If You Want Cheap But Good Humbuckers

BillDL

I thought I would just post this message to mention my experience of the Vanson '57 Alnico II covered humbucker I bought as the neck pickup for a project LP copy guitar.

I bought the guitar (along with another new one) from an online retailer as New B-stock - "broken headstock" - for £40.  RRP is £179, so it's a budget guitar but I know the brand and they are structurally good quality, but the lowest priced ones have crap pickups and electrics installed as the cost cutting part of the build.  When it arrived the headstock was completely severed and additionally the neck was broken across the full width between the 9th and 10th frets.  It must have been stood on in transit from The Orient and nobody looked further down than the obvious headstock break.  I couldn't be bothered returning it and was going to keep the hardware and bin the rest, but I decided to repair it rather than adding to landfill.  I'm glad I did.  It's the first time I've glued and splined neck breaks using only a hand chisel indoors (garage is cold and damp) rather than a router, and I effected a good solid repair that I'm really pleased with.  The neck is now so smooth that I'm not even going to spray it with opaque black lacquer and the splines and lacquer fill-ins are visually very obvious.

I had a good quality but lower priced (about £40 each) set of humbuckers (Alnico V covered -15.4K bridge, 7.1K neck), but there was an internal wiring fault on the neck pickup which is now pulled apart and in the recycle bins.  I've had some single coils from Vanson before and they far surpassed the low price for build quality and sound, so I bought the '57 Alnico II neck humbucker (7.3K) for £19 to use instead.

Wow!  I don't know what the matching 8.3K bridge pickup will be like, but the neck pickup sounds lovely.  It's clear as a bell and sings.  This is the first time I've used an Alnico II humbucker in the neck position.  So often neck pickups I have tried have been too muffled and muddy (apart from the 7.4K IronGear Alnico IV Blues Engine I like), but not this pickup.  It sounds a LOT better, and is significantly louder, than the Alnico V 15.4K pickup in the bridge position that cost twice as much.

I know that perceived "loudness" can be attributable to wire gauge, number of winds, and the predominant frequencies wherever it's positioned, but Vanson got it perfect with this pickup.

If anybody has a cheap project guitar requiring really nice sounding pickups but you don't want to spend much, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Vanson '57 Alnico II set for only £35.90.  That's £1 less for a set than for one IronGear or Tonerider humbucker, and I like their pickups a lot.  I'm so impressed that I'm off to buy the matching Vanson '57 bridge pickup and I hope it is as good.

NicoAdie

I've have a set of these in a Westfield SG and agree - they're absolutely great for the price, and genuinely not far off the Fralins I have in another guitar in all honesty.

impmann

I had a Vanson A2 neck unit and A5 bridge unit in a USA Fender Strat - utterly sublime sound. These pickups are genuinely superb - at any price. At the bargain price they are, they are insanely good.

adamino

Tonerider are great too.

BillDL

True, but they are twice the price.

Yorkie

I put that set in an Epi SG. Sold the guitar (neck dive...), miss the pickups. I won't buy them again because I really want to try new things (e.g. Blues Engine), but I can wholeheartedly recommend them at that ridiculous price. 

Dave_Mc

What's the bridge pickup which cost twice as much which didn't sound as good? 

Yorkie

Dave_Mc said:

What's the bridge pickup which cost twice as much which didn't sound as good? 

Humbucker sized, price around £36... I'm guessing that'll be an Iron Gear one: Rolling Mill, Tesla Shark or Hot Slag  

BillDL

Dave_Mc said:

What's the bridge pickup which cost twice as much which didn't sound as good? 

IronGear Dirty Torque in bridge and Blues Engine (the dodgy one) in neck.  Add postage.  Free shipping by Vanson.  The DC Resistance readings I gave are the actual readings I took.  Where IronGear give those figures as 16.4K and 7.4K, they actually read 15.4K, and 7.1K on my multimeter.  IronGear don't give their inductance figures.  Those were from the notes relating to another set of pickups and I was switching between them at the time.  Ignore them.  I've edited the OP. I like IronGear pickups and I have that same Dirty Torque / Blues Engine combination in a couple of other guitars and they work well together.

In this case though, the Vanson '57 Alnico II 7.3K neck pickup is significantly louder than the 15.4K Alnico V Rolling Mill in the bridge on this guitar.  It's not as though I have the pickups at really odd or unusual heights.  I just think it's the way the bridge pickup deals with the frequencies in the neck position.  Actually, I didn't even check the DCR of the Vanson pickup.  They do say it's + / - 10%.

ToneControl

I'm interested in these:

VANSON '57 Alnico II Black PAF Style Humbucker Pickup Set for LP, SG, – Vanson Guitars


for an HSH Harley benton Fusion III


has anyone tried this before - just wondering about fitting these pickups without the mounting rings in a cheap guitar's routing

Ddigger

Alegree FTW!

BillDL

I don't think there should be any issues @ToneControl - The chrome casing of the pickup fits perfectly into a universal mounting ring that has had a number of other unbranded and branded covered humbuckers in it.  The mounting feet / frame are / is very standard in dimensions and the same as some uncovered Roswell HAF pickups I have.  The height adjustment bolts are standard as well, unlike the thinner and more finely threaded IronGear ones. I would assume that the uncovered version conforms to the same universal standards also, but if you are in doubt (especially about the height of the mounting frame given that it would be direct mounted), then a drawing with dimensions is available on the product page.

NOTE: the COVERED '57 pickup has an overall height (to the top of the cover) of 22mm whereas the uncovered one is 20mm high to the top level of the bobbins.  Clearly the 2mm difference is the additional height of the cover.

