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Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I had a set of their grey bobbin late 60s spec Strat pickups in my Strat and they really impressed me. Surprising considering the origins...
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
regards jez
What many people forget is that it is the care in selection of materials, the reduction of tolerances to the smallest margin you can, and really caring about your product reliably makes good pickups.
The huge Far Easter factories churn out pickups by the thousand, often the parts are generic, slack, and made to fit with silicon 'glue'. Potting is over done ... wind patterns generic, and care in assembly/QC cursory.
I am actually quite a fan of cheap pickups for certain things. If you want to use a ton of effects and heavily process your sound, then to be honest, pickup choice is going to be low on your list of priorities.
My own experience with GFS, when I was just a consumer, before being a manufacturer was mixed. I had a 'Lipstick humbucker' from them ... more out of curiosity than anything ... and it was quite nice. I followed that up with a 'Hot' Tele pickup that was really horrible ... twangless, nasal and overcompressed. Then a customer brought me one of their humbucker sized P90s that had stopped working ... I was a bit shocked to find there was just a lonely humbucker bobbin sat under that cover ... nothing remotely like a P90.
Their Strat pickups can be quite acceptable.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Later ones were better built anyway ... but they always used 43awg wire to get enough wire in the narrower space ... that made them sound less P90 like than some more expensive bucker sized 90s that use the same 42awg wire that a real P90 uses. The trick there is that companies like Bare Knuckle, Creamery and yes myself, make our own bobbins so we design em a little taller to get all the thicker 42awg wire in. Thr Chinese mass produced stuff tends to use bobbins off the shelf for cheapness ... and vary the wire gauge. Now this can sound perfectly acceptable ... don't get me wrong ... just not as much like a proper P90 as with the 'right' wire.
As an interesting aside: the Dynasonic (a descendant of which is my own Sun-T-Ron) is a very close relative to a P90 in design. Similar coil shape and size so it gets all those big chewy low notes ... but with a much more focused magnetic field from six alnico poles ... and the zing of a hot wind with super thin 44awg wire. Shows what an extreme variation on a theme can do:)
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message