Wizard retiring...

OilCityPickups

My Manson 'Kents' were potted in purple sparkle resin ... and used to kick out some serious racket!
I have a hankering for an old Shergold ... ideally one to restore ... as nice ones are really at a premium these days

Dodge

Big fan of Wizard Pickups - a real shame that he's giving up.  Superb sounding and without the over-inflated price tag of BKP.

FelineGuitars

Kent's hand-wound stuff was great - some of the early offerings that he designed and had made in Korea weren't bad , but the hand-wound stuff was lovely. Kent is still winding in Vermont USA and his son Aaron is running the UK hand-wound business.

I knew Andy from his days at Kent Armstrong's place and later he ran rewinds under the Armstrong name till shifting over to Wizard. I hope he enjoys his new adventure

Roland

JookyChap said:

That's a book there Ash...

If it turns out to be a paper book, rather than a blog, then interest from this forum should help you get a publisher/printer interested

OilCityPickups

Lol conversations repeat themselves ... FelineGuitars.

FelineGuitars

Yes -pretty much what we spoke of yesterday.

EdGrip

A +1 for Marc at Mojo Pickups. I've got one of his broadcaster pickups and it's such a good Tele bridge pickup. I wouldn't have heard of him if it weren't for Jooky. RIPPLES, GUYS

WezV

ICBM said:

I agree, but some of his work borders on deliberate vandalism. There was no sensible reason for a lot of it, and the workmanship was often poor which makes it even less excusable.

he did it at a time when most repairman would do stuff we now consider stupid

and john birch did have an excuse, he knew best.   Never forget that john birch knew best and everyone else's ideas about guitar are wrong

I love mine and am really happy now it has some original pickups, but yeah, i have seen some horrible conversions and shoddy work on early or one off john birches.   my factory les paul style is pretty much perfectly built apart from the 4 massive splits it got from an almighty accident... i brought it like that and was nicely surprised when it turned up still playing quite nicely  

rpr

I bought some old guitar mags from a charity shop years ago. I'm pretty sure one of them had features on J.Birch, Overwater, Flyte etc. It'll be up in the loft. i'll try digging it out and if any one wants it, you can let me know

hotpickups

Monty's guitar pickups. Great set I have i.e. Humdingers.

I did have a set of wizard pickups but I just didn't get on with them and sent them back. That was quite a few years back now and my tastes have changed

mike257

Just found out about this - I've got a set of pickups from Andy in one of my basses and had always planned on going back to him when I got the time/cash to finish a couple of project guitars I've got here.  Top bloke and great service, and his pickups transformed a bass that was only staying around on sentimental value (my first bass, a Squier P-Special) into a gigging machine that got almost as much playtime as my 'nice' basses.  Hope he enjoys a well earned retirement!

RocknRollDave

I bought a Bulldog pickup 2nd hand off this forum, and it was excellent. Spoke via email with Hayden a couple of times and he was never less than extremely helpful and knowledgable.

fretfinder

No one's mentioned Shed Pickups yet...?

hotpickups

Ah yes of course. I had a set of his supernaturals and they were great. I only sold them recently cos I wanted to wire the out of phase via a push pull etc. which you can with them

ICBM

There's also Sidewynder in Scotland - I tested a couple of their pre-production models a few years ago but I haven't heard a lot about them since. They're good pickups - very modern-voiced, which might not be flavour of the month at the moment - but unfortunately rather poorly marketed.

mike_l

RocknRollDave said:

I bought a Bulldog pickup 2nd hand off this forum, and it was excellent. Spoke via email with Hayden a couple of times and he was never less than extremely helpful and knowledgable.


Agreed. When I ordered from him, he actually listened to what I wanted and nailed the tone exactly. I used the Jackson with the Bulldog through a Laney Practice amp at a Jam on Saturday and it sounded absolutely fantastic.

As I've said before, thoroughly recommended

exocet

That's a real shame, I have a set of Ozones which I really rate....for me I prefer them to Fralin Blues Specials and Lollar Dirty Blackface. I was eyeing up their "Revellation" set for my new Strat build but alas it looks like I'm too late.

blueskunk

I had some wizard pickups for a strat, bought here, err well that "other place". They were wonderfull, nuff respect to the guy. We are pretty lucky i reckon to have these cool guys handwinding a various choice of quality pickups. Obviously wizard was a pioneer but iv got a set of Oil City pickups (cowtrons) and a set of Mojos golden foils , just amazing quality and sounds on tap.
These guys will be by first port of call everytime i want new pickups, very happy to support uk guys.

hotpickups

Oops

Paul_C

so who's the go-to guy for repairs/rewinds now ?