One of the great things about being a micro-business is that you can act quickly! There is no management structure, no liaising with a marketing or accounts departments – we don’t have them! And best of all, no office politics! This means that if we have a good idea, or even a stupid one, we can do it straight away.
 |
|
Hexapup in a Gretsch-style ‘toaster’ cover
|
Last month we made a stereo guitar pickup prototype, and it was fairly clear from our customers and comments on forums that a few people might want one. So now, six weeks later, we have a ‘production’ version in a humbucker sized* can – the Hexapup!
 |
| Hexapup – hexaphonic guitar pickup |
 |
| Hexapup guitar pickup |
The hexapup is actually made of six small pickups, and can be wired for mono, stereo or hexaphonic output
Mono
When wired as a conventional mono pickup, the hexapup has a bright single coil tone. But it also has hum rejection (humbucking) properties because the coils on one side are reverse wound, with reverse magnet polarity.
 |
| Hexapup – serial number 002 with 43AWG wire |
Stereo
There are two obvious ways for stereo wiring. Either bottom-and-top, or alternating strings. Put another way, the lowest three strings can be sent to one output, and the highest to the other, so power chords could have one sound, and solos another. Or, the E, D and B strings sent to the left, and A, G & e to the right. This makes for nice stereo width, and is great for multi-tracking chords, and chorus type effects. I have my guitar wired this way!
 |
| Hexapup being mounted to a customer’s guitar |
Hexaphonic
Each coil can be given its own output, volume and tone control which, with series / parallel and phase options gives a staggering number of combinations. Each string can be sent to a different distortion or delay to get strange new sounds, and could even be auto-tuned or pitch shifted separately – that might be weird. With six outputs, imagination is the only limit!
I’ll be writing a bit more about the technical specs in a couple of days, so stay tuned.
* Actually a little deeper than a normal humbucker, but most guitars have plenty of space.