Why, How and Wow about GASCAPS

Why, How and Wow about GASCAPS

Would you wire 3 microphones to a single microphone jack and plug into your PA or recording console.  Obviously not and very wrong don't you think?  Well believe it or not we have been doing just that for almost 80 years with electric guitars.  Just to complicate this debacle a little more we added some combinations of potentiometers and capacitors and called them tone controls and volume controls to this unsavory brew.  Then we a tad further in further in perpetuating the mess by keeping all this passive circuitry at High Impedance.  So without doubt the guitar cable itself becomes a significant part of circuit to further assist in depleting the Pickups output right up to the point where we connect it to the amplifing device.

BUT IT WORKS, DOESN"T IT?

Yes it does, at least to a reasonable degree.  Let's face it when the electric guitar came into vogue it was the era of the warm and golden glow of vacuum tubes. The practicality for installing real electronics at the instrument end was just not realizable back then. COULD you phathom Electron Tubes inside your guitars control cavity adding weight and warmth not to mention the 200 plus volts of DC and the 6.3 volts of AC.  NOT!   So a practical compromise for those Golden Times was reached and that compromise has existed for the most part for about 80 years plus.  From an engineering stand point it leaves much to be desired as demonstrated by the many yet accepted short comings the electric guitar suffers from electronically to this day.

Let's take a look at the most important electronic component of the electric guitar, the pickup.  At first inspection it really appears to be a very simple transducer device.  Transducer is a term for anything that converts one form of energy to another.  In this case the pickup senses the energy (amplitude or volume) and pitch (frequency) and converts into electromagnetic energy that can be amplified and manipulated by electronic devices such as preamps, EQ's etc. etc. 

A couple of magnets, lots of turns of really thin enamel coated wire, a bobbin to wind the wire on and a composite panel or printed circuit board for convenient connection of larger wires used for wiring the pickups into the instruments controls.  Don't let this simplicity fool you as the theory behind this transfer function and the math describing a pickup's electrical behavior is quite complex and compounded when we wire some combination resistors and capcitors in combination  with them .

The electromagnetic pickup has been with us a long time and chances are it's not going away anytime soon.  Actually the traditional pickup as we have come to know and love it, in my opinion is never going away.  Why, you may ask?  The reality of it all is simply this; the pickup is the major electronic contributor to sound we recognize as the electric guitar.  Yes the woods and instrument construction play a role but these factors pale in comparison to the contribution of the pickup(s) in so far as the electronics are concerned.

GASCAPS (Great American Sounds Co Active Pickup System) addresses the electrical characteristics of the pickup and provides optimally designed electronics that basically overcome the short falls of traditional pickup interconnections and the resultant interactions.  GASCo's mission is to preserve, improve and increase the integrity of the timbral foundation and therefore the total harmonic content and the output of the pickup.  GASCAPS allows pickups to be all that they can be without creating a sonically alien personality but instead afford a multitude of signature tonal personalities that guitarists hold  dear to their hearts and ears.

Now let's look at it from a higher level which is more than adequate and certainly less technically burdensome for explaining the why.  Remember, GASCAPS is an integrated approach; therefore its functional building blocks all work together as a system.  These  functional blocks within the GASCAPS are carefully designed and engineered to allow a heretofore unattainable degree of a control at the instrument side of the system affording the user immediate and convenient accessibility without the requirement for batteries on board.

When connecting the output of any electronic device to a load i.e. an amplifier to a speaker or microphone to mixer it is good engineering practice to never connect multiple output devices in parallel to the input of another.  You certainly wouldn't hook up 2 amplifiers to a single speaker (although there is a way this can be done legitimately but does not apply in this case) nor would you wire multiple microphones to a single input jack of a mixer or preamp. (shame on you if you have, but don't feel bad sometimes we will do anything for that extra input)

Obviously and I hope by now immediately we can recognize that outputs from such devices wired in parallel are driving their respective outputs into each other's outputs there is no isolation.  What are the consequences of such a configuration?  In most cases they are dire however with low power devices like pickups and microphones the probability for catastrophic failure is low to none.   However, there are considerable deleterious effects to include less than optimal output levels, phase relationship interactions, and compound impedance relationships not necessarily contributing to the optimal output and tonal potential of the pickups as would be the case if they were to stand alone.  All of these factors play a significant role in what turns out to be the depleted performance of the pickup as it is used presently.  Simply stated the traditional wiring schenme for pickups will not allow us to realize the full sonic potential of the pickup because of the electrical interactions created by wiring all these outputs together.  After listening to some great sounding instruments one might conclude; so what it; sounds great! Well when compared to a GASCAPS equipped instrument that uniformed indeifference turns into Wow, it sounds so (expletive deleted) much better to quote the many who have experienced the comparison first hand.

