Budget Humbuckers £8 delivered

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baldybaldy Frets: 195
Following on from the several recent budget pickups threads I decided to go the complete extreme & ordered the cheapest Chinese no brand/name Humbuckers on ebay at £8 delivered.
They took 2 weeks to arrive, arriving Thursday (no wiring instructions).

As you can see they are 4 conductor "Zebra" humbuckers said to be Alnico V, 14-15k Bridge & 7-8K Neck.
I metered them & got 15.6k Bridge & 8.1k neck, which should put them in the "hot rodded" humbucker ball park.
I had recently been given this "V" FOC which I had already decided to swap all the hardware on as it all was pretty poor.
The "V" had already had a fret level/crown/polish & new Tusq nut fitted a week ago by John at Right Guitar Set Ups & Repairs for the princely sum of £30 !


Today I swapped the pickups & all the hardware.
I fitted Wilkinson EZ-LOK tuners from Vanson & roller bridge & stop tail, vol pots x 2, push pull tone pot, 3 way toggle switch & jack input all from Axetec, all in gold.
I also fitted gold strap pins I had lying around, moving the top pin to the front upper neck plate mounting to reduce neck dive.




Other than having to bend the pickup legs slightly, as the bobbins were fouling the pickup rings, the job was straightforward.
Hopefully tomorrow I will do the wiring for which I will use connector blocks so that I can swap pickups easily & quickly without having to do any de-soldering/soldering.
Oh I know the lawn is a mess.
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Comments

  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71956
    With no wiring instructions the tricky bit will be working out which of the 24 possible combinations of the 4-conductor wires give you series and in phase :). But using chocolate blocks at least makes trial and error straightforward if you can't do it with a multimeter...

    They're probably going to be fine. I've got some SeiQ Rickenbacker-alike 'Toasterbuckers' which cost all of £19 each, posh compared to yours ;). They're fine - they sound very good, and the only slight problem with them is that they're a bit microphonic - but no worse than real Rick ones.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • baldybaldy Frets: 195
    Does it matter which way up I mount the pups ?
    I have put them with the black part of the pickup on the inside, white outside as I prefer the look ?
    I have seen several videos of extremely cheap pups versus expensive, Darrell Braun"s videos spring to mind, & generally the cheap pups sound pretty good to my ears.
    I have several other sets of pups I want to try in this guitar, hence the chocolate blocks, before I decide on which set I am going to stick with.
    So far the guitar owes me £30 for the set up & new Tusq nut, £8 for the pups, & if I had to buy the parts that I have fitted about another £75, so under £120 for a very playable "V".


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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9981
    tFB Trader
    One screw coil ... by tradition ... should face the bridge, the other should face the neck. However it seems you have one reverse zebra pickup and one zebra pickup so that may look odd! The screw coil positioning matters if the pickups have been wound with a coil offset (one coil stronger than the other) ... an offset improves the 'openness' of the pickup's tone as it allows a few more frequencies not to be cancelled out by the humbucking action. Putting the stronger coil away from the bridge on the bridge position pickup fattens the sound slightly, and putting the stronger coil of the neck position pickup closer to the bridge stops the e neck position from becoming to plummy.
    It's very doubtful that the coils on such a cheap humbucker will be wound with any offset ... so it's likely to be cosmetic only. If there is offset ... with no wiring diagram, sorting out the weaker and stronger coils will be a job for a multimeter. 
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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  • baldybaldy Frets: 195
    edited May 2019
    Thanks for that I will see how I get on.
    For £8 I have nothing to lose, & really I only bought them as an experiment to see what sub £10 pickups sounded like.
    I have seen videos of comparisons of $10 dollar pups versus Seymour Duncans etc & TBH the cheap pups have sounded good.
    Maybe not as good but certainly very usable & really good value for money.
    One of my favourite sounding pups are a set of Vanson 59 PAF"s which were only £30 the pair & I do have Seymour Duncans in a couple of guitars.
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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9981
    tFB Trader
    baldy said:
    Thanks for that I will see how I get on.
    For £8 I have nothing to lose, & really I only bought them as an experiment to see what sub £10 pickups sounded like.
    I have seen videos of comparisons of $10 dollar pups versus Seymour Duncans etc & TBH the cheap pups have sounded good.
    Maybe not as good but certainly very usable & really good value for money.
    One of my favourite sounding pups are a set of Vanson 59 PAF"s which were only £30 the pair & I do have Seymour Duncans in a couple of guitars.
    You can improve pickups yourself ... potting properly ... a magnet swap ... all cheap to do if bucks are tight.
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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  • baldybaldy Frets: 195
    Bucks aren't particularly tight, I have guitars with £200 plus SD sets in them, but having fitted pups from "budget" brands such as  IronGear, Entwistle & Vanson myself I believe that price is not necessarily the "be all & end all"  when it comes to tone & quality & IMHO you are often just paying a lot for the name.
    I am in no way saying these £8 humbuckers are as good as a £200 plus set but  quite possibly they will sound OK.
    Likewise they may sound crap.
    If they sound crap it"s only £8 wasted & I am just genuinely curious as to how a pick up combo that costs £8 delivered sounds.
    As it is the guitar will probably end up with an IronGear Dirty Torque/Blues Engine combo as that was my original plan for it & I already have them.
    Certainly I can say that, to my ears anyway, my £60 IronGear Hot Slag/Rolling Mill combo is at least as good as my £200 Seymour Duncan JB/59 combo.
    In fact I actually slightly prefer the sound of the IronGears.
    In this Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf4xYCMtFVg the presenter A/B"s a $15 pair of Chinese HB"s against a $150 pair of Seymour Duncans.
    I would say that the SD"s do sound slightly better but there is not a lot in it IMO & certainly not enough to justify the SD"s being 10 times the price.
    Just my opinion obviously.

