[sdiy] 'So much "mojo" is just sloppy engineering...'

[Veronica Merryfield]

What you’re describing is not sloppy engineering but rather the pursuit of enquiry. 

There is a difference between things we don’t know that create questions we use to seek answers, perhaps making money with them as we go (advances in technology often look like magic), verses sloppy engineering, which I guess I would say is where the answers are already known, generally, but not applied.

As an example in the pickup world, someone recent told me they had changed the bobbin martial and it had made a difference to the sound. I asked how they were consistently and repeatably winding the coils and they said by hand. This shows a near complete lack of understanding of the pickup. Even if the material had made a change to the magnetics of the coil, there is no way they can control the the elements of the coil (inductance, capacitance) to be able to make that judgement, assuming their ears were a perfect judge. So if they then want to predictably change the tone, they have no fixed starting point. And this is the tip of the iceberg.  This is sloppy engineering which ever way you cut it.


On Feb 8, 2014, at 2:25 AM, cheater00 . <cheater00 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Electronics used to be mojo and magic too. An "electrician" was a
> sideshow performer who could show tricks with amber, later with static
> electricity generators, metal leafs, glass spheres, etc. The
> technology grew through trial and error, and careful observation of
> what works and what doesn't, without understanding how things work
> inside. I think we are missing a lot by rejecting this approach, or by
> coming up with simple explanations that are too simple, and rejecting
> the notion that we just don't understand things.
> 
> On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 2:24 AM, Veronica Merryfield
> <veronica at merryfield.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> On Feb 7, 2014, at 5:17 PM, Adam Inglis <21pointy at tpg.com.au> wrote:
>> 
>>> I thought this quote from a recent post by Tom Wiltshire was so thought-provoking it deserved a thread of its own
>>> (while I'm waiting for my T-shirt to get printed ;-)).
>> 
>> I rather liked it too.
>> 
>> In July I am giving a talk on the physics of guitar pickups to a luthiers guild in Tacoma. I volunteered to give the talk expressly because so much of the prevailing 'wisdom' is at best sloppy engineering but it is an area where mojo and magic are the defacto standard.
>> 
>> I like the idea of getting a t-shirt for the talk :)
>> 
>> Veronica
>> 
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>