01/03/2022
Meet the new shop cat - Arduino.
Rivet Pickups
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Rivet Pickups are revolutionary humbucker-sized boutique guitar pickups that use mini-coils to organically expand your guitar's tone. Using millennial technology, at RIVET we sifted thru the best of old designs and made a discovery so simple that it's hard to believe nobody thought of it before: Add mini coils that hear just certain string sets which you can mix in with the other coils you’ve had for years.
RIVET pickups have one full-size coil that hears six strings, plus another mini coil that hears a grouping of just a few strings. This allows you to combine such coils in new strategic combinations to get cool new sounds with the emphasis where you want it. Add bass to your single-coil bridge pickup, add treble to your single-coil neck pickups, or go from full-strength single-coil to humbucker wit
RIVET pickups have one full-size coil that hears six strings, plus another mini coil that hears a grouping of just a few strings. This allows you to combine such coils in new strategic combinations to get cool new sounds with the emphasis where you want it. Add bass to your single-coil bridge pickup, add treble to your single-coil neck pickups, or go from full-strength single-coil to humbucker wit
Operating as usual
12/10/2021
A minor variation:
12/10/2021
Some recent work that I think will become standard product...
05/21/2021
Hey Rivet tribe - look for a new design to be available on a hand-made prototype basis as soon as next week at www.rivetpickups.com.
Yes, all my pickups are hand made, as are most brands, but there's a HUGE difference in manhours that go into prototypes vs. an ironed out production run. So if being on the bleeding edge appeals to you, and if you like to be involved at a level where your input has much bearing on the final outcome, be ready to pounce on next week's limited offer. I'll need to make a few sets as I dial in the final details.
So below - pics show the design cycle in full swing - 1st pic is design software & 2nd pic right is actual prototype.
05/10/2021
These guitars are beautiful. (There are so many out there which aren't, that I love it when I come across something beautiful.) In particular, I like how this guy brings fragments from historical designs (sound-hole-not, F-style mandolin headstock, Flying-V body, jazzbox F-holes, 50's sunburst) and artfully arranges them in a lively yet cohesive design that salutes fragmentation itself. Cool. Brilliant work, David Myka.
04/14/2021
Progress... (I think!)
04/02/2021
I'm working on something new, again. What do you think of this?
10/22/2020
Here's Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs & Deep Purple) with a miniature copy I made of his weird franken-tele-strat guitar. Mini there on the table, and the original on-stage. Circa 1980.
10/12/2020
This one was fun - take a close look at the pictures. I made a regular set of Rivet's and then added another independent bass-only output, and another independent mid+hi only output. This thing can tri-amp with the regular Rivet's going to your favorite amp, and then more bass going to a bass amp and your mid+hi going thru your pedal chain to maybe another amp. It's pretty cool when the pedals only effect mid+hi's but don't mess with the bass - and the bass can flood the room without sounding muddy. It's all passive but it creates a shockingly "3D" tone...
This was an experiment - do you think it would sell? What do you think people would do with it? Anything cool you think you could do with it? Comments, please.
10/07/2020
I made a tiny Les Paul which I sold to Eddie back around 1981. He was delighted; his wife Valerie told me he carried it with him everywhere. It wound up as the centerpiece of a hit song, and the song was even named after it - "Little Guitars"... There's a much longer story to be told which includes my brother, a suitcase full of money, hanging out on tour, the invention of fine tuners on a locking vibrato, and so on and so forth. Kind of interesting and kind of not, but a heck of a lot of fun to experience. Ed, it's always been incredibly meaningful to me to have made something for a guy who is in turn so meaningful to other people. Rest in peace, Eddie - and memory eternal.
09/16/2020
This is a very nice design, in my opinion. Beautiful motion in the pickguard.
05/13/2020
Prototypes for Kenny Vaughan pile up as I process his feedback and develop "corrections". That's about half of them.
02/05/2020
Hoo-weee! - a blow-up in the laboratory last night. Nearly ready to release the new Rivet Pickups recipe!
01/10/2020
I'm grateful to my 100+ Kickstarter supporters who helped me get started!! I've come up with what I think is a huge improvement to Rivets - maybe "Rivets 2.0" - which is a new razorblade wiring... Older Rivets can use this new razorblade wiring only if they are rewound. Any of you interested, PM me or email for more details.
01/09/2020
Some people look down on my work.
10/04/2019
The Simpsons DNA thru a microscope? Nope - it’s the bottom of a new Rivet Pickup design - coming soon.
10/04/2019
I feel the same about laying out circuit boards as I do driving in the snow: Sure, other people get stuck, but I don’t!
10/04/2019
Column 1 is science, and column 5 is "snake oil" (stuff that's supposed to work, but nobody checks or proves whether it actually does)...
