Oil City Masterwound Dynamite

OilCityPickups

I've been making the Oil City Masterwound Dynamite for some time now, but I thought it was about time I put a spotlight on some of my less well  known pickups.

This is timely as I am fitting the particular pair in the picture to my own SG, so I thought I would talk you through their spec and options.

For years I have been a fan of a certain Australian Gibson SG toting rock guitarist, and I wanted to produce a set of pickups that were a homage to his sound. 

Based on the sixties 'T-Top' these beauties are wound 7.5/ 8.2k neck and bridge respectively ... a little more heat than vintage for the bridge position to balance out. The coils are wound symmetrically for mid-range push, and fitted with short sixties style magnets (also available with regular PAF length mags). 

Winding wire on the set in the pic is 'Polysol' as used in genuine T-Tops ... but PAF style 'PVA' plain enamel wound is also an option for a slightly less biting top end.

Cover options are nickel plated nickel, raw nickel (as in the pic) gold plated nickel, and black nickel ... and open topped they can come in a wide range of bobbin colours from traditional black, zebra, reversed zebra etc, to wild options like hot pink, royal blue or fire red! 

In tone they are what you would expect ... an aggressive mid range bark that teams up brilliantly with a good 'British sound' amp run well up. There's plenty of bottom end, courtesy of the A5 magnets and healthy top end sparkle. 

If any of you want to get your paws on one 'off the shelf' I believe Jonathan at Feline guitars has some stock :-)

 

OilCityPickups

Oh and a look at the back ... with the new 'Masterwound green label'

Excuse the 'workman's dabs' on the baseplate :-)

TTony

TheGuitarWeasel said:

Excuse the 'workman's dabs' on the baseplate :-)

But that's proof that they've been made by real human hands!

Mkjackary

@theguitarweasel What is the difference between masterwound and non-masterwound? Had a quick look on the website and can't see anything (although I may have missed it). Is masterwound just a humbucker thing or single coils too?

OilCityPickups

Right ... firstly, my 'standard' range can be wound/built by me or any of the couple of people I have available to wind in my workshop. My 'Masterwound' pickups are entirely made by me. My standard range feature a limited set of of the most popular options ... with 'Masterwound' it is more like 'Custom Shop', the options are wider and the designs themselves feature more exotic materials and components than the standard range. For example my Bean-O PAF style features among its options: Butyl Butyrate bobbins modeled from 3D scans of the 50s originals, drawn steel keeper bars, rough cast alnico magnets, threaded baseplates and American PVA plain enamel wire. Added to this they are available with 1959 correct 'TV set' style covers, again modeled from 3D scans of 50s covers ... in several finishes including relic. These take on pickups made by some US companies as 'true 50s' style head to head ... no compromise ... except the price, which is around than 2/3 that of the US alternative.

And yes there are Masterwound single coils too ... for example my 'Route 66' Strat set, based on measurements taken on vintage 60s Fender pickups :-)

Mkjackary

TheGuitarWeasel said:

Right ... firstly, my 'standard' range can be wound/built by me or any of the couple of people I have available to wind in my workshop. My 'Masterwound' pickups are entirely made by me. My standard range feature a limited set of of the most popular options ... with 'Masterwound' it is more like 'Custom Shop', the options are wider and the designs themselves feature more exotic materials and components than the standard range. For example my Bean-O PAF style features among its options: Butyl Butyrate bobbins modeled from 3D scans of the 50s originals, drawn steel keeper bars, rough cast alnico magnets, threaded baseplates and American PVA plain enamel wire. Added to this they are available with 1959 correct 'TV set' style covers, again modeled from 3D scans of 50s covers ... in several finishes including relic. These take on pickups made by some US companies as 'true 50s' style head to head ... no compromise ... except the price, which is around than 2/3 that of the US alternative.

And yes there are Masterwound single coils too ... for example my 'Route 66' Strat set, based on measurements taken on vintage 60s Fender pickups :-)

Honestly I have heard many other manufacturers (guitar, amp and pickup) use buzzwords like masterwound or others simply as an excuse to charge more for what is essentially the same product.

It is nice to see you arent following that trend and that the price difference isn't just that they have had a sprinkling of fairy dust[ie nothing], but that they are actually different and will cost more as they take more time to make/develop or the parts cost more etc.

Where could I find details about specific masterwound sets and pricing? Got to say that strat set sounds tasty!

OilCityPickups

I am rushed off my feet at the moment, but I will be getting all the Masterwound stuff up as quickly as I can ... in the next week or so I hope. Meanwhile ask Jonathan @FelineGuitars ... he has quite a few of the humbucking designs in stock.

Jeremiah

What difference does a long or short magnet make?

FelineGuitars

We raced ahead and were putting together a page for these as we had stock on our shelves

Not as fully fleshed out as it was going to be in time 

Ash was going to call the ASL  - as in his initials as they were to be signature masterwound sets, but decided to use Oil City Masterwound instead so as to not divorce them from the rest of the range too much.

Here is the page: http://www.felineguitars.com/upgrades/pickups/ASL.html

Also the idea was to have them sold through a small select number of specialist guitar repairers or  luthiers - the kind who would also be installing such models in their own high end builds.

It was this collaboration that sparked the idea for the Masterwound range offering something a bit special.

We have stock on the shelf in a couple of options and colours.

OilCityPickups

Jeremiah said:

What difference does a long or short magnet make?

Short magnets have slightly less power, and focus the frequency of the pickup to the upper mids and highs a little bit more than long mags. Similarly, rough cast magnets have, for the want of a better word, a softer field than polished ones, more suited to 'vocal' PAF like tones.