[LAU] [OT] guitar pickups: how to get separate signals for each string?

[Folderol]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 21:30:35 +0100
fons at kokkinizita.net wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 10:15:45AM +0100, Renato Budinich wrote:
> 
> > but maybe he's not doing it right... who knows... to the DSP-gurus:
> > shouldn't this[1] be fairly easy and give good results?
> > 
> > [1]: subtracting from the signal of a string the signal of nearby strings,
> > multiplied by appropiate coefficient
> 
> Depends. You have to start with a reasonably low crosstalk, otherwise
> combining the signals to separate the strings requires too much gain
> and will be very sensitive to small variations in the crosstalk.
> 
> Another potential problem with this is that the vibration of a string
> is the sum of two components: a vibration to/from the pickup, and one
> orthogonal to that direction. These two modes could very well have
> different crosstalk coefficients. If that's the case, separation of
> the signals becomes almost impossible.
> 
> Ciao,

My first thought was 'use smaller pickups' but he seems to have already covered
that and noticed the improvement. The other thing he could try would be to turn
them into pot magnets, where the outer ring would tend to provide screening
from the neighbouring string/pickup. It might also help to slightly raise the
edges either side of the string.

In any case there are so many factors that can affect the way the string
vibrates that I don't see much hope of reliable crosstalk cancellation being
possible.

-- 
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.