
Nu Multi

Frequency Response
The Nu Series active polyphonic pickups have a uniform frequency response from 20Hz to 20Khz. The sound is very clean with lots of overtones and crystal clear highs. The low impedance coils give the pickups its characteristic wide bandwidth.
Unlike traditional high-impedance passive pickups, there are no big peaks and dips in the response. Such a wide and flat frequency response gives you the freedom to sculpt the tone using analog or digital filters. The low-impedance pickup imparts very little coloration to the sound. You get whatever tone you want using appropriate tone-shaping EQ rather than a fixed, predetermined tone.
Sound Clips
See Sculpting the Tone for details about the sound clips. The multichannel recordings take advantage of the stereo field to great effect. For best results, put on a good set of headphones or better yet, have your reference monitors ready, or a good HiFi stereo system. Cheap earphones or laptop speakers won’t do this justice, please don’t bother using those!
Here’s a short clip: Vale Vanezolano no.3 (by Antonio Lauro) recorded using “classical” EQ capture of the Cycfi Nu multichannel pickup mounted on a Fender Stratocaster in the bridge position. The strings are panned with the low-E center, A at 3 o’clock, D at 10 o’clock, G at 4 o’clock, B center and high-E at 9 o’clock. Listen to how the notes seemingly chase each other in the stereo field.
Vale Vanezolano no.3
Here’s a short composition: Thousand Paths (Joel de Guzman 2014). This one is mixed to mono using the EMG-81 EQ capture before applying distortion and amp simulation.
Thousand Paths
Recuerdos de la Alhambra —A classical guitar piece composed in 1896 in Granada by Spanish composer and guitarist Francisco Tárrega performed on a Fender Stratocaster equipped with the Nu multichannel pickups, again with a “classical” EQ capture.
Nu Multi Pinout

Nu Multi Standard vs. Basic
The only difference between the Nu Multi Standard and Nu Multi Basic (available as options) is the inclusion of the Internal breakout (see below). The Nu Multi Basic does not include the Internal breakout.
The Nu Multi Basic by itself has all the power, signal and ground connectors available that you can use to connect to whatever audio input devices you wish to connect to. The Internal breakout that comes with the Nu Multi Standard expands the inputs to other audio sources such as other pickups and control voltages (CVs).
Internal Breakout

Open Source
This Project is entirely Open Source. The designs (schematics, PCB layout, software, bill of materials, CAD drawings) are freely shared and 100% free, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source code is distributed under the MIT License.
All hardware design files and source code are available in the Nu Github Repository: https://github.com/cycfi/nu
Hardware design files licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Software source code distributed under the MIT License.
All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders. The use of these trademarks does not imply any affiliation or endorsement by the trademark holders.