The season is changing, old guitars are coming out of cupboards, if your electrics are crackly or your guitar keeps cutting out it might just be a Dirty guitar jack – don’t blame your pickups. At least not yet.
It’s pretty simple really, if you’ve got a crackly guitar the jack may just need cleaning. Don’t blame your pickups straight away. Jack sockets, switches and pots are more likely to cause problems than your pickups.
Of course, when you eliminate all the other possibilities you might be needing a repairer. Here’s a list og repairers in NZ:
Incidentally, it’s an “output” jack, not an “input” jack – just a pet hate of mine.
You can see the jack in this Les Paul is looking a tad fluffy. This one isn’t very bad but it’s worth a clean anyway as part of a set up.
I use 600 grade wet’n’dry paper used dry.
I simply tear a piece off, roll it up and clean the jack out with it. A squirt with some contact cleaner can help. It’s good to keep a piece in your guitar case in case your jack goes crackly at a gig.
You can see a fair bit of dirt can come off even this relatively clean jack. Just think what that was doing to your earth connection.
If a dirty guitar jackis really bad and you are gigging just replace it. It doesn’t cost much and it’s something you just can’t do without. If your jack stuffs up on stage it’s not a good look. I always have a small piece of 600 grade in my gig bag just in case. Cheers Glyn
As part of my series on How Pickups Work here is How To Test Pickup Phase – The Easy Way.
There is, of course, a hard way and that’s putting pickups into a guitar and having a listen later. That’s fine if you get it right first time but a pain if you have to re-wire the pickup again later.
In this video I demonstrate how to use a cheap test meter to identify which phase your pickup is in out of the guitar.
Traditionally, Gibson style and Fender style pickups are in the opposite phase to each other. This is just how it is.
So it’s really useful to know how to wire your pickups especially if they have an unfamiliar colour code. In my line of work I often repair pickups. I need to send them back to the customer in the correct phase. This is the simple test I use.
In this second video I demonstrate the sound of pickups out of phase so you can hear the difference which is, of course, the whole point.
There is also a demonstration of the Strat ‘out of phase’ sound and how it isn’t out of phase at all – yeah really! The sound of positions 2 and 4 on a Strat are 2 pickups in parallel.
In the last week I have received 2 emails from customers with YouTube demos attached showing how Mr Glyn’s Pickups are working for them. Customer Feedback is always gratefully received.
If you like their YouTube channels don’t forget to Subscribe.
Firstly, Reg in Christchurch NZ with a set of Cruel Mistress Telecaster pickups:
Then Antonio from Tasmania who has a Cloud Nine bridge pickup.
Here is the email he sent me along with the links to his YouTube:
Hi mate.
Just wanted to give you some feedback on the cloud nine i recently installed.
Firstly, thanks for the amazingly fast service.
Secondly the pickup sounds fantastic, especially alongside the dimarzio hs4s that were already installed on the guitar. I got the cloud nine to replace the paf pro which was only standard spacing but needed to be f spaced. I absolutely love the paf pro, but im so glad i went with the cloud nine.
Even in coil cut mode it sounds fantastic.
Anyways i wanted to send you a couple of links to videos i made with the finished guitar.
The cold chisel one i used the humbucker in full mode on the second solo.
As for the Europe cover, all the rhythm guitars were recorded in coil cut mode including the parts of the solo when i switch to the bridge. Because the hs pickups are such low output pups, the cloud nine in coil cut mode is a perfect output match.
Im definitely going to give more of your pickups a go.
I like to support my customers as much as I can so here is my drawing of Gibson Modern Wiring – Les Paul.
The modern wiring is used in most Les Paul’s and it’s great for players wanting to roll off some treble when the guitar volume is turned down.
The difference between the modern and 50’s wiring is in how the tone capacitor is connected to the volume pot. It’s a very simple modification if you have 50’s wiring and are curious.
Modern Wiring – Les Paul diagram
An explanation
I’ve linked below to my 50’s wiring diagram so you can see the difference.
Another thing to remember is that you can actually use both wiring methods on the same guitar. It is possible, for instance, to use 50’s wiring for the neck pickup and modern for the bridge. That way the neck pickup would retain some clarity as you lower the volume. The bridge pickup (with the modern wiring) would loose a bit of high end with the volume down a bit and therefor smoothing off the treble. It just depends on what you’re trying to get out of your Les Paul. Then there’s capacitor choice, pot value, coil tap or series/parallel, or even out of phