Gibson CEC replacement pickup

[harryh]

If you look up the patent on the CE and the pickup for it, you will find that the inventor is listed as Tim Shaw of Gibson guitars. The chambering was done to balance the bass and treble strings. There's all the information contained in the patent to allow you to make one, provided you can get the pickup; I doubt that the pickup would be easily reproduced outside a factory setting.

Thank you, Bill. I don't know how to look up a patent via inventor/company name, but I'll take a stab at it; good learning experience!

I do know who Tim Shaw is. He was responsible for Gibson's initial efforts to re-issue a vintage style Les Paul guitar. There are also some good sounding early '80's Gibson humbuckers associated with his name. At one point, I believe he ran the Guild Custom Shop in Nashville. I think he's still around. Maybe he could be reached for a question or two. I'll follow up on that and get back in touch.

I was my understanding that Gibson produced the first piezo saddles for the CE(C) model, but later subcontracted with Shadow to produce the saddles. The model, I believe, was SH-079P. It had individual output leads for each string.

Thanks for the info, Jay. That might be something to ask Tim Shaw about when one of us talks to him about the evolution of the CE/CEC guitars.

Skip, I heard from Rich Barbera. He gave me a price on his pickup and said that they'd tried them out on solid body guitars with success. He told me that had two preamps available, but didn't give me any pricing on the pres. Can you give me a price on your preamp, por favor?

Here's the info that Rich Barbera sent me, after I explained that some folks at the ChetBoard were interested in what he had to say:

Harry,
The Soloist/Nylon pickups sound very powerful, clear and natural on non acoustic guitars.
I can say this confidently because we voice, calibrate and test each one we make on a solid
body instrument.
I've had customers put them on Buscarino, Sand, Sadowski and Gibson semi acoustics and
solid body guitars with excellent results.
We offer two preamp options, one has slider type controls for volume and tone and the other is a
standard endpin type with volume and tone controls which mount in the sound hole.
Soloist pickups can also be used with most other preamps out there.
The pickups are $300.
Regards, Rich Barbera

Here's some more info on them;
The Barbera Soloist guitar pickup is a high performance boutique pickup for acoustic guitar. It is based on concepts evolved out of our years of work producing high end multi transducer bridges for violin family instruments.

A guitar strings' vibrational response to an instruments top is shaped by the resonant characteristics of the top. So the tonal personality of the guitar top is mirrored in the vibrating strings. Soloist pickups are designed to efficiently harvest these tonally rich string vibrations and generate a strong and clear reproduction of the guitars' voice for amplification. The pickup rejects microphonic body noise. The elimination of this noise in the amplified signal provides a superior level of clarity and tonal purity. This greatly enhances and extends the possibilities for the use of an amplified acoustic guitar in a wide range of musical settings.

The Soloist pickup is an engineered saddle, containing micro electro acoustic structures within the saddle itself.
These structures in the saddle are selectively responsive to each string's vibrations, independently reproducing the guitars' sound clearly and transparently . This focused clarity and accuracy of tone allows for very effective amplification and projection when playing with other instruments.
String outputs are individually voiced for a well balanced string to string output. (unlike under-saddle pickups, string balances do not depend on the flatness of the saddle slot)
Soloist pickups are highly responsive to playing dynamics, enabling the effective use of a wide range of expressive playing techniques.
The saddles do not alter or detract from the guitar's acoustic sound. The saddles function passively, installation is simple and non-invasive to the guitar. Active preamps with volume and tone controls are also available.


Thanks again, everybody. It sure is heartening to be a 'new person' on an established site like this and have people contribute to the flow of information. Mil Gracias!

Harry

[harryh]

If you look up the patent on the CE and the pickup for it, you will find that the inventor is listed as Tim Shaw of Gibson guitars. The chambering was done to balance the bass and treble strings. There's all the information contained in the patent to allow you to make one, provided you can get the pickup; I doubt that the pickup would be easily reproduced outside a factory setting.

Hi Bill, I've been looking at the ChetBoard some more and I came across a quote from Paul Yandell that speaks to the provenance of the CE/CEC electrics:

The Gibson CE

Chet had an idea of making a solid body classical guitar and with a neck provided by Haskell Haille Chet added a board and a Baldwin piano pickup. The experiment worked.

Working with Haskell Haille Chet’s concept was made into a prototype model and Chet asked Gretsch to pick up on the idea. They didn’t want to do it. This was right around the time Chet left Gretsch.

Gibson jumped on it using Chet’s and Haskell Haille’s ideas, and with the addition of a preamp designed by Ray Butts, developed the CE .


That's all I know.....So Far!!

Thanks, Harry

[bill raymond]

Hi Harry,

Chet came up with the idea by taking a guitar neck and putting it on a plank on which he mounted a prismatone pickup from Baldwin. When he showed it to Hascal Haile, and asked him to put "wings" on it (much like Les Paul's "log") Mr. Haile reportedly told him he would make a proper solidbody nylon string guitar for Chet. The prototype that Mr. Haile came up with featured a classical-width neck, 14 frets to the body, and a classical shaped body with a cutaway and pretend soundhole. Chet can be seen using this guitar playing "Blue Ocean Echo" in an appearance on the Dinah Shore show, which I think is on YouTube. When Chet took this to Gibson, it having been rejected by Gretsch, the Gibson engineers worked on the design, making some improvements, such as putting a chamber under the bass side of the bridge to balance the response, and adding some chambers under the treble bouts to lighten the weight and also came up with the pickup that appears on the Gibson models. I believe that there were several versions of the preamp--Al Baggetta's has posted the schematics for several versions on his website, but I can't be sure any of these are attributable to Ray Butts. Reportedly, Mr. Butts did come up with an improved version at some point and that version was probably (I would think) the one used on the later thin body classical guitars that Gibson made based on Kirk Sand's design, the "Studio Classic" model.

The Gibson pickup patent number is 4,657,114 and the guitar patent number is 4,450,748; you should be able to find these patents on the google patent site using the patent numbers.

[harryh]

Thanks Bill,

I did find the patents and spent an hour looking at the Gibson pickup design. The design appears remarkably complicated to me. It must have been very time consuming to assemble the parts on a jig, invert them into a mold and cast them into the 'vaulted roof' string ridge/housing that CE/CEC owners are used to seeing as the thick, plasticky Chet Atkins Classical saddle top!

Some of the tricks seem to have been 1) making the molding hard enough to use for strings, yet soft enough to prevent transmission of unwanted vibration, 2) partial Faraday shields, 3) a compressible conductor that runs length-wise under the six pickup sensors and 4) partial air spaces at the top, bottom and sides of the sensors. Whew!

I think I see why Gibson doesn't have any spares. They must have been very expensive to make!

Looked at Al Baggetta's website, too and found the schematics; lotta fun!

Thanks again, Harry

[Skip]

Hey Harry, I haven't been on here much lately, But the preamp I have is the soundhole mounted, because My Gibson Montana 2005 model Studio is hollow, and has a sound hole in the rear of the guitar.(click on picture ) And it was $90.00. I don't know what the end pin preamp's cost. If You call Rich He may even know a way to rewire the preamp You have now. Other than the thick saddle used by Gibson He build's each saddle to fit Your guitar's original size saddle. Years ago I changed the saddle in a Gibson Dove that had a tune-amatic metal bridge with a slot in the bridge as big as Your CE has and I made an insert to fill the void and cut an 1/8th" slot in the insert and mounted an under saddle pickup and it worked fine. So unless You can find some one with a broken CE guitar and working electronic's willing to sell You,You have that option. What ever Your choice is I'd like to know how it works out for You.

Skip