21-Mar-2020
The term "tone" has been bandied about quite loosely in recent years by a lot of people trying to convince customers to buy their products. The thing is almost none of them define what tone is. Well hopefully we'll shed some light on this veiled topic.
In the Kinman website's we use the word "sound or sonic experience" rather than tone because sound / sonic experience infers a holistic experience I.E. attack response, dynamics, feel ... which the term "tone" fails to adequately define.
One dictionary defines Tone as >>> a musical sound of definite pitch, consisting of several relatively simple constituents called partial tones, the lowest of which is called the fundamental tone and the other harmonics or overtones. So it seems by that rather narrow definition tone can be anything you want it to be because it is silent concerning feel and dynamic response. So aren't they clever, using the generic word "tone" as an inference of quality without describing exactly what it is and leaving it up tothecustomers imagination to fill in the gaps or paint the picture in the colors he likes, so no matter what the pickups sound like the customers are deluded into believing it to be something like what they expected.
We believe the grand piano is a good reference for tone, all notes from the very lowest to the highest have great clarity and depth of sonic character as wellasthree dimensional dynamics accompanied with beyond excellent touch sensitivity and feel. That's the reason you'll see descriptions on our website that talk about piano mid-tones. The greater concentration of piano mid-tones the greater the clarity and definition of a musical note, and piano mid-tones are pleasant to listen to as well and infer very much alive dynamic response. We believe piano mid-tones are the best way to describe the sounds of pickups. And the best way to generate piano-mid-tones is by using a medium Tortex plectrum or similar. Read our blog article titled "What you don't know about plectrums"
Think about it, one can't accurately describe an ordinary humbucker in terms of piano mid-tones since the low E string doesn't have any, it's more like a dull thud. So when we talk about piano mid-tones of our humbuckers we are describing the improvement intone which infers improvements in touch sensitivity, dynamic response and feel. Our humbuckers stroke human cravings for a stimulating and satisfying feeling experience, like the Stones song "Can't get no --- Satisfaction" no one likes dis-satisfaction.
Talking about humbuckers, we know that some guitar players like the dull sound of the low E string, the bigger and rounder the better. Since Kinman is responsivetocustomers likes and dislikes, we set about improving the ubiquitous humbucker so the low E string doesn't go thud ... but rather paradoxically blossoms into a full, rounded tone that is almost as devoid of piano mid-tones as an ordinary humbucker. So here we have a clean, well defined sound sound that doesn't have piano mid-tones to speak of and yet doesn't go thud. How can that be? Read the Blog article titled >>>Humbuckers with bouncy sound
On the opposite end ofthespectrum our Twang-Bucker has a dense concentration of piano mid-tones, so much into single coil territory you won't recognize it as a humbucker. Lower down the ladder of mid-tone concentration is the P90-Bucker, still in single coil territory but with a syrupy flavor that you'll instantly recognize as coming from Gibson origins.
Before we launched our humbuckers we wondered what could be done to improve them, now after yearsofadventur-some experimenting we have mastered the art of producing tone from humbuckers and we can fine tune the concentration of piano mid-tones from zero to 100% if called upon to do so. Presently we are developing 10 new flavors of our Mini Humbuckers. These incorporate new tricks and innovative new coil winding techniques to deliver you very satisfying new sonic experiences that you won't have felt before.
Meanwhile we have also mastered our Multi-Sound humbucker the 2n1 and soon to be released Converge 3 v1 and v2 that produce Zero-Hum authentic and loud Fender & P-90ish sound as well as a great humbucker sound with the flick of a switch. On top of that we have revised our current Astound models to attenuate the brightness of the plain strings from razor sharp to a more pleasant nice treble sound (with bite). The are known as the Astound v2.
Listen to our 59+ LPS before the v2 treatment. It sound pretty darn nice don't you think!!! You could be forgiven for asking how could this marvelous sound possible be improved?
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