Alumitone?

[niftyprose]

Um, is anyone out there using Lace Alumitone pickups? I like the demos but they're off-the-scale weird and I'd really appreciate some hands-on testimony.

[Blackened Soul]

I have one in a… bass tuned tenor so like a baritone guitar missing a high string.. anyway I have a death bar in it and not really into it.. not as much output or lowz as I was lead to believe, now if clear and trebly is your thing then get one.

[oldangelmidnight]

I had (maybe still have somewhere) a single coil sized one. It seemed thin sounding in my Eastwood tenor but maybe I didn't have it set up right.

[ibarakishi]

i use all lace pickups, two golds in the neck and middle, then an alumitone deathbucker in the bridge. thing that most people don't do or understand with them is that you need to adjust/raise them closer to the strings than normal to get them to really start singing. they like being super close to the strings. i didn't know this when i got them and at first hated them until i sat down and adjusted them like i do now. you need to really sit with them and adjust the height and just listen, not go by measurements, etc. they aren't for everyone, are hyper hifi, and not forgiving at all in that they are super detailed to everything you play which is what i love about them. They are my endgame setup and i don't look for pickups anymore. If my guitar burned in a fire tomorrow, i wouldn't think twice about going out and buying them again in the setup i have. But as you see above and im sure you will see after this post, there are tons of opinions on them, you either love them or you hate them

[goroth]

Disarm Darcy has a set.

[John]

I have a schwingle in the neck pos on a Warmoth strat and it's delightful. Yes proximity to the strings matters, and also you can't run them simultaneously with non-Alumitones. They can be on the same guitar but you can't use both regular and Alumi pups at the same time, something to do with impedance or I dunno, that's just what they say. Anyway I don't like regular single coils because of hum and low fidelity, and these things fix everything I didn't like about singles.

[niftyprose]

Hello guys, thank you to everyone for replies. These are pretty uncommon and I figured that there might be a disproportionate number of users here on ILF, which turned out to be true. I definitely like what I've heard. Anyone tried them with a slide? I figured they'd work well in that context but the only YouTube demo I could turn up was so awful that I've kind of blanked it.

[ibarakishi]

i don't use traditional slide, but i do a ton of prepared guitar stuff and also railing metal against my guitar, usually exclusively with the bridge alumitone deathbucker i have as it is the most sensitive over the lace golds. i run into various pedals that give it gain, etc. but you can hear exactly how my guitar sounds with next to no processing really effect wise (just eq, compression, etc.) in this song from one of our albums:

LINK: https://aworldwonderedfull.bandcamp.com/track/part-2-2

100% of the guitars on this are done by me on the lace pickups. It is guitar>pedals>amp>mic>computer . This is pretty much exactly what i hear when i turn my rig on. The one gain pedal is use is a The Driving Notion as an alway on pedal and just increases the clang and sensitivity of the hi fi aspect of the alumitone to an absurd degree before then going into whatever other stuff i want to use. This should give you a rough idea at least of how it sounds going into stuff and being used in real life in actual music recordings instead of just some random youtube video in isolation without any context to real life.

hope this helps. have no idea what type of music you like or play, but this is what i do and how i use my equipment everyday

[niftyprose]

Thanks, Ibarakishi, that's generous and helpful. I enjoyed the clip not least because it challenges tourist-y preconceptions about music from Thailand, a country where I've spent like two months and kid myself I have some kind of understanding. (Yeah, right.) Regarding tone and style: since beginning to learn slide I've been listening to Lowell George more than anyone and love the way his use of extreme compression got him out of the old lead/rhythm conundrums but this is 2022 and I'm damned if I'm going to put a Tele pickup in a Strat and run two Dynacomps into a Twin. Best, NP

[Dandolin]

i'll echo comments re: height sensitivity. they tend to emphasize a lot of detail in the attack phase, so that can translate to lots of articulation, especially if you fingerpick extensively. they don't interact with most fuzz like more "traditional" designs, which might be a bummer if you're reliant on certain fuzzes to produce certain tones. good tones can be had tho, it just takes some tweaking or finding the right pairing/stack. i don't use them exclusively, but i really enjoy the difference they bring. overall tho, i tend to reach for the alumitone equipped guitar moreso when i'm doing clean tones, since its strengths fall in line with what i'm doing there much moreso than when i wanna get gnarly. for slide? well, all of the above applies - they seem to be fairly well-received by pedal steel players, from which i'd guess you can draw some conclusions....

[Jero]

I have one (bridge humbucker?) that I still need to install in something...maybe one day

Everything I have seen online echoes what everyone else has said

[Dandolin]

do eet almost all the Alumitone haters i've evar have been tan pants wearers - they're actually a lot of fun, and once you move off the idea that you need to replicate old tones, they're a great way to find new tones. fwiw, i def like mine with the Virus (not that's it's any slouch w/ Haxan (Snaxan))

[Blackened Soul]

i use all lace pickups, two golds in the neck and middle, then an alumitone deathbucker in the bridge. thing that most people don't do or understand with them is that you need to adjust/raise them closer to the strings than normal to get them to really start singing. they like being super close to the strings. i didn't know this when i got them and at first hated them until i sat down and adjusted them like i do now. you need to really sit with them and adjust the height and just listen, not go by measurements, etc. they aren't for everyone, are hyper hifi, and not forgiving at all in that they are super detailed to everything you play which is what i love about them. They are my endgame setup and i don't look for pickups anymore. If my guitar burned in a fire tomorrow, i wouldn't think twice about going out and buying them again in the setup i have. But as you see above and im sure you will see after this post, there are tons of opinions on them, you either love them or you hate them

This is all true, yes I do have the one in mine right up on the strings.. I think if I was trying to play something other than I am it would be cool.. in contrast I love their Man-O-War bass pickups, things sound massive.

Anyone tried them with a slide?

[Dandolin]

yeah, those lace man'o'war do seem interesting
do you have yours set up in a passive or active setup? (he asks, showing his complete ignorance). i guess i usually see Lace designs in passive configs, but that's with guitars usually, where the demand for active systems seems far less than in bassworld

[Blackened Soul]

I'm running it passive, it's in my 12 string. It can keep up with my active bass that I use for the same band which is cool. Actually I'm going to be making a new body for my 12 soon to get it to balance better and I was going back an forth over going Barts and a pre or sicking with the lace and final decision was to buy another one and put them in the musician saber positions and wire it like a jbass