bunch of links

I don't see how any amount of links, or re-linking to the page you've already linked to, is going to explain away how the guy is falsely talking about "humbucker sustain" without considering what is actually happening in the equation. Nor does it explain how cryogenics actually "add" sustain and level. :?

Sorry, but you gotta bust out some logic of your own if you want to counter unexpected and unpredicted points made and give yourself any semblance of credibility. Quoting a bunch of links back to me isn't going to help because I for one am not going to click them all to find the information you're trying to use to answer my points. Even if it's in there somewhere, a "watch this video at 1:32 to see what Jans says about output levels" is the bare minimum. I already responded to their own words and claims, so I'm speaking to the source....

--

[ edit: I just made a liar out of myself-- I decided to check out those videos to see if they offered any insight. There's absolutely nothing in them that would have anything at all to do with the topic at hand. The guy in the video is just mucking about with liquid helium and nitrogen... they're completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, and particularly irrelevant to the information I posted, which was simply the description of how a humbucker CAN (but doesn't always) have increased perceived sustain, but will generally have a negative effect on true physical sustain. ]

[brewu22]

what if this process was applied to guitar hardware & pickups ?

You'd find a grand new way of wasting money on improvements you'll never need or hear. Of course, some joe is going to say he hears a difference, and then he's going to convince everyone else of it, and charge them tons of money to have it done to their guitars.

http://www.nwcryo.com/pricelist_master.html

looks rather cheap to me

Than by all means, go for it. Tell use the wonders you discover. Keep in mind you're talking to a mechanical engineering student who studies this stuff on a daily basis and understands the applications. You're wasting your time here; I'm not saying that to burst your bubble. I'm just trying to save you time and money.

peace,

russ

+1

[brewu22]

(although I would ask you the same question with your obsession with genuine sounding PAF pickups!).

peace,

russ

See again you must not read before posting cause I am pushing for pickup builder to move on & try some new things , in fact a flickoflash model pickup may soon be available from a reputable builder which touches again on non same old same old line of thinking. Does wood of the same species sound different from guitar to guitar ... is it maybe something to do with it cells formations & alignments ?

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/

Finally, the freakin sales pitch

[flickoflash]

(although I would ask you the same question with your obsession with genuine sounding PAF pickups!).

peace,

russ

See again you must not read before posting cause I am pushing for pickup builder to move on & try some new things , in fact a flickoflash model pickup may soon be available from a reputable builder which touches again on non same old same old line of thinking. Does wood of the same species sound different from guitar to guitar ... is it maybe something to do with it cells formations & alignments ?

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/

Finally, the freakin sales pitch

A sales pitch i would of named the maker & details

[thegarehanman]

Great way to back up your arguments.

[fryovanni]

Great way to back up your arguments.

Man Russ, what do you want? You are just too demanding

[thegarehanman]

I dunno rich, voodoo just gets me all riled up. Let me tell you, I had the internals on a motor for a formula car LN tempered and that motors tone did not improve one bit. What a waste!

Plus, that acoustic I just finished is sitting in an art gallery just begging for me to play it. I can't take it anymore!

[SwedishLuthier]

in fact a flickoflash model pickup may soon be available from a reputable builder http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/

Perfect. Besides the fact that this being exactly a sales pitch IMO, you are putting your thoughts into motion. Make that pickup and let people evaluate it. If you get good reviews from people you trust, make the pickup available to the public. Market it. But be prepared to meet the same skepticism as from some of us on this forum. Having said that I would love to be proven wrong as there have been very few real improvements in guitar design the last 25 years, but a whole lot of marketing hype…

[MiKro]

I still think you should get with TED I'm sure he knows!!!!