I spend ALL of my invention time working to improve things in column 1, and I'm often shocked by how prone people are to believe in snake oil.
10/03/2019
10/02/2019
Working feverishly on new Rivet Pickups...
09/27/2019
GUITAR HERO!: Scott Holyfield of Glaser Instruments, Nashville, beautifully fixed the shattered headstock of this guitar I built in 1979 - Great job, Scott!!! This ax was owned by Dave Hlubek of Molly Hatchet. Now fixed it's soon on it's way to Dave's son, Kyle Hlubek.
09/27/2019
Wouldn't this be a killer lobby for a music museum or theater? It's the interior of a durn hollow body guitar. 🙂 From harperguitars.com...
09/23/2019
Back in the early 1980's when I was learning to make instruments at the Old Time Pickin' Parlor in Nashville, I did some setup work on a guitar or two for an interesting old character. The Pickin' Parlor's owner, Coley Coleman, asked me if I knew who the guy was; I didn't. It was Harold Bradley. Harold was kind and unpretentious, which I liked. Being myself about 24, Harold at around 55 seemed old. My head space then was tuned in to the trajectory of 60's & 70's rock and roll such that Harold's amazing career was to me a fleeting curiosity at best. Thank God that life sometimes lets us look back and fill in the blanks. Harold passed away early this year at age 93; rest in peace, Harold Bradley.
09/20/2019
Serious question; answer any way you like...
Open this picture up fully to see it in detail, and based on appearance tell me: which set of new pickups you can best imagine on a guitar of your own? Why?
09/20/2019
Black on black design
09/20/2019
What do any of you think of the look of these?
09/13/2019
Beautiful work by a luthier I met in Mexico City early this year - Paul Murcio Ortiz... Check him out at https://www.facebook.com/OrtizMurcioGB/
09/12/2019
Second guitar I built - being fixed by Scott Holyfield at Glaser Instruments - nice work, Scott!!!
08/31/2019
New models out soon. As roughly sketched here in Photoshop, these will add Strat routing fit, and though you can't tell from looking, a particularly brassy new humbucker tone...
08/15/2019
I've finally found a design motif I like for a new design I'm working on - a Strat-footprint RIVET... (I like to sketch stuff like this in Photoshop before I go to CAD.)
05/24/2019
GUITAR PICKUPS WITH KICK...
How are RIVET's different? The low end is less mushy, and never missing.The mids and highs soar.
Riff responsibly.
05/17/2019
I've been working hard on a new recipe. Simple layout. Several great tones on one guitar. If you're local, give me a shout and come on by for a sampling from the first batch out of the oven. I bet you'll be surprised that there's something this fresh in the world of pickups.
03/22/2019
Take it, dog...
03/06/2019
How do you deal with the fact that major 3rds of chords sound 13% sharp? (Major 3rds are what make major chords sound kinda queasy.) How do you cope, or do you even bother?
02/09/2019
Yeah, I know I make pickups, but... a few folks have nudged me to build a few more mini "Less Pauls". It so happens that one of the most kind artists I ever worked with, Jackson Browne, gave back to me as a gift the mini I built for him 30+ years ago. It's got the same specs as one I made for Eddie Van Halen. No timeline promised, but I've started taking measurements.
Address
Nashville, TN
General information
Entirely passive, just magnets and wire, but with new possibilities. It's the traditional electric guitar pickup redesigned.
Website
http://www.rivetpickups.com
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Videos
Take it, dog...
Presto...
Strat transformation - actually it was a pretty tight squeeze getting the wiring card into the control cavity. Food for thought next time I have the design files open...
RIVET™ PICKUPS on the campaign trail in 2016 - Now on Kickstarter
Post the name of an artist and the lyric you imagine any of these characters singing... (This is a cartoon I made using Adobe Photoshop and Premier - for our Kickstarter campaign a year ago. It was a BLAST to do!)
Interesting NAMM post #4: The guys at Jackson Pedal Steel guitars brought a couple fun little tidbits. The one on the left is a de-tuner and the one on the right is a string-bender lever. Both are tiny and mount right on your stop tailpiece bar. Very clever and very tiny.
The Rivet proto guitar is up to something.
I'm playing with a new idea.
I discovered a cool tone setting by accident. Rivet users: try this if your guitar has a Les Paul type of pickup configuration: 1) Put in razor-blade #106. 2) Flip the toggle switch up to the rhythm position. 3) Put the rhythm neck pickup's tone on 10 but turn the LEAD bridge pickup's tone down to ZERO. Whoa! For whatever reason you get a very cool and unusual tone that's like "Jerry Seinfeld" bass beneath a Bob Marley / Wailers rhythm. All - and I mean ALL - the midrange gets siphoned off by that second tone control. It sounds almost acoustic guitar-like, but with an electric vibe to it. I'm infatuated with it - can't wait to jam with some pals to try it in the context of a band. Check it out & see if your guitar does it too - it should. Let me know what you find and what you think! (Check this out with earbuds or good speakers to appreciate the bass.)
milling milling milling
Sandin' flatwork for new #RivetPickups today.
Success!! Took about 45 minutes from start to finish, and never turned on the soldering iron. Check out a few clips of Zach playing clean and through a Catalin SFT overdrive. #RivetPickups
I showed our pickups to an expert the other day, and he says to me, "Hmm. What problem are you solving? Do you think maybe you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist?..." THERE'S NO PROBLEM. WE JUST FOUND SOMETHING FUN AND NEW!
Dave's waxing poetic today--this morning we started potting coils that should ship by months end! #RivetPickups #Paraffin #WeAreSantasElves 🔥🎅🏻🔥
Very excited today to be winding the first Rivet for our Kickstarter production batch. Many more soon to come! 😛🤘🏻🤗
Stamping Rivet Pickups
Pickup progress:
Painting with Dave 🎨💡⚙
Earth's Dylan Carlson Demos the RIVET '63 and RIVET '64 by Riv...
Had a chance to see our friend Dylan Carlson the other day before Earth and Boris's sold out show in Nashville. After the show, and despite the fact that we'd just been nearly destroyed by rock and roll, we realized that we never uploaded this Rivet Pickups demo video that Dylan made for us last fall! Check it out to get a good sampling of what Rivets can do, in clean situations and with the filth poured on. And make sure to check the "HD" setting for the best audio quality possible. We certainly consider anything kind Dylan has to say about or gear as the the highest of high honors--Dylan is a certified tone visionary. Check out his Instagram, @drcarlsonalbion for regular insights from a seasoned gear vet who is consistently blowing minds and making folks smile with his other-worldly tones and sounds. Thanks again Dylan, and drone on.
drilllin' parts 💪🏻 #cnc
Wheel turn. Make pretty parts. Grog like.
If you're at #NAMM, start your day off right by checking out Rivet Pickups at booth 1053 with Bluesman Vintage guitars (John Scott)! 🎸🎼☕️
RIVET™ - a new design in electric guitar pickups! Watch our story here in 20 seconds... Then click on "Learn More" to get the full scoop now on Kickstarter - but time is running out!
RIVET™ ELECTRIC GUITAR PICKUPS
RIVET™ PICKUPS in space? - NASA was in the news today trying something new on the International Space Station - which made me think of this out-take we cut from our Kickstarter cartoon! So I brought it back. Hope you enjoy.
Turn On Mini-Coils Any Time with Rivet Pickups
We keep seeing one question come up again and again in treacherous nooks and crannies of the internet where guitar gearheads discuss such things: "Why do I need mini-coils on my pickups, since my neck already has enough bass and my bridge already has enough treble?" Here's our answer, which may surprise you: You're right! Adding bass to your neck or treble to your bridge is most cases probably totally uncalled for- HOWEVER, that's not how Rivet Pickups work. Here's how Rivet Pickups work: either mini-coil can be turned on/off AT ANY TIME. Mini-coils DO NOT automatically turn on with the full-sized coil they sit beneath. Mini-coils are turned on/off with PUSH/PULL POTS, while the FULL-SIZED COILS are selected with the pickup selector switch. Make sense? Add a bit of bass-y string signal from your neck to your treble-heavy bridge position, or a little treble-y string signal from your bridge to your bass-heavy neck position with Rivet Pickups. It's a whole new way to unleash the strengths of both pickup positions at once, without the muddiness of turning two full pickups on at the same time--the best of both worlds! TL;DR: Mini-coils on Rivet Pickups ARE NOT wired to the full-sized coil they sit under. You can turn either mini-coil on/off at ANY TIME! Check out the attached video to see this in action. (And P.S.: Don't forget to stop by our Kickstarter if you haven't claimed your Rivet Pickups yet--two weeks remain! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1207574295/rivettm-electric-guitar-pickups-join-the-evolution/posts/1578102)
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Comments
A big thanks to our recent guest speaker David Petschulat, owner of Rivet Pickups and a guitar maintenance instructor at Belmont University, who came to talk about the process of designing and building pickups and how they can affect the sound of an instrument.
What happened to your website? It has been down for weeks. I really like your pickups. I installed a pair last year and could not be more impressed. If you need help getting your site back up, I would be happy to help. No charge. Feel free to contact me anytime. I am mainly a designer but I have done a lot of code work and site setup in the past. I hope you guys are ok. I have been looking forward to seeing what you come up with next... or maybe just a new razor blade... hint hint
Can I get a sample set to put in my next build?I'm using seymour duncan invaders on my current build then I don't know what to use. Your pickups would be a nice addition to my snake bite build! How do your pickups compare to SD?