New Products

 

NEW  AT-04 for Archtop Guitars. The archtop guitar pickup re-thought.....(more)
NEW  UST series for Steel String Acoustic Guitars utiliizes a piezo polymer film cable sensor...(more)	NEW  RB series for Upright Bass and for Rock-A-Billy Bass ...(more)
NEW Player series endpin jack preamps are single channel with the option of volume and tone thumbwheel controls...(more)

Things Of Interest

  

Welcome To New Dealers

 

IE Music - Corona California	Loveland Violin Shop - Santa Rosa California
Moonshine Guitars - White Bluff Tennessee	Strings and Things - Memphis Tennessee

 

Mid Year Changes

     Our archtop guitar pickup was completely redesigned and the AT-04 was released 

 

Products Introduced At NAMM In Los Angeles - January 2010

New Under The Saddle Pickup System - The UST Series

New Endpin Jack Preamp Series - The Player Preamps

New Upright Bass Pickup Series - The RB Series for Bass and Rock-A-Billy Bass

 

YouTube Videos

 

We're going to ask those players using  Schatten Pickups to send us their YouTube videos so that we can post them.

 

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Here are a couple of videos featuring me playing my Wechter/Scheerhorn squareneck with the RG-03 installed. The mics were basically "decorative." The Schatten gives me a well-controlled sound in an instrument that is typically a nightmare to amplify. Thanks, Schatten!

Good Kings Highway - RG-03 Spider Bridge Reso Pickup

Benediction - RG-03 Spider Bridge Reso Pickup

Enjoy!

Bob Knight 

www.newcommand.info
Guitar, bass, mandolin, bouzouki, lap steel,
Dobro, vocals, arranging, production, hand percussion
"Guess what?! I've got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!"

 

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Jack Fields - HFN-S2 Selmer

 

Blog

 

June 17/ 2010
     Wow, that was a quick month and a bit. Lots of good positive feedback from the stores and Luthiers who have been installing the new AT-04 archtop guitar pickup.....which makes me feel somewhat better about spending weekends at the bench designing, fine tuning, and trying to get projects finished up.
     The RB bass pickup series has also been going gang-busters. This is both a blessing and a curse since I'm the one who builds them. Today I managed to find the time to build eleven of the RB's.....hand built, limited production, built by the boss.....
     I'm going to take a couple of days and go the Montreal Guitar Show, which is on from July 2nd to July 4th in, you guessed it, Montreal. Been to something like three out of the last 4 or so shows. Great guitars, great Luthiers: http://www.salondeguitaredemontreal.ca/accueil_en.aspx and the Montreal International Jazz Festival is going on at the same time. Wonderful!!

Les

 

May 13/ 2010
     Getting things packed up and ready to go for the MIAC trade show in Toronto this weekend.....well sort of this weekend - I can never for the life of me figure out why they insist on holding this show, year after year, on a Sunday and a Monday. What would be wrong with a Saturday Sunday show?....that would make a lot more sense to me.
     In between trade shows I forget just how much I enjoy standing around on a hard concrete floor with just a thin carpet on top..... for two to four days at a time.....I must be getting old.
Les

 

May 6/ 2010
     I've just finished with our new Archtop Guitar pickup, the AT-04. I've made the pickup fuller and richer sounding, decreased any unwanted body noises, decreased the unit's ability amplify the sound of your hand on the top of the bridge. I've also made it much easier to trim the height of the bridge down - which is especially critical if you're trying to fit a pickup to an older archtop that doesn't have a lot of bridge height.....whew.
     Archtop guitars have always been interesting critters to amplify. When you had a pickup with enough body sound, you were also liable to get that high pitched 'spwang' from the strings exiting the trapeeze tailpiece - whether you wanted that sound or not.....and hand noise, and finger noise, let's not forget about that stuff. Doing an archtop pickup, if I had to rate the level of difficulty on a scale from one to ten, is somewhere right up there with designing resonator guitar pickups - that would put it up in the eight and a half range.

     If you're an archtop player looking for a good pickup, I think you'll enjoy this one.
Les

 

April 6/2010
     I'd like to thank Mike Brown for the review he sent in about the installation of our new RB-1 bass pickup on his upright bass. Personally, I loved the sound of the new RB's when I finally did finish the design and testing of them. Piece of cake, right?..... No, not quite.....I produced the equivalent of about three shoe box fulls of different designs of bass pickups over a period of close to half a year. I will get them out of my lab and stack those containers neatly on the storage shelves.....right next to the two containers of banjo pickups, three containers of reso pickups.......

Les

 

March 7/2010
     Still hard at work on new stuff. Continuing with the new archtop, new violin going out for beta testing next week......here it is a Sunday and after I go and get a coffee at Tim's, I think I'll get a bit further along with the archtop project. Interesting instruments those, not much happening acoustically and yet there are a lot of things to vibrate and make assorted sounds on them.....

Les

 

Feb 14/2010
     I found this video that used to be up on our website about three or four years ago. It was obviously made when I was much younger and had a bit more hair...... the 'boss' speaks

 

Feb 10/2010
     I'm going to ask for some input and suggestions here: What are you guys looking for in a pickup? What's missing in pickups in your opinion, what should be done differently, and what should be there? You can drop me an email directly: email Les

     Oh yeah, for the good or the bad of it (and it's a good thing the windows are closed up here in the winter), I'm back to practicing the fiddle for at least a solid hour a day. I played pretty well most stringed instruments along the way, some acceptably, most not wonderfully. Taught banjo, mandolin, and fiddle - for about 10 years and ended my playing career playing not very good bass in a dance/swing/jazz band.
     I'm going to start teaching my granddaughter to play fiddle and I figured I had better try to re-learn where I was 20 years ago when I put it all down.
Les

 

Feb 3/2010
     Coming up next: I get a chance to get back to work on three new violin pickup designs that I've been playing with on and off over the last half a year. There's never enough time to get everything done when it's supposed to be, just too darn busy. To those that have been patiently waiting for that new solid body violin pickup....it is coming and it shouldn't be long. For the other two violin pickups, well you'll just have to see them when I'm finished - hopefully sometime later in the spring.
     Since I don't get holidays and I haven't had a break since before Christmas (what with new pickups and the NAMM show and all), I'm going to take off Friday through Monday....
Les

 

Feb 2/2010
     Well....we've just come off of a successful NAMM show in LA and managed to get out just in between the monsoons. Liked LA, glad to be home though. Ok, I just finished the design work, beta testing, and release of the RB Upright Bass Pickups and the UST series of under the saddle acoustic guitar pickups. Lot of work there, glad that's done. Those are some really fine new pickups.
     While we were at it, we introduced a whole line of Player series products with some really great low pricing - would you believe a nice new North American built (actually built right here in Canada) Endpin Jack Preamp - for less than Fifty Bucks?
Fifty Bucks! That's really good.
Les