Finely Crafted
Electric Guitar
Pickup Systems
The Original Timberwolf™
And
New Insanely Flexible
Attitude Adjuster ®
MORE INFO
IS
COMING SOON
Copyright © 2016 RTT Music Inc Blue Thumb, Timberwolf and Attitude Adjuster are Registered Trademarks of RTT Music
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Timberwolf Pickups
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®
Work began in 2011 on development of a guitar pickup. We had long felt that the performance bar for guitar pickups had remained too low. We consciously avoided attempting to create a replica of a vintage this or that. Years were spent trying various combinations of materials, styles, designs, and finally a remarkable and unique pickup was the result. It was such a sonic improvement that we applied for a patent in May 2013 and began offering Blue Thumb Pickups for sale. By late 2013 our pickups were being used by a number of musicians on stage and in the studio, in LA, Nashville and New York.
Following issuance of the first patent, #9,185,333, in September 2015 for an adjustable bar magnet pickup, came the development of the Attitude Adjuster® which was originally intended to allow magnet changes to be made at the base of the pickup. A Patent for a user removable and replaceable magnet assembly was issued in July of 2016, #9,384,721.
While this did offer superb sonic flexibility, the swapping of magnets took longer than desired. During the uphill quest with the US Patent Office for issuance of the second patent was occurring, trying to make magnet replacement easier occupied much of the R&D time.
Eventually moving the magnet assembly to the topside of the pickup proved to be the answer. Changing out the magnet now takes seconds, does not required removal or loosening of the strings and can actually be accomplished during a performance set. A Patent application was filed in August, 2016 for a user removable and replaceable top loaded magnet.
We simultaneously decided to develop a method that would allow the guitarist to rotate and even flip over the coil AND mount the magnet assembly above or below the coil. Realizing that this further modified how the pickup interacts with the guitar, we filed a patent for this revolutionary concept in December, 2016.
Every guitar player has their favorite guitar, whether it be how it looks or feels. You can now keep it in your hands and allow your #1 guitar to have more flexibility with sound, texture and sensitivity.
A few comments about coil and magnet combinations.
The first Blue Thumb® top loaded Attitude Adjuster pickups are a 6 pole piece single coils that are inherently low noise and a humbucker that is two of our single coils sized to fit into a standard humbucker opening. Our coil windings are available in either straight wind, trapezoid and parallelogram shapes. These different shapes really come into play when our coils are rotated or flipped.
Magnets are varying materials, and physical sizes and each designed to not require pickup height adjustments to be made after you determine your initial setting. By changing out magnet material and strength you will obtain significant sonic changes from your guitar.
As development continued we searched for thinner bobbin materials that would allow us to keep the coil height/thickness ratio where we have found the most desirable results. In order to allow the bobbins to hold the upward pressure exerted by our coil winding patterns, we have found that using Garolite G10 works best. It is stiff and better allows our coils to slightly vibrate adding to our signature sound.
We should also mention our potting procedure. We do not vacuum pot our pickups, preferring rather to allow the coils to “wick” our proprietary potting material. We have found that different wind patterns , both in length and shape, respond more favorably to different potting temperatures and different potting times.
Every Blue Thumb and Timberwolf Pickup has a protective coil wire over-wrap. This not only protects the working coil from damage, we feel it looks better than covering the coil with tape.
Yes it takes a bit longer and costs a bit more, but we feel it is worth it.
With our new pickup assembly we found that in addition to removing, changing or replacing the entire coil on a humbucker pickup would also allow each pickup that makes up our humbucker to be individually adjusted. So, you can change the height and angle of each side of the humbucker independent of the other. You can of course continue to adjust the entire humbucker assembly’s height and angle as usual. This flexibility combined with our Attitude Adjuster Magnets makes for a revolutionary pickup.
A background of how the name Attitude Adjuster came to be. There was a logo drawing that was commissioned for a project in 2009. The artist was asked to come up with a caricature of a guitar player with a bit of attitude. Soon the name Attitude Man came up, but he just hung around, waiting, until we wanted a name for the changeable magnet. It was apparent the attitude of the guitar was being adjusted, so Attitude Adjuster just fit. The Attitude Man is now part of The Blue Thumb logo.
Blue Thumb Pickups
Single Coil with standard top or bottom changeable magnet assembly,
changeable, rotate-able coil assembly – Pole Pieces
Blue Thumb Pickups
Humbucker with standard top or bottom changeable magnet assembly,
changeable, rotate-able coil assemblies – Pole Pieces
All Blue Thumb Humbucker Pickups also include spring sets to allow individual coil height adjustments
Timberwolf Pickups
Single Coil with bottom changeable or fixed magnet assembly – Blades Only
A Bit Of Our History