Schecter Van Nuys history - Part SEVEN

In late 1978, Schecter Guitar Research was newly firing on all cylinders. Shel Horlick, president of SGR, was the man responsible for convincing Dave Schecter to morph his 'shop' into a parts factory. SGR was already well known for their hod rod , tapped, FT500 pickup, and somehow Dan Armstrong and Shel hooked up. Dan had a proprietary pickup design, and Shel convinced SGR to produce it.

It should be noted that since early 1976, SGR (a partnership of Shel, Dave, Herschel Blankenship and Gene Rushall), had run Dave Schecter ragged getting everything going. Dave was working too much and had an un-diagnosed food allergy. He became dangerously ill and was recovering during the time the Z-Plus came into existence.

The design was unique in several ways. The first was the magnet orientation. There was one thin wide ceramic magnet that was placed between the coils. The dimension of the magnet was (height of coil x length of coil x 1/8"). It was magnetized across the thin 1/8" * dimension ((* from memory, not really sure)), like so:

The poll pieces were long steel set screws. The coils were wound on special bobbins , waxed on the bobbin, then removed after cooled.

The pickups were encased in an epoxy. We started with a synthetic rubber mold, and assembled the components inside it. The set screws were screwed into threaded holes in the mold, the coils were dropped over the set screws, (I forget what we used to isolate the screws from the coil). There was some mounting hardware as well I vaguely remember. The magnet was dropped in the gap between the two coils, then in was filled with epoxy. Below you can see molds in the foreground, and trays full of coils at the far end of the bench.

Let me say I don't play the guitar, so can only rely on others I trust for opinions about musical instruments. One of those friends is Dave Schecter. While Dave is generally critical of his own early pickups, he thinks the Z-Plus sounded really good. Tom Anderson also thought they sounded good.

Dan Armstrong insisted on the black epoxy to obscure his 'invention', the magnet orientation. Shel agreed and took the lead in sourcing the molding material, some kind of synthetic rubber like compound, and the epoxy. The epoxy was vile, it was tricky to mix, was very susceptible to weather and created a lot of obnoxious fumes.

Unfortunately I ran the electronics and metal shops at the time the Z-Plus was under development. I was expected to produce these things, so I had to tolerate the mess as they prototyped. The metal shop had large fans to evacuate dust, so we cured the pickups at night and blasted the fans in the morning. I learned to hate the Z-Plus even before it went into production.

It was mostly Shel Horlick and Dan Armstrong who worked out the original production design. Tom Anderson was watching with interest, but he was almost 100% locked away with Dave trying to perfect guitar necks at this time.

The first Z-Plus pickup was a pretty dismal failure, in fact according to Tom Anderson, who worked at SGR the entire time the Z-Plus was developed and produced, "all of them broke". The epoxy shrank over time, adjusting set screws would cause havoc and break wire, the epoxy was fickle, etc.

Dan Armstrong did not hang around long after the Z-Plus was launched. After the Z-Plus pickups started breaking the pickup and the name Z-Plus were dropped. Tom and Dave took the basic design and created the first Super Rock pickup. Dave was never much of a fan of hum buckers. I'd guess Dave supported Tom in Tom's re-design of the Z-Plus into the first Super Rock.

The other part of the Dan Armstrong story was the Z-Plus Assembly and how it led to the push/pull pot. Dave Schecter's original concept for his shop was to sell just complete assemblies, (pick guard, pickups & wiring). Dave's focus was on Fender's because they tended to have easily replaced assemblies. Assemblies were the high ticket items for SGR, surpassed only by necks and Dream Machines later in 1979.

Dan's Z-Plus pickup gave SGR the key components for a Les Paul assembly. When Dan Armstrong demoed the Z-Plus he would split off coils and switch from serial to parallel and get some crazy weird sounds. The only way to get those switching options in a Les Paul, the SGR way, was with a push/pull switch combined with the potentiometers.

Dave and Shel sourced an Allen Bradley combined potentiometer / push-pull switch, Allen Bradley called it a 'Mod Pot'. The stock product had a 1/8" shaft. Fortunately Allen Bradley's product line allowed them to swap their 1/4" shaft bushing on the 1/8" shaft Mod Pot, leaving the shaft wobbling around in a 1/4" hole. Schecter had bushings made (1/4" shaft with 1/8" hole), and the pots and bushings were sent out and plug/spot welded together.

Eventually Allen Bradley started producing 1/4" shafted Mod Pots. If you ever find an old Schecter Allen Bradley Mod Pot, and you notice a spot weld at the top of the shaft, it's super rare. The Z-plus had one other effect, for the true collector/enthusiast:

Originally Dave sourced those beautiful blue Bourns pots for his assemblies. When SGR was formed they stuck with Bourns. When SGR needed Allen Bradley to do a special production run to make a 'weird Mod Pot that wouldn't work as shipped', they extracted some additional commitments to purchase more Allen Bradley pots. So SGR had to switch to regular Allen Bradley pots in order to procure the special Mod Pots. When the Z-Plus died, the Z-Plus assembly died, and the Bourns pots came back.