Cheaper after market pickup brands like.....

Jez6345789

siraxeman said:

Jez6345789 said:

What you don' t get in most cases is what you get from OCP or other boutique winders which is ears and knowledge.

Without wishing to sound racist what appreciation does your average asian factory worker have of western guitar?

The guy who grew up listening to Angular Banjoes and Chinese opera really is not going to get it. 

That in my mind is the main difference

I'm not sure that you're right on that...you might be but I think perhaps some of these companies are owned by westerners who know their onions and commission the manufacture of their designs simply to make more for less. The pups of these companies are made to a certain design to achieve a particular sound just like the big wigs do. 

I dont disagree to a certain extent certainly with Duncan and Dimarzio probably others they are winding, 1000's of pickups to a their own formula that for a lot of pickups have now become generic. so stuff like the JB and 59 combination they were a good rock sounding PAF style pickup back in the day when Gibson were screwing around. To duplicate that in an Asian factory today is pretty easy to do. The fact that Duncan sold a million of them will be enough to spur most people on. Pretty much anything in the mass commercial market can easily be reverse engineered.

These days its the only really the smaller guys that are doing the type of work that is not really suited to commercial volume pickup winding.

All that said I am amazed with the availability of cheap labour that you are not seeing some enterprising soul set up a shop teaching asian workers to wind by hand and achieve the type of work done by the small guy I am sure it will come.

When I was looking for a change of direction 10 years ago I modelled out starting a pickup business and saw too many issues like that down the road even if you established a solid brand of custom wound pickups you would grow for a while but the biggest threat to me was somebody doing what I was doing with a good low cost work force who were well trained and could produce the more exotic stuff cheaply. Then all you are left with is selling the idea of secret sauce and special mojo and I would find that sort of thing hard. 

Certainly I am not anti budget pickups and also think that like Klon and other things certain sets of pickups very quickly get over hyped via the internet. Its a very cyclical business look at the rise of Suhr in the pickup market a few years back with the Aldridge set and the low wind Thornbuckers suddenly they are a buzz word and this years darling, as far as I know they were just a PAF variant run up on a commercial winding machine could of been made anywhere. 

Xsmnmy

I have a few guitars with vintage P90 and P13 pickups. I used a 'vintage style' Tonerider P90 in the neck position on one project and a Lollar 50s wind in another (with vintage pickups in the bridge positions on both). The Tonerider sounds great, I prefer it to the Lollar to be honest, though the gtrs are quite different - one is '54 style Les Paul with a maple top, and the other is more of a 50s Special kind of thing.

Jez6345789

smnmy said:

I have a few guitars with vintage P90 and P13 pickups. I used a 'vintage style' Tonerider P90 in the neck position on one project and a Lollar 50s wind in another (with vintage pickups in the bridge positions on both). The Tonerider sounds great, I prefer it to the Lollar to be honest, though the gtrs are quite different - one is '54 style Les Paul with a maple top, and the other is more of a 50s Special kind of thing.

And at the end of the day thats the rub one mans boutique pickup is anothers expensive pile of magnets and wires. 
It is also true throwing stupid money at pickups is no guarantee you will get a sound you like. 

I have used two sets of Toneriders on my own partscasters and the first set I really hated and in the end I wound my own well three versions till I got what I liked. The 2nd set was for a friends birthday parts caster he also hated the Toneriders and ended up with Fender Noiseless the JB ones. It all comes down in the end to what you like. 

So I suppose the real wisdom these days is throw on a set of something cheap and see if you like it you have far less to lose than if you throw big money at a US custom maker and hate them. 

sawyer

I think its all subjective. Like I said further up the thread I've got two strats both fitted with Iron Gear Blues Engine in the bridge. Ones alder/ones ash. Alder one has two hot singles and usual strat controls. Ash has single humbucker plus one volume. They both sound different as you would imagine they would,despite been the same model.So I think a manufacturer can say a pickup sounds like this or it sounds like that. But until its actually in your guitar you just don't know what its gonna be like. Unless it comes with mojo  of course:). 

rossi

The Tonerider pickups are very good .I upgraded a PRS SE with two P90's and it was a huge improvement .Same with an Epi Dot and Teles . I play blues ,jazz ,a bit of country ,all finger style through Fender amps .Pickups are very personal and I often think that so much depends on the amps used ,picking style ,music style used  etc .This is often never said in pickup recommendations.So one mans meh is another mans brilliance .

Fez

I have some old Kent Armstrong pick ups in a Strat with an Oil City Hardman in the Bridge and another strat with Oil City triple blues in the neck and middle and an Iron Gear Tex Loco in the bridge. The budget ones do hold up quite well but the hand wound pick ups do have a certain something. There are Dimarzios on my Gordon Smith but they are a bit err characterless but I love the Bare Knuckle Holy Diver in the Epi Les Paul.
In the end you pays your money and you takes your choice. There are some great value pick ups available but you do need to try them in the guitar.

TTBZ

I've had an Irongear Rolling Mill - didn't stay for long as it was a bit too low output for my tastes but tone wise it was up there with my Gibson pickups,  Bare Knuckles and Seymour Duncan. I'd definitely try some of their others. I really liked the Bare Knuckles I had, but I doubt I'd buy another set now - they're just too expensive when you can get a pair of Irongear for 60 odd quid or a pair of Oil City for about the same price as one Bare Knuckle.

Alegree

As a pickup winder on the higher end of the spectrum price wise, I'd say you're paying for the R&D and expertise, rather than the production methods (although there is benefit to handwinding in some applications).

When some high end winders say they create the most faithful PAF replica you've got to laugh though. PAFs were so loosely quality controlled you can wind anything in the 7-8.5k range with any alnico magnet and 42 PE wire and there would have been a PAF made like that. Not to mention PAFs were never handwound, so your cheap PAF replicas are actually more accurate. That's not to say handwound PAF replicas can't be great though - just not quite as accurate (as someone who has zero interest in vintage accuracy, that's certainly not a negative in my eyes)


And that's why I stay away from vintage recreations generally. If people are paying a premium I want to develop and sell unique pickups that require a bit of thought and creativity to go into their design to set them apart. I like to think this makes the premium people pay far less snake oil. 

stickyfiddle

DrBob said:

antifash said:

Recommend these : http://ironstone-guitar-pickups.co.uk/

Would second that. I've used the Silver Strat set in a couple of builds/upgrades and at the price they're brilliant ! 

+1 for these. Genuinely fantastic pickups, but obviously no "bobbin mojo". I'm a huge fan of Mojo & Bareknuckle but if on a budget I wouldn't hesitate to get those again.