Selector Switch!

[Jim Eaton]

I recently got my 75' D-10 P/P back from Mike Cass after having a full restoration job
(It's GREAT! -photo's to follow in another post)and sat down to try the P/P through a very clean Peavey Bandit 112 I just got here on the forum. (thanks again Byron, it's great). I used the Bandit yesterday at a street fair with a nice PA playing my Sierra S-12 and it was great so I couldn't wait to try it the Emmons here at home tonight.
I had been leaving the bandit at the rehersal studio until after the street fair yesterday.
I hooked up my vol pedal and plugged in the Emmons and fired up the Bandit. I was picking on the open E9th neck with no picks on and even with the vol pedal wide open, the sound was very faint, but great tone!
I checked the channel switch to make sure it was on the clean channel. I keep the volume off on the 2nd channel and maybe it got pushed? Nope. Checked chords. Nope.
Still getting faint sound, with great tone!
Then, there it was!!! The "neck-selector" switch !!!!! It's a D-10 you dope!!! It's got necks and a switch!! Playing S-12 E9/B6 for the last few years had cleaned any thoughts of a neck selector switch from my memory banks! I had been playing C6th the night before and had not switched it back to the E9th neck when I plugged it into the Bandit. Then I realized that even with the switch set on the back neck when I was picking on the front neck, the vibrations were somehow getting to the active pick-up on the C6th neck and to the amp.
Once I "selected" the E9th neck, things were just fine.
Can the signal from the pick-up's bleed through the switch? or is this just part of the P/P's great tone?
JE:-)>

[Jerry Roller]

No bleeding. Just that great push pull.
Jerry

[Bobby Lee]

When you pick, the guitar body resonates. Those vibrations cause small "sympathetic" vibrations in the strings of the unpicked neck.

Also, some pickups are "microphonic", which means that physical vibrations of the pickup itself will be amplified. If the body of the guitar is tightly coupled to a microphonic pickup, you will hear the body resonance (and mechanical noises, as Mike Perlowin discovered). Engineers see microphonics as defects in the structure of an electro-magnetic pickup; musicians may have a different view.

These two effects, sympathetic string vibration and microphonics, generate signal from the pickup of the "unpicked" neck.

I'm moving this topic to the "Pedal Steel" section of the Forum, where there has been a lot of pickup discussion lately.

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<small><img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b.gif" width="64" height="64">Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (F Diatonic) Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6)