Edited August 20, 2007 by MiKro

[flickoflash]

in fact a flickoflash model pickup may soon be available from a reputable builder http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/

Perfect. Besides the fact that this being exactly a sales pitch IMO, you are putting your thoughts into motion. Make that pickup and let people evaluate it. If you get good reviews from people you trust, make the pickup available to the public. Market it. But be prepared to meet the same skepticism as from some of us on this forum. Having said that I would love to be proven wrong as there have been very few real improvements in guitar design the last 25 years, but a whole lot of marketing hype…

I do not know what you are thinking maybe you assume I am speaking of voodoo pickup which I am not & as far as The flickoflash pickups it has only gone as far as prototypes being made for me which I have not received yet nor approved but may or not be put to market & I would not have any involvement by only in use of my name. My point was only to address me being accused of being obsessed with PAF design , I posted about here only to bring to light Cryogenics & it's possible use with guitars only to be attacked & ridiculed by you guys who can not even read about nor make any point on the subject really , you claim to blow holes in the subject where ? I just presented what anyone who searched the web can find which must have some valuation as it is info from many sources gathered from over the world not pure ego speculation but actual research what marketing hype ,I only posted that companies price list to point that this process seems rather cheap & might be worth a try.

[SwedishLuthier]

I do not know what you are thinking maybe you assume I am speaking of voodoo pickup which I am not

To me, as long as you don’t have that pickup done and tested you arespeaking about pickup voodoo, but as I said, would love to be wrong

My point was only to address me being accused of being obsessed with PAF design , I posted about here only to bring to light Cryogenics & it's possible use with guitars only to be attacked & ridiculed by you guys who can not even read about nor make any point on the subject really , you claim to blow holes in the subject where ? I just presented what anyone who searched the web can find which must have some valuation as it is info from many sources gathered from over the world not pure ego speculation but actual research what marketing hype ,I only posted that companies price list to point that this process seems rather cheap & might be worth a try.

You are coming on quite strong on the wrong guy here. I'm not accusing you for anything. I just said that it is nice to see that you are testing your ideas.

I would also really like to read what YOU believe that the process would result in. You have still not giving anyone a real clue about the benefits of this process in a guitar pickup. You have directed us to Callaham guitars but that site is just full of sales hype and no real info. A diagram or similar of frequency response, overtone response and similar would be nice (from Callaham, not you of cause). What YOU (internet quote?) have said is that the overtones are even instead of odd as with untreated pickups. That, my friend, is in my ears marketing BS and no facts unless you back it up with science. But as I have said all the time: I would love to be wrong.

Edited August 20, 2007 by SwedishLuthier

[ToneMonkey]

I think that everyone has been a bit quick to jump on the "that wouldn't work" bandwagon here. I know that cryogenics is used in a lot of electrical componants (valves, pots etc). I haven't got time to read through the links, but I'm a bit unsure as to how they would treat a pup with cryogenics. Surely if you freeze and then heat a magnet you will change the inter-molecular structure of the magnet (say from a body to a face centred cubic) altering the magnetic properties of the magnet (such as: it was magnetic, then we froze it and reheated it and it's not magentic anymore).

Are we on about treating the whole pup after it's been constructed or are we on about trating the magnet and wire individually prior to costruction.

EDIT - Then again, if you heat up steel and cool it slowly, it stays magnetic. However, if you cool it rapidly it turns it martensitic so that it is no longer magnetic (and that ladies and gentleman is how to test if your carving knifes are cheep steel or not), so I would imagine that treating the magnet is possible. Maybe the process alters the magnetic field which is where the sound change comes from.

Edited August 20, 2007 by ToneMonkey

[Drak]

Hmmm, I see issues on both sides of the fence here.

Flick, I think your issue is the 'way' you posted it, the way you 'couched' the conversation to begin with, it was more like a proclamation, which instantly puts other people on the defensive, which it certainly did.

Say you had couched it more as a question, like...'I was reading about this, it seems interesting, what input do you guys have, do you think it may be a viable avenue of research or not?

That opens up a potentially fruitful, positive conversation much easier than your approach would, your approach had a lot of (I surmised) ego built into it, which, as I said, sets everyone else up to prove you wrong, which they are trying to do.