Update Regarding Output Levels of Pickups

I mentioned in my previous post how I had a faulty IronGear Blues Engine neck pickup, which had prompted the installation of the Vanson '57 pickup, and that the Vanson was noticeably louder than the IronGear Dirty Torque bridge pickup.  I have discovered that the remaining IronGear pickup is faulty, and suffers from drop-outs that either reduce the output slightly, considerably, or completely.  This is rather annoying.  I have had this pickup (and the faulty Blues Engine one) for quite a long while and there is a possibility the cable has been tugged.  I think it would be too much of a coincidence for an assembly fault to have affected two different pickups, albeit bought as a pair.  It's going to be replaced by a Vanson '57.

@Ddigger - yes, Alegree pickups are good, and his "Old Timer" range offer very good value for good pickups just as the Vanson ones do.  If you are talking about the Alegree hand wound pickups, then they are obviously at a very different price level from the Vanson pickups.

Dave_Mc

You weren't far off @Yorkie ! 

Thanks @BillDL I've said before but I was a bit disappointed with Irongear- however, I haven't tried their humbuckers. EDIT: Just read further down, that does make more sense if the Irongears were faulty regarding the output level.

@ToneControl Hopefully @BillDL can confirm, but I think you have to drill out the feet for the bigger screws that direct-mounted pickups need. Presumably you'd also need to check that the leg lengths are the same. I checked the ones in my sister's HB Fusion Tele (without taking them out of the guitar, so don't 100% trust what I say here!) and also compared to the specs on the Roswell website and I think they're short legs, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

BillDL

Good point about the leg lengths @Dave_Mc. ; The most commonly fitted pickups in Harley Bentons are Roswell's take on the PAF, namely HAF.  I THINK that's what's fitted to the Fusion III, but they may use different ones on different models.

HAF-B humbucker - Bridge:
https://roswellpickups.com/product/haf-b/
HAF-N humbucker - Neck:
https://roswellpickups.com/product/haf-n/

Apart from the pole spacings (52mm and 50mm) the dimensions are identical (HAF-B drawing shown below).

The base of the leg to the top of the bobbin is 19.6mm.  The Vanson '57 open coil is 20mm, i.e. only 0.4mm difference (about 3/4 of a turn on an M3 or #3-48 polepiece screw), so it's so negligible as to be the same and that difference could even be taken up by the burr on the underside of the threaded holes.  There are some tiny differences with bobbin dimensions, but again they are so small that they won't make any difference to direct mounting or in a universal mounting ring.

I've never bothered drilling out the threaded holes in the feet for the wood screws when direct mounting.  Decent screws find their own ways through the soft metal of the frame without forcing them, but it would of course depend on the thickness of the screws.

As far as I recall "short leg" pickups have legs 1/4" long and "long legs" 1/2" long, ie. 6.4mm and 12.7mm, so the Vanson '57 and the Roswell HAF are "short leg" pickups if my memory is correct. 

Dave_Mc

@BillDL Yeah I think you're right about the HAFs, but I haven't tried the Strat version of the Fusion. My sister's Fusion Tele (and my HB SG) have the covered versions which I think are called the LAFs and which I assume are more or less identical apart from the cover.

That's very interesting about the legs for direct-mounting. I always assumed you had to get them drilled out- any time I've replaced pickups in a guitar which had direct-mount pickups I just asked the winder to drill them out for me. But if you don't even need to... that does mean there are a few other options available. (I don't have a drill!)

EDIT: I think you're right about the lengths for short and long legs... those are the measurements I came across online, anyway. Kind of annoyingly, Roswell doesn't list the actual length of the leg, just the height of the pickup plus the leg (the uncovered one is a few mm less but I assume that's accounted for by the pickup cover). But they have another model which seems to have much longer legs and its measurement of the pickup plus leg is a lot bigger, so I'm assuming it's long leg and the HAFs and LAFs are short.

E.g. https://roswellpickups.com/product/pv2-v/ or https://roswellpickups.com/product/lvs-n/

I'm sure I've also come across some manufacturers who do medium legs, though. Tonerider maybe? They do seem to be between the size of the short and long leg Roswells.

longjaw

I have a set of Vanson AlNiCo 5s single coils in a Strat partscaster and they're great. Had them for at least 5 years.

ToneControl

I ordered a mixed pair, 57 neck, 59 bridge

BillDL

Hopefully they will work well together.  Curious to know how they sound.

Rabs

Yeah, I have been using Vason pickups for years..  Their humbucker sized P90s are great., like REALLY...  I have told people on here and elsewhere about them for ages but no one usually seemed that interested. 

They are great pickups regardless but for the price cant be beat I dont think.

ToneControl

BillDL said:

Hopefully they will work well together.  Curious to know how they sound.

I fitted them last week, they sound far better than the Roswell ones.
I can't understand why Thomann use such crap pickups

Dave_Mc

ToneControl said:

BillDL said:

Hopefully they will work well together.  Curious to know how they sound.

I fitted them last week, they sound far better than the Roswell ones.
I can't understand why Thomann use such crap pickups

That's great news that they sound good!

To be fair, some of the other Roswells are actually quite nice. But I agree that the humbuckers are a bit middling. And they also seem to fit the exact same ones to almost everything that carries humbuckers!

I think Harley Benton/Thomann used to use Wilkinson pickups, but had a lot of bother with fakes. (There's a Youtube video about it somewhere, I think.) FWIW I think the Roswells I've tried are better than the Wilkinsons I've tried, though I've tried far from all of the available models from either.