Hi folks,
I'm Alex from Alegree, a rather new pickup winder on the scene.
I've just about got to the point of being happy with the standard 'must-haves' pickup sets in my catalogue now (50s humbuckers, 60s Strat, hotrodded humbucker set (to be released very soon)) and now I want to pursue my real goal - having the most unique pickup designs ever.
For anyone who hasn't stumbled across me yet, and is curious what I have to offer, have a look at www.alegree.co.uk for my pickup information site, and shop.alegree.co.uk for my entire range of products.
Here's what I already have:
Hot P90 toned Strat bridge
Strat toned Tele neck (all my Strat necks are available like this)
Active toned humbucker set
Hybrid humbucker
Really clean and bright (acoustic like) Strat set
Here's what I have planned:
(Quite hard to describe the tone) a Tele bridge/P90 toned with a humbucker bridge bite humbucker neck. Basically a high output humbucker neck which is cleaner than any humbucker neck I've ever heard before. (prototyping done, to be released shortly)
vintage P90 toned Strat set
High output Strat set utilising flatwork flare for a scooped vintage EQ
Tele bridge toned Strat bridge
Active pickups with passive characteristics and look
Hot minihumbucker bridge (hotrodded bridge characteristics)(prototyping has begun)
Alnico rods and bar magnet + steel screws humbuckers
February has been really rather quiet, so I'm flying through the prototypes at the moment and I'm struggling to think of more designs. I'm sure there's lots of mad scientists on this forum who have crazy ideas that have never been made before, so lets collaborate and build some weird stuff!
Edit:
The general consensus appears to be for Filtertrons and Staple P90s
I'll update with photos and maybe some videos of my progress as these develop.
the first humbucker sized filtertron prototype! Wrong cover due to supplier screw up, but pretty nevertheless. 4.4k DCR with massive alnico 5 magnet - tone is like a less twangy and lower output P90 - doesn't sound remotely like a stadard Gibson bucker. It has a smoothness and a treble bite that P90s lack - they seem like opposites, so both together is a bit bizarre!
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Truth be told I'm not very familiar with gold foils, but what little information I've been able to find, they look like they're constructed like a Jazzmaster pickup with a bar magnet rather than rods.
I reckon something along the lines of a P rails would work- using a single coil sized humbucker bobbin for the secondary coil. Working out how it would all be held together would be a challenge though.
I think I'll have to order in some of this stuff to satisfy my curiosity.
and some of those pickup-through coil designs fender did on their lap steels, that have no pick attack
It really does work.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
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I'd be interested in this!
I'd like to get into staples at some point in the future, but at this point in time I don't think I could. I'd need to have loads of custom parts made for those and I think the investment would be too much for me at present- all my profits are going into upsizing my store at the moment!
Ideally for the moment I'd like designs that I could make out of the standard parts I already have my hands on (my supplier has a pretty decent array of parts so I can still be pretty adventurous) - but of course with some twists in construction to make them unique.
This confuses me, as it's the best pickup position
Seriously - Used to be all about the neck, then I went through a snappy bridge phase and now I hang out on the middle.
Never use the inbetween positions - I'd be happy with a 3 way.
I think the problem is that it's made to be the same as the neck, and the neck is always designed to be more bright to compensate for being the neck pickup - so you get an overly bright middle to get the nice quack 2 and 4 positions. I reckon you could get a nice middle tone with a tapped single - have the 2 and 4 positions tapped to be the same as the neck, then the 3rd position could be with the additional coil to beef it up a bit. I'm sure there's a switch out there that could automatically do that.
with the coil split to get the inbetween sounds
It's my understanding that inbetwen sounds sound quacky because the pickups cancel frequencies when used in parallel - the closer the pickups are in design, the more frequency cancellations, the more quack. I'm sure that's probably a oversimplification, but that's my experience of it.
A split humbucker and a true single are very different in design so there probably wouldn't be a great deal of quack in those 2 and 4 positions. Maybe if the neck and bridge were made to be like split humbuckers by design you'd get decent quack and a P90 like tone in the neck and bridge positions.
If there's enough interest I could poke my supplier and see if I can have some custom guards cut for SHS.
the main issue with SHS is it looks ridiculous
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