...But I'll agree with you, some folks are a little too quick to jump on the 'voodoo BS' wagon where there might be something interesting going on...but in this age, everyone is trying to outgun everyone else to make a buck, so if you are going to present someone with new info, especially that even remotely sounds like voodoo BS, then you should be prepared for folks to attack it, it would be ridiculous for you to presume that everyone would just jump on your bandwagon instantly, that is a bit silly to be so presumptous.

Any breakthrough is always precursed with naysayers until the point has past hard and cold muster, that's just a fact of scientific life. If you're going to do research and be inventive, you naturally have to expect people to doubt you until you have proved your point beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's just a natural part of the process.

Scientific fact can be proved true, but you are dealing with humans also, social creatures at heart, so you have to be able to deliver the facts with some social 'grease' as well.

[mpeg2]

One thing that's missing from this thread is any form of science. One of the basic premises of this treatment: cooling to change the atomic structure and then heat treating to lock it in is exactly back-asswards - especially for most of the materials used in guitars (Copper noteably).

As a 1st year materials engineer would know, changes in the crystal (grain) structure of a metal happen quicker as the temperature goes up (and conversely, slower as the temperature goes down). As an example - if one wanted to increase the conductivity of Copper, you'd heat it up to a fairly high temperature and then cool it slowly (anneal) to allow the grain structure to grow. Cooling it to cryogenic temperatures would make no change in structure.

Steel is a bit of an exception - it undergoes a ductile-brittle transition at low temperatures (think of the Liberty ships in the North Atlantic during WWII).

Rich

BTW: If you're wondering about credentials, I would think that a PhD in Nuclear Materials engineering with a significant amount of research in the kinetics of phase change in rapidly cooled metals might count for something...

[ToneMonkey]

Now we're getting somewhere, mpeg2 obviously knows about this kind of thing.

I was thinking that heating something up to lock it in place was a bit of arse dribble too. As far as I can see, that's just heating it up

I thought it might harden it if they were going for a carbonising process or something like that. Materials never was my stirong point, the lectures were in the afternoon and I was normally fairly drunk by then

[thegarehanman]

Mpeg2, glad you joined the conversation. A materials engineer, now that's hard to beat in a thread like this. You know, tonemonkey, I had the same concern as you regarding the magnets, but I'm not sure it would be a problem if (like you said) temperature changes were gradual and as long as you didn't reach the magnet's max operating temp. or its curie point. I realize you can still lose magnetism, but that sort of thing has to be planned for based on magnet shape and what not to fully avoid it. However, despite my hunch that you won't see an appreciable improvement after putting a pickup through this process, what about the bobbin?! A bobbin would long have melted in most heat treatment processes. Plus, bobbins might even fracture if you shock freeze them in LN! Flickoflash, I'm sure we're all willing to debate this with you, but we want you to defend your side of the debate with your own words, not some youtube videos and other random links.

peace,

russ

[WezV]

its over my head!!

but i did have a customer asking if i would use cryo pots and stuff, i dont mind as long as it still sounds like a guitar!! If we think they sound better then thats great but 'better' is a very subjective term and if i know one thing for certain its that these will never be considered 'better' by everyone

[mpeg2]

its over my head!!

but i did have a customer asking if i would use cryo pots and stuff, i dont mind as long as it still sounds like a guitar!! If we think they sound better then thats great but 'better' is a very subjective term and if i know one thing for certain its that these will never be considered 'better' by everyone

By all means, use cryo bits if the customer demands it. However, you might want to CYA by noting that these parts were not designed to be put through that type of thermal cycle and therefore, you can't warranty their longevity once they leave the shop.

By going real cold, there could be some interesting stresses put on the internal due to thermal contraction. Cryo treatment is definately below the minimum storage temp specified for most of these parts...

Rich

[WezV]

yeah, if i get more unusual requests like that its always on the customers head if it doesnt work. although obviously i tell them if i think something wont work, and in this case i pointed out i havnt used them before so dont know what to expect from them - i dont mind replacing them cheaper than i would normally if they break, just for good customer relations . . . but thats as far as i would go.

And if i thought they actually sounded worse in any way i would replace them with normal ones and tell the customer why they would not be staying on the guitar!!

