IronGear Rolling Mill 2 mini opinions?

DarnWeight

Looking for a set of cheap replacement mini hums, and wondered if anyone has firsthand experience of these IronGears?  They're wound far hotter than I'd like, but Alnico V magnets and 4-conductor wiring are swinging me.  Should add, I'd almost certainly be wiring them parallel for a cleaner, spankier tone.

jonnyburgo

I put a set of Rolling mills in a Korean Tokai, improved it very very much, really brought it to life they werent minis though

Adam_MD

I had a set of those in a gretsch and were the main reason I got rid of the guitar I really didn't like them. Very middy with no real top end or sparkle. I put a set of p90s in briefly instead and they were much nicer. I really wanted them to be like the mini hums in a les Paul deluxe I used to have but they weren't even close.

I'm not complaining about all Iron Gear pickups just the rolling mill 2s, they just weren't for me.

DarnWeight

Adam_MD said:

I had a set of those in a gretsch and were the main reason I got rid of the guitar I really didn't like them. Very middy with no real top end or sparkle. I put a set of p90s in briefly instead and they were much nicer. I really wanted them to be like the mini hums in a les Paul deluxe I used to have but they weren't even close.

I'm not complaining about all Iron Gear pickups just the rolling mill 2s, they just weren't for me.

Cheers, very useful to know!  I'm trying to remedy an over-hot set with only 2 wires, so was hoping that parallel-wiring a set of these might get me what I was after.

Maybe I should widen this a bit...Anyone tried parallel wiring a mini-hum, and how did it work out?

OilCityPickups

I've accidentally parallel wired Firebird mini hums ... and they sounded minging! :-)
Might be different with drastically over wound ones mind ....

Misterg

DarnWeight said:

Maybe I should widen this a bit...Anyone tried parallel wiring a mini-hum, and how did it work out?

"Yes", and "a bit meh"

This was in the process of trying to find the right pickups for my Firebird build, so may not be typical, and as a bedroom player, I'm probably shooting for something different to those who play out.

I started with  SD  SM1-N neck & SM1-B bridge (their 'vintage' output Firebird pickups) but found them very ice-picky, even with 250k pots. I was pretty gutted about that, but on listening carefully to the sound samples on the SD site, I could hear the same characteristic (this might be part of the "authentic" Firebird sound).

The sound samples for the SM3 sounded more to my liking, even though it was higher output. I picked up a 4 wire SM3-B bridge pickup to try, but it was too much wired in series. It sounded OK wired in parallel and stayed in the bridge position for quite a while. Eventually, I got tired of its harshness and took a punt on a pair of cheap Warman minis.

To my surprise, the Warman mini sounds great in the bridge (IMHO - but this might be because it needed something to take the edge off a bright guitar). Not so good in the neck, though - pretty woolly. The other surprise to me is that the SM3-B sounds great in the neck position, so thats the combination I have now.

I doubt it gives the 'authentic' Firebird tone which IMHO is very cutting, but it's certainly somewhere between single coils & humbucker sounds with a nice bit of growl.