GASCAPS through the use of patented and proprietary electronics has created a system that allows your pickups to develop and deliver all their sonic potential.  The pickups are totally isolated from each other throughout the signal path employing EHZ/CC (Extremely High Imepdance) Buffer Amplifiers,loaded as Constant Current Sources and active electronic summation of the individual pickup buffered outputs. Each pickup can now deliver their full sonic potential as they are not encumbered by the other pickups or those ridiculous volume and tone pots that constantly interact and suck signal out of the system.  The result of eliminating these pitfalls is a remarkable and profound sonic improvement regardless of the brand or model of pickup employed. The pickups deliver all they possibily can becuase they are no longer trying to drive their outputs into each other as well as into those archaic passive volume and tone controls before it even gets to the amplifier. Let's not forget the Guitar cable itself which also contributes sinificantly to the performance of the pickup system as it exists today.  Try running a even a 25ft high quality guitar cable then watch and listen as the High frequencies disappear before your very ears.   

GASCAPS affords a refreshing new clarity and improved frequency response which is immediately recognized as the now isolated pickups deliver their outputs unencumbered by the complex impedance relationships created by the traditional parallel connections.  The notes and chords sustain so much better becuase the pickups are no longer subject to the losses of a traditional parrallel wiring scheme.  The pickups now independently see constant and very high load impedance allowing the pickups to deliver all the amplitude and frequency response they are capable of.  Using the old school method the pickups never worked into a constant impedance load but rather into each other.  It is a well established fact that the output of electromagnetic pickups is not a flat response curve. This is due to the nature of the LCR (Inductance, Capacitance, Resistance) circuit that defines all electromagnetic pickups.  Fact is, change the load and the output changes just ask Ohm (you can't he's dead but his law lives on) or and a few other pioneers that defined the laws to which all electronic devices are subject too. 

By actively buffering the pickups the output of the GASCAPS system converrts what used to be a very lossy High Z output signal into a full  fidelity Low Z that is virtually immune to loss.  With the pickups job now done GASCAPS electronics kicks in.providing a robust and truly faithful original signal reproduction for further manipulation through the system.  A bonus or two afforded by this high to low impedance transformation is less noise, greater signal strength (Dramatically improved Signal to Noise Ratio) and extended sustainable fidelity.

The GASCAP System also provides proprietary and patented impedance matched digital electronic switching matrix which provides all 7 possible pickup combinations for 3 pickup instruments.  This digital electronic switch array is also employed in the gain loop of the combining circuitry to provide lead boost switching enabled and disabled at the player's option at the touch of button.  Very key to the digital switch is the absence of a noise generating internal clock oscillator and the non requirement for the Pickups Signal to travel through an additional circuit.  Instead a rather ingenious technique employing propagation delay allows us to provide a clock free alternate action digital switch design.  There are no annoying hums or buzzes generated by the electronics.

A meticulously designed shelving equalizer provides boost and cut for both highs and lows at carefully selected hinge points.  The slopes are approximately 4dB per octave and there are many sweet spot combinations available within the boost and cut ranges from both equalizer controls.  A very low noise Hi Current output Op Amp is used in this functional block and it is capable of driving the final output signal down 100's of feet of cable without loss of amplitude and frequency response.

The included Control Unit (CU) provides one half of the dual regulated power supplies that are employed by GASCAPS to insure stability.  A high stability voltage regulator at the control unit provides phantom power through the instrument cable for the instrument embedded electronics.  The Phantom Power provided by the CU is further regulated a the instrument end at slightly lower voltage to allow for IR losses within the cable and allow the use of relatively extreme cable lengths if required. 

The Control Unit is a very compact yet rugged and robust package constructed of .075 Cold Rolled Steel and finished in 2 tone powder coat.  You can just about park your car on top of the CU with no ill effects.  The CU also provides an array of practical and useful features to include an attenuator control, multiple amp outs, direct balanced out, ground lift, and cable fault indicator.  No wall wart for the CU as this unit is completely self-contained and despite its small size employs a much more robust UPC AC Inlet. The Unit can be fitted with optional Rack Mounts and Tilt Stand now available.

The GASCAPS system is available as a retrofit for many popular guitar models and as OEM product for new instruments.  Be sure to visit a dealer that carries Statage Guitars (pronounced stratergy, www.stratageguitars.com) for a product demonstration.

Players and professionals wishing to purchase this system please contact us or a local authorized dealer.

OEM inquires are invited.

Stratage Espirtu Model GASCAPS equipped