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Comments
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.
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.
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.
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.