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  • OilCityPickupsOilCityPickups Frets: 9981
    tFB Trader
    baldy said:
    Bucks aren't particularly tight, I have guitars with £200 plus SD sets in them, but having fitted pups from "budget" brands such as  IronGear, Entwistle & Vanson myself I believe that price is not necessarily the "be all & end all"  when it comes to tone & quality & IMHO you are often just paying a lot for the name.
    I am in no way saying these £8 humbuckers are as good as a £200 plus set but  quite possibly they will sound OK.
    Likewise they may sound crap.
    If they sound crap it"s only £8 wasted & I am just genuinely curious as to how a pick up combo that costs £8 delivered sounds.
    As it is the guitar will probably end up with an IronGear Dirty Torque/Blues Engine combo as that was my original plan for it & I already have them.
    Certainly I can say that, to my ears anyway, my £60 IronGear Hot Slag/Rolling Mill combo is at least as good as my £200 Seymour Duncan JB/59 combo.
    In fact I actually slightly prefer the sound of the IronGears.
    In this Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf4xYCMtFVg the presenter A/B"s a $15 pair of Chinese HB"s against a $150 pair of Seymour Duncans.
    I would say that the SD"s do sound slightly better but there is not a lot in it IMO & certainly not enough to justify the SD"s being 10 times the price.
    Just my opinion obviously.

    I'm with you ... Duncans and DiMarzio are massively over priced. They are mass produced pickups, and they are only marginally better than mass produced Far Eastern pickups. Most of the price you pay is due to expensive US labour costs and a huge advertising budget. Hot Slag/Rolling Mill combo are excellent ... and all you miss out on is the 'US made' tag. 
    I spend my life making pickups, in fact I don't have much of a life outside pickups lol ... but this means I know exactly what makes a good pickup ... and it's not advertising budget, celebrity endorsements or fancy packaging ... it's good design, quality materials and care in production. Both of which are about equal between mass produced Far Eastern and mass produced US. In fact most US mass manufacturers use imported Chinese parts ...   
    Professional pickup winder, horse-testpilot and recovering Chocolate Hobnob addict.
    Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups  ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message  

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  • earwighoneyearwighoney Frets: 3489
    I'm with you ... Duncans and DiMarzio are massively over priced. They are mass produced pickups, and they are only marginally better than mass produced Far Eastern pickups. Most of the price you pay is due to expensive US labour costs and a huge advertising budget. Hot Slag/Rolling Mill combo are excellent ... and all you miss out on is the 'US made' tag. 
    Agree/have a wisdom. 

    I've always found Duncans and Dimarzio to be fine pickups but not worth their price tags, especially in comparison to pickups like Tonerider, GFS etc. 
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  • mbembe Frets: 1840
    I got a set of those for my Epiphone Les Paul a few months back. Cost me £12, oof was I robbed? No I don't think so as they are an improvement on the original pickups.

    Baldy, I got 2 zebras so they look like your arrangement except the screws are the right way round. I will open up the cavity tomorrow and see how I wired them up. I followed a wiring diagram off the Internet but can't remember which brand they corresponded to.
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  • baldybaldy Frets: 195
    Great mbe a wiring diagram or which colour wire corresponds to what would be great & save me some time.
    Glad to know also that my investment of £7.99 wasn"t wasted either. 
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  • victorludorumvictorludorum Frets: 996
    I'm doing a similar thing at the moment. I'm putting together a cheapo, beater guitar, and I have a couple of Epi 57 alnico pickups which I'm going to play with to see what I can squeeze out of them. I hope to do some recordings to show the differences, but it's not an urgent project for me, so it may be a while before I get around to it...
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  • mbembe Frets: 1840
    @baldy, I checked the wiring on my Epiphone and the colours are the same as Seymour Duncan. Black is hot, green is soldered with the bare wire to ground on the volume pot casing and red and white connected together.

    Here is a link to the wiring diagram for you
    https://imgur.com/a/PwGGtjb
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  • thegummythegummy Frets: 4389
    baldy said:
    Bucks aren't particularly tight, I have guitars with £200 plus SD sets in them, but having fitted pups from "budget" brands such as  IronGear, Entwistle & Vanson myself I believe that price is not necessarily the "be all & end all"  when it comes to tone & quality & IMHO you are often just paying a lot for the name.
    I am in no way saying these £8 humbuckers are as good as a £200 plus set but  quite possibly they will sound OK.
    Likewise they may sound crap.
    If they sound crap it"s only £8 wasted & I am just genuinely curious as to how a pick up combo that costs £8 delivered sounds.
    As it is the guitar will probably end up with an IronGear Dirty Torque/Blues Engine combo as that was my original plan for it & I already have them.
    Certainly I can say that, to my ears anyway, my £60 IronGear Hot Slag/Rolling Mill combo is at least as good as my £200 Seymour Duncan JB/59 combo.
    In fact I actually slightly prefer the sound of the IronGears.
    In this Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf4xYCMtFVg the presenter A/B"s a $15 pair of Chinese HB"s against a $150 pair of Seymour Duncans.
    I would say that the SD"s do sound slightly better but there is not a lot in it IMO & certainly not enough to justify the SD"s being 10 times the price.
    Just my opinion obviously.

    I'm with you ... Duncans and DiMarzio are massively over priced. They are mass produced pickups, and they are only marginally better than mass produced Far Eastern pickups. Most of the price you pay is due to expensive US labour costs and a huge advertising budget. Hot Slag/Rolling Mill combo are excellent ... and all you miss out on is the 'US made' tag. 
    I spend my life making pickups, in fact I don't have much of a life outside pickups lol ... but this means I know exactly what makes a good pickup ... and it's not advertising budget, celebrity endorsements or fancy packaging ... it's good design, quality materials and care in production. Both of which are about equal between mass produced Far Eastern and mass produced US. In fact most US mass manufacturers use imported Chinese parts ...   
    Do you have any endorsement deals with anyone?

    If not, can I be the first? :P
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  • rossirossi Frets: 1699
    I think one reason for coughing up for high priced US made pickups is they are a given .You know what you are getting with a JB or a A2 pro .You know roughly what you are getting for a certain sound .Other cheaper ones could be all over the place .I know from  my personal experience that Tonerider are very good pickups so  they tend to be my  default choice  and the one I suggest to others.Other people will have different experience .Cheapies are great and  long may they reign but until they are in and up and running its a  gamble .The last set of cheapies I put in were some Maida Vales at 20 quid each into my strat .I love em but had no idea until I started playing and am aware that they suit my quirky playing style and music i try to play (finger style jazz/blues).
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  • baldybaldy Frets: 195
    Mine came with white & green already soldered together ?
    Black & red when metered together give readings of 15.6k bridge & 8.1k neck, I am assuming black is "hot".
    No other wires or wire combinations give any readings at all including splitting the white & green  and trying them both together or separately ?
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  • FunkfingersFunkfingers Frets: 14321
    edited May 2019
    Regarding "overpriced" American-made pickups for electric guitar and bass. The secrets are:
    1. not to listen with your eyes.
    2. buy pre-owned. 

    It probably helps to have some idea of what sound you are aiming for before purchasing. That way, you avoid amassing a drawer full of trial and error "errors".

    The pickups in my Paul Reed Smith S2 Vela are made by G&B in Korea. They suit the instrument perfectly.

    The original pickups from the S2 Singlecut that now houses my Winterizer II humbuckers went into a Asian-made SG copy where they sound as if they were made for that guitar.
    Be seeing you.
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  • MegiiMegii Frets: 1670
    baldy said:
    Mine came with white & green already soldered together ?
    Black & red when metered together give readings of 15.6k bridge & 8.1k neck, I am assuming black is "hot".
    No other wires or wire combinations give any readings at all including splitting the white & green  and trying them both together or separately ?
    \Could be wrong, but from my limited experience of pickup wire colour codes, I would think it's more likely to be red is hot and black is ground.
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  • FunkfingersFunkfingers Frets: 14321
    edited May 2019
    Megii said:
    from my limited experience of pickup wire colour codes
    Wisest not to guess.

    Several of the best known pickup manufacturers use the same four conductor wire insulation colour codes but in different permutations. 

    For a long time, when answering guitar wiring questions, it has been necessary to post a link to the Seymour Duncan website Colo(u)r Codes Translation .pdf page. Eventually, somebody on t'Interweb took the liberty of expanding the SD page to cover several more manufacturers.


    Be seeing you.
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  • baldybaldy Frets: 195
    I only put that as mbe stated he had the same pickups & that black was hot.
    Irrespective the only 2 wires that give a reading are red & black is that correct ?
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  • FunkfingersFunkfingers Frets: 14321
    baldy said:
    I only put that as mbe stated he had the same pickups & that black was hot.
    Irrespective the only 2 wires that give a reading are red & black is that correct ?
    In the photograph that you posted at the beginning of this Discussion, black is hot, red/white are the series and coil splitting link, green and bare are ground.

    This convention holds good even if you rotate the bridge/Treble position pickup through 180 degrees to have its screw polepieces in the customary place.

    Any fancy coil splitting and phase reversal shenanigans and you may need to rearrange the order in which you connect the conductors on the bridge/Treble position pickup.
    Be seeing you.
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