[fryovanni]

If the finished pickup is to be subjected to this process. What about the dialectric strength and integrity of any insulators subjected to this? Depending on the pickup would potting materials be effected?

Maybe another thought here. If conductivity of the coil wire can make a dramatic improvement in pickup design. Why would a pickup designer not choose to go with a silver coated copper conductor? As skin effect would seem to be more of an issue at higher frequencies, especially in a very low current situation like this? From everything I had read in the links provided. The talk was resistance of wire being the significant factor.

flickoflash, Since you have taken this a step farther and are having a prototype made for you. Do you have any data that quantifies the change in resistance(just basic ohm values) of a treated coil wire vs untreated? I would think that would be a simple first step in the analysis of the process. Maybe a second would be to compare resistive properties at more applicable frequecies.

Peace,Rich

[flickoflash]

One thing that's missing from this thread is any form of science. One of the basic premises of this treatment: cooling to change the atomic structure and then heat treating to lock it in is exactly back-asswards - especially for most of the materials used in guitars (Copper noteably).

As a 1st year materials engineer would know, changes in the crystal (grain) structure of a metal happen quicker as the temperature goes up (and conversely, slower as the temperature goes down). As an example - if one wanted to increase the conductivity of Copper, you'd heat it up to a fairly high temperature and then cool it slowly (anneal) to allow the grain structure to grow. Cooling it to cryogenic temperatures would make no change in structure.

Steel is a bit of an exception - it undergoes a ductile-brittle transition at low temperatures (think of the Liberty ships in the North Atlantic during WWII).

Rich

BTW: If you're wondering about credentials, I would think that a PhD in Nuclear Materials engineering with a significant amount of research in the kinetics of phase change in rapidly cooled metals might count for something...

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at extremely low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect).

The electrical resistivity of a metallic conductor decreases gradually as the temperature is lowered. However, in ordinary conductors such as copper and silver, impurities and other defects impose a lower limit. Even near absolute zero a real sample of copper shows a non-zero resistance. The resistance of a superconductor, on the other hand, drops abruptly to zero when the material is cooled below its "critical temperature". An electrical current flowing in a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It cannot be understood simply as the idealization of "perfect conductivity" in classical physics.

Superconductivity occurs in a wide variety of materials, including simple elements like tin and aluminium, various metallic alloys and some heavily-doped semiconductors. Superconductivity does not occur in noble metals like gold and silver, nor in most ferromagnetic metals.

In 1986 the discovery of a family of cuprate-perovskite ceramic materials known as high-temperature superconductors, with critical temperatures in excess of 90 kelvin, spurred renewed interest and research in superconductivity for several reasons. As a topic of pure research, these materials represented a new phenomenon not explained by the current theory. And, because the superconducting state persists up to more manageable temperatures, more commercial applications are feasible, especially if materials with even higher critical temperatures could be discovered.

[mpeg2]

Superconductivity is somewhat outside of consideration here (unless someone is contemplating playing their guitar in Liquid Nitrogen).

Rich

[GregP]

I don't think people were quick to jump on the "voodoo BS" bandwagon at all. I think people were quick to jump on the "back your sh** up" bandwagon. Speaking only for myself, I admitted that there's something scientific going on with -cryogenics- that I don't necessarily understand. But he quoted a bunch of links back to me and I even watched them. They had nothing to do with the matter at hand, and even the thing the scientist was trying to prove while mucking around (which is all he was doing) didn't work. They were "nothing." Not only that, but they were quoted back to me as an explanation for my 'humbuckers don't have inherent sustain' explanation, which in turn was a response to janslabs' unsupported and unscientific claims... those videos were worse than useless to the actual interesting question at hand: "can cryogenic treatment be used to enhance/change pickups?" The videos had nothing to do with realigning molecules, effects on magnetic properties, or anything remotely related to pickup design or even scientific principles in general. He was just trying to make liquid helium and then try to shatter a variety of metals... <shrug>

I for one am always FOR seeing people try stuff out and take new approaches. As SL says, not many innovations come along in the electric guitar world.