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.
Comments
My trading feedback: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/210335/yorkie
My trading feedback: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/210335/yorkie
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
Update Regarding Output Levels of Pickups
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.
https://roswellpickups.com/product/haf-b/
HAF-N humbucker - Neck:
https://roswellpickups.com/product/haf-n/
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.
They are great pickups regardless but for the price cant be beat I dont think.
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/RabsWoodGuitars/
My Youtube page
I can't understand why Thomann use such crap pickups
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.