Triad pickup
OwnerWayne A. Rogersinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A removable and portable single pickup unit for stringed instruments such as guitars, and the like. The unit can be mounted inside of a sound hole of an acoustic guitar without damaging the guitar. The unit can combine inputs from three different pickups(such as a magnetic sensor, vibratory transducer, and a microphone) into a single small housing. The unit can include a pre-amplifier and circuitry within the unit along with three rotatable rheostat type control knobs for each of the pickups, and an overall volume control knob that are easily reachable to the user's fingers while the fingers are on the strings. An output cable connects the unit to a single external amplifier or three individual amplifiers for each of the three different pickups.
Claims19
A pickup unit for stringed instruments, comprising:
- a single removable pickup housing adapted to be mounted within a sound hole of a stringed instrument, the housing having a top surface facing strings on the instrument, a left side, a right side, a front end side and a rear end side, and a bottom surface, the top surface and the bottom surface having a vertical axis passing therethrough;
- three pickup sensors on the stringed instrument connected to the pickup housing;
- three rotatable tuning members knobs for each of the pickup sensors attached on the housing being easily adjustable by a user of the instrument, the three rotatable knobs located on at least one of the left side and right side of the pickup housing, the rotatable knobs having an axis of rotation perpendicular to the vertical axis passing through the top surface and the bottom surface;
- and
- a connector for connecting the pickup housing to an external amplifier, wherein the pickup unit is adapted when installed in the sound hole so that a user's fingers are reachable to the rotatable knobs while the user's fingers are on strings across the sound hole of the stringed instrument.
A method of adjusting a broad range of audio frequencies emanating from an instrument with strings, a bridge, a sound board and a sound box hole, comprising the steps of:
- providing a single pickup unit with an upper surface, a left side, a right side, a front end, a rear end, and a rear surface;
- positioning at least three rotatable control knobs on at least one of the left side and the right side of the unit, the control knobs for adjusting at least three different sensors;
- mounting both the front end and the rear end of the pickup unit with clamping members to interior edges of the sound box hole without causing damage to the instrument;
- sensing acoustic wave pressures absorbed in the sound board of the stringed instrument through one of the different sensors;
- detecting mechanical resonate energy from the bridge of the string instrument through another of the different sensors;
- detecting motion of the string in the string instrument through still another of the different sensors;
- and
- combining the sensing step, the mechanical resonate energy detecting step and the string motion detecting step for connection to an exterior amplifier.
A pickup unit for use with stringed instruments, comprising:
- a single removable pickup housing adapted to be mounted within a sound hole of a stringed instrument behind strings that lay across the sound hole, the housing having a top surface facing the strings on the instrument, a left side, a right side, a front end side and a rear end side, and a bottom surface, the top surface and the bottom surface having a vertical axis passing therethrough;
- a pickup sensor on the stringed instrument connected to the pickup housing;
- and
- a rotatable tuning knob for tuning the pickup sensor being mounted to a side face of at least one of the left and right sides of the pickup housing, the rotatable knob being located adjacent to at least one of the front end side and the rear end side, the rotatable knob having an axis of rotation perpendicular to the vertical axis passing through the top surface and the bottom surface, the rotatable knob being located beneath and away from the strings on the instrument so that fingers of the user do not have to pass between the strings to reach the rotatable knob, and so that a single finger of a user's hand can reach the rotatable knob while the user's hand remains stationary over the strings that are across the sound hole of the stringed instrument;
- and
- separate adjustable clamping members for solely clamping both the front end side and the rear end side of the housing of the pickup unit to interior edges inside of the sound hole of the stringed instrument.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.