It's WHAT?

[Marty]

Darwin would have played one.

[drlj]

Yow!

[Russell Letson]

Maybe he should spend some time making his recorded sound less crappy. Or maybe it's not the recording but the guitars that sound thin and clangy. (And I'm still wondering how he got patents on design elements that should have "prior art" branded all over them.)

[billhammond]

Mar 20, 2023 20:31:54 GMT -5 Russell Letson said:

(And I'm still wondering how he got patents on design elements that should have "prior art" branded all over them.)

I'm pretty sure he said "patent pending."

[david]

I might wait on telling "everybody what all the buzz is about."

[Marty]

I still see some problems with the whole idea. If you have humidity problems changing neck angle is not the way to deal with it. Treating the symptoms.

Intonation screws will change the body to neck connection surface area. Although to repair things being able to remove the neck and body rod is not to bad idea. Same with refretting the neck.

Trade offs.

[Marty]

Mar 20, 2023 20:38:24 GMT -5 billhammond said:

Mar 20, 2023 20:31:54 GMT -5 Russell Letson said:

(And I'm still wondering how he got patents on design elements that should have "prior art" branded all over them.)

I'm pretty sure he said "patent pending."

In 1956 Gibson (Humbucker) and Gretsch (Filtertron) had a minor brawl about who invented the first hum canceling pickup. I believe Gibson won by having applied for the patent first, hench they had a Patent Applied decal on every pickup.



Here comes the topic drift.



Nice thing about dual coil hum canceling pickups is that you can wire them several ways and still keep them hum canceling. I think it was Rick W. that got a pre loaded Strat pickguard from me for the guitar he was building. It was the usual HSS style and the bridge humbucker had a ohm resistance of about 17k ohms, heat seeking humbucker range. I wired it series/parallel but the default position was parallel which means it was 4.5k ohms. So in the default position it sounded pretty much like a Strat bridge pickup, but hum canceling.



Normally humbuckers get wired series as the default, lets say 8k ohms. The usual alteration is to "tap" the series connection to ground making it a true single coil with a 4k ohm output, not hum canceling. By going with a parallel connection the output becomes 2k ohms and hum canceling with a very bright/clear single coil sound.



You can run that bridge pickup very close to the strings to make up for the slight loss of output and run the middle and neck pickups farther away, which you must do on a Strat anyway to avoid harmonic drag aka Stratitus. It's not the impedance of the pickup that causes this it's the strength of the magnets.



A nice trick when "tapping" a humbucker is to replace the ground connection from the tap switch with a .01/.02 mf cap. This gives the pickup more of a P90 sound while retaining some hum canceling properties.



Damn that took a long time to type out and edit.

[Dub]

Mar 20, 2023 20:06:14 GMT -5 Marty said:

Darwin would have played one.

That video is 10 years old. The prize he won was awarded last year on the River Pacific Acoustic Electric P2P GA model. If the stories are true, the winning model must have some significant differences.

I see that the bridge is attached to a thin piece of wood that is joined to the end block. Assuming that is also true for newer version, the bridge isn’t attached to the top, it’s glued to that piece, which may act as a bridge plate, that’s attached to the end block. They may also glue that “bridge plate” to the top. I would think you could wind up with a permanent buzz if they don’t do that. But it does mean there is a lot more holding the string tension than just the top itself.

That’s one of the confusing things about this company. Many of their videos are a decade old showcasing the guitars that evidently didn’t quite cut it. It appears that the P2P GA model won the award even though it seem as though it isn’t manufactured in Canada but, probably, Asia. And the Canadian-built model that looks similar and is priced at $4K has listed dimensions that are slightly smaller than the P2P GA.

Curiouser and curiouser.

[Marshall]

The Corvair was the Motor Trend Car of the Year.

[billhammond]

Mar 21, 2023 7:33:23 GMT -5 Marshall said:

The Corvair was the Motor Trend Car of the Year.

It got worse in 1991, when the bulbous Caprice, AKA Shamu, was given the award.

[drlj]

If that video was done 10 years ago, it’s a pretty safe bet that Riversong guitars have not made a huge impact on the guitar world. They seem like gimmick guitars to me and, other than as a curiosity, they don’t hold a lot of interest for me. All those set screws, hex connectors, and moving parts are pretty strange.
I knew a guy who had a Corvair and loved it so you just never know who might actually like something.

[billhammond]

Mar 21, 2023 7:47:28 GMT -5 drlj said:

I knew a guy who had a Corvair and loved it so you just never know who might actually like something.

Was his last name spelled like someone spilled a Scrabble tray?

[Marshall]

I had a '64 in '70. Sucked me dry. Paid $850 for it. 2 years later I got $45 after the engine blew.

[billhammond]

Mar 21, 2023 8:25:26 GMT -5 Marshall said:

I had a '64 in '70. Sucked me dry. Paid $850 for it. 2 years later I got $45 after the engine blew.

My first car was a '62 Beetle, bought it for $300 from a bartender at the country club where I worked, that cheap because the front end was all smashed up. But I was able to get replacement fenders and hood at a junkyard and some buddies and I did a lot of sanding and rattle-can priming, and a body shop painted it a cool metallic red. Good car for several years, terrific in snow, terribly cold interior, though.

I used to hang out at a Texaco station near my high school where the owner was one of the few folks in town who specialized in foreign car repair/maintenance. At some point he came into possession of an Offenhauser conversion plate to adapt a Corvair engine (six cylinders!) to a VW. The Corvair engine rotated in the opposite direction, so the fix was to swap the transaxle tubes so the pinion gear did the opposite of what it usually did. I bought a Corvair motor in a junkyard and we cut sheet metal and wrestled it in there, although the hood would not close all the way, so we rigged up a bumper bracket with a rubber cushion on the end.


The car was stupid fast, going from 40 horsepower to 110. I remember starting out in second gear all the time because first would wind up instantly. But the motor gave out after a couple of weeks, so we ripped it out and I was done with the car, put an ad in the paper for a Beetle with no engine. A guy whose high school shop project was rebuilding a VW engine was thrilled, just what he needed. I guess I forgot to mention the previous Corvair powerplant and the transaxle tubes, because he called me a few days later, livid, screaming that he had four speeds in reverse! And he didn't seem to appreciate my suggestion that he just turn the body around.

[Tamarack]

I learned how to drive in a 1969 Corvair. It was fun.

[epaul]

The 65-69 Corvair was a real pretty car.

[Dub]

Mar 21, 2023 7:33:23 GMT -5 Marshall said:

The Corvair was the Motor Trend Car of the Year.

Did the article mention it was “unsafe at any speed,” or did they have to wait to read the book?

[Marty]

Mar 21, 2023 10:19:44 GMT -5 Dub said:

Mar 21, 2023 7:33:23 GMT -5 Marshall said:

The Corvair was the Motor Trend Car of the Year.

Did the article mention it was “unsafe at any speed,” or did they have to wait to read the book?

I've heard they capsized easily due to a narrow wheel base even though the center of gravity was low.

VW had the problem also, except Bill's due to the added engine weight. I've been in a VW that went on its side while going around a corner.

[Dub]

Mar 21, 2023 11:21:43 GMT -5 Marty said:

Mar 21, 2023 10:19:44 GMT -5 Dub said:

Did the article mention it was “unsafe at any speed,” or did they have to wait to read the book?

I've heard they capsized easily due to a narrow wheel base even though the center of gravity was low.

VW had the problem also, except Bill's due to the added engine weight. I've been in a VW that went on its side while going around a corner.

From Wikipedia.

Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile is a non-fiction book by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, first published in 1965. Its central theme is that car manufacturers resisted the introduction of safety features (such as seat belts), and that they were generally reluctant to spend money on improving safety. This work contains substantial references and material from industry insiders. It was a best seller in non-fiction in 1966.

The book resulted in the creation of the United States Department of Transportation in 1966 and the predecessor agencies of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1970.

…

The subject for which the book is probably most widely known, the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair, is covered in Chapter 1—"The Sporty Corvair–The One-Car Accident". This relates to the first models (1960-1964) that had a swing-axle suspension design which was prone to "tuck under" in certain circumstances. George Caramagna, a mechanic working on the suspension system, suggested installing a stabilizer (anti-roll or "anti-sway") bar, but was overruled by GM management.[citation needed] To make up for the cost-cutting lack of a front stabilizer bar, Corvairs required tire pressures which were outside of the tire manufacturers' recommended tolerances. The Corvair relied on an unusually high front to rear pressure differential (15psi front, 26psi rear, when cold; 18 psi and 30psi hot), and if one inflated the tires equally, as was standard practice for all other cars at the time, the result was a dangerous oversteer.[4] Despite proper tire pressures being more critical than for contemporaneous designs, Chevrolet salespeople and Corvair owners were not properly advised of the requirement and risk. According to the standards of the Tire and Rim Association, these recommended pressures caused the front tires to be overloaded whenever there were two or more passengers in the car.

[billhammond]

Mar 21, 2023 11:21:43 GMT -5 Marty said:

I've heard they capsized easily due to a narrow wheel base even though the center of gravity was low.

VW had the problem also, except Bill's due to the added engine weight. I've been in a VW that went on its side while going around a corner.

I think you mean "narrow track," not wheelbase, which is the distance between the front and rear wheels. The Corvair's handling issues were more complicated than that. Here is a good primer: