Did Schaller Do Anything Right?

[rockabilly69]

6 hours ago, Kuz said:

I am sorry, YES, you are correct they were Sperzel tuners, not Schallers that stripped out.  I stand corrected, thanks for bringing that to my attention.

I'm glad to hear this because I LOVE Schaller tuners. 

[rockabilly69]

7 hours ago, skydog52 said:

Personally, I liked the Schallers better. You be the judge.

 

 

In a bright solid state amp the tone is going to be much different than what I'm accustomed to. And I think both of these pickups sound good in this demo. I like Rick Severson's demos for jazz style playing/voicing, but that's worlds different from the tones I like to go for. But when he was riffing towards the end of the demo I heard some things I liked and that was with the Seths. That guy is a monster player!!!

[nuke]

21 hours ago, helmi said:

The set I had in a old H-150 were horribly bright and thin sounding.

If you want to let go of them, I'll take them off your hands. If nothing else, send them to me and I can measure them and send them back unharmed. 

[bolero]

Ooops

Edited May 4 by bolero
oopa

[bolero]

11 hours ago, Kuz said:

The aluminum Pinnacle bridge and stoptail on the 150 Custom Core is definitely a step in the right direction, but I wish (for at least the CC models) they would have used a locking Faber ABR or an original ABR-1 bridge.  The biggest problem with the Pinnacle bridge is it uses proprietary bridge studs (screwed directly into the top) that are larger in diameter than the original ABR-1.  The Faber locking ABR bridge will still work if you use the Pinnacle bridge studs, the Pinnacle thumb wheels, and the Pinnacle locking top screws.  I am not sure if a traditional (non-locking) ABR-1 will fit with the large Pinnacle studs.

Original hardware...

 

 

Locking Faber bridge (using Pinnacle bridge studs, thumb wheels, and top locking caps.  Locking Faber stoptail studs using the Pinnacle aluminum bridge.  Stoptail is flat to the body.

 

 

Hey that's good to know about, thanks Kuz!

I wonder if Heritage would just sell us an unloaded CC body, since we end up replacing all the parts anyway? And without the bridge posts drilled out.

They could call it the "Naked Custom Core"

[bolero]

14 hours ago, nuke said:

Yes, I have. A bunch of them actually. 

Schaller made pickups from the same stuff everyone else does.  Here's one fully apart. Alnico V magnet, 42AWG copper wire, 8.5k DCR, I have the electrical and magnetic measurements as well, Inductance, Ls 4.98 henries, Q2.02, Cs 98pf, DCR 8.394k. 

Also the same pickup being characterized on my oscilloscope with an exciter coil connected to a signal generator. 

 

This is great!

I think there's a lot of variation in parts though: I've heard winders talk about different wire coatings, certainly there are different magnet materials, and types of magnet casting. So to lump it together as "the same stuff everyone else uses" glosses over a lot of details

[helmi]

4 hours ago, nuke said:

If you want to let go of them, I'll take them off your hands. If nothing else, send them to me and I can measure them and send them back unharmed. 

They’ve been gone for a long time sir.

[MartyGrass]

There was a pretty good jazz guitarist I knew as a kid.  He was not finicky about his instruments.  I think he used a old beat up ES-175.  There was no point talking to him about instruments.  I brought my guitars to him a couple of times with some trivial concerns.  He'd play them then say stuff like it works don't it?  He was a studio musician.

 

[nuke]

On 5/3/2024 at 5:14 PM, bolero said:

This is great!

I think there's a lot of variation in parts though: I've heard winders talk about different wire coatings, certainly there are different magnet materials, and types of magnet casting. So to lump it together as "the same stuff everyone else uses" glosses over a lot of details

There's a lot of hocus-pocus in the pickup industry. 

In reality, Schaller made a LOT of pickups, probably millions of them and virtually all went to OEM's, like Heritage, G&L, and many, many others. They made whatever the OEM wanted to order, underwound, overwound, hex-screw poles, blades, single coil, humbuckers, magnet type, heck, pink polka dots and skull stickers if that's what they guitar maker wanted. 

Just like DiMarzio and Seymor Duncan offer dozens of variations. 

The Schaller Golden 50's, their "vintage PAF" flavor, are pretty good actually. Better IMO than Gibson 57 Classics.  

 

[bolero]

 Yes, but those other pickups all sounded different than the Schallers.  Are you saying we are all imagining the fact they sound different? I know I wasn't.

[rockabilly69]

On 5/3/2024 at 3:35 AM, nuke said:

Yes, I have. A bunch of them actually. 

Schaller made pickups from the same stuff everyone else does.  Here's one fully apart. Alnico V magnet, 42AWG copper wire, 8.5k DCR, I have the electrical and magnetic measurements as well, Inductance, Ls 4.98 henries, Q2.02, Cs 98pf, DCR 8.394k. 

Also the same pickup being characterized on my oscilloscope with an exciter coil connected to a signal generator. 

 

Different covers, different wind pattern,. different base plates, different wire, different magnet composition, and oh yeah, potted, close but no cigar. There are certain winders that put a little more emphasis on the proper PAF recipe. I don’t think Schaller is one of them!

 

[nuke]

Honestly, what pickup winder offers a low-moderate output conventional humbucker that isn't claimed to be a "PAF clone".  🤔

Schaller made an enormous number of pickups, and an enormous *variety* of pickups. There's not just one Schaller humbucker sound, there are a huge number of Schaller pickup variants, all made to order for different guitar manufacturers. 

Here's one of my favorites, a 1984 Fender Esprit Elite, part of the "Fender Master Series", the Esprit, Flame and D'Aquisto. Robben Ford played the Esprit, and Fender eventually re-launched it as the Robben Ford signature series. It's a really nice guitar, made in Japan and supervised by D'Aquisto. These were the first with Fender's "TBX" tone control system and intended as very high-end instruments.

The pickups are Schaller, used on all three models. They are definitely on the mellow side, and have a unique mounting system with 3-point alignment, and the top of the pickup has a radius to match the strings.  Of course, all the rest of the hardware probably looks familiar, tuners, bridge and fine-tune tailpiece are all Schaller. All of this still works great 40-years later. 

This unusual pickup system appears in Schaller's OEM literature in the mid-1970's. I'm not aware of another guitar maker who used it. They were not cheap, and quite innovative. 

I don't know what deal Heritage did with Schaller, or what they ordered or what spec's they asked for from Schaller. But they could have ordered whatever they wanted from them. 

[bolero]

The question ( and this thread title ) "did Schaller do anything right" is a bit unfair and a very broad generalization, as obviously their stuff *is* well made, and solidly engineered.

 

[rockabilly69]

18 minutes ago, bolero said:

The question ( and this thread title ) "did Schaller do anything right" is a bit unfair and a very broad generalization, as obviously their stuff *is* well made, and solidly engineered.

 

As I said I LOVE their tuners. So I'm not knocking them across the board, just saying that I'm not a fan of their hardware or pickups if I'm going after the classic old LP Kalamazoo sound. If people like their stuff, and they are getting the sound they want out of their guitars, that's all that really matters. This was opinion thread, and we all have them.

[bolero]

Was anyone around during the " heavier weight! All brass hardware! " era of guitars, during the 70's?

That's when I always imagined those heavy tailpieces being germinated

The roller saddles are super adjustable too, easy to dial in exact string spacing.

[rockabilly69]

1 hour ago, bolero said:

Was anyone around during the " heavier weight! All brass hardware! " era of guitars, during the 70's?

That's when I always imagined those heavy tailpieces being germinated

The roller saddles are super adjustable too, easy to dial in exact string spacing.

I was, on one of my telecasters I used a heavy brass bridge plate and brass nut. They were made by mighty mite. And my L5 S Guitars got those big harmonica bridges, weren’t they made by Schaller?

 

 

[nuke]

4 hours ago, bolero said:

Was anyone around during the " heavier weight! All brass hardware! " era of guitars, during the 70's?

That's when I always imagined those heavy tailpieces being germinated

The roller saddles are super adjustable too, easy to dial in exact string spacing.

 

Yeah, that's the best part of the Schaller STM bridge, the string spacing is very adjustable. They're not all that heavy either. 

The STM bridge weighs 58 grams, the top-loader tailpiece weighs 126 grams. 

Yeah, I started playing as a kid around 79. That's the era of brass-everything, including "Fat Heads" , brass plates to put on the back of headstocks, "for sustain!"  

The STM bridges have a common, but easily fixed problem. Over the years, the threaded shaft of the rollers works loose from the forks that hold it to the intonation screws.  If you can pinch the roller bead and pull it out of the bridge, they're loose and that, is the "tone sucking" problem. 

The easy fix is a tiny dot of red Loctite in the little forks that hold the threaded shafts. Requires careful work under a magnifying glass and just a tiny dot of loctite on the end of a toothpick is plenty. You don't want it on the threads or anywhere else.  Then just press them back in carefully centered, and let the Loctite cure.  Some Loctite activator will help, since chrome is inactive metal. 

Don't bend the forks to tighten them. They were peened originally, but the metal is cast zinc and will crack easily. 

Once the Loctite cures, they're good as new and sound good again. 

[bolero]

Good tips! Thanks!

 A friend of mine had a 70s custom gtr, kind of an Alembic thing, Garcia-like. It weighed a TON & had all brass hardware, one of those headstock plates too! Very nice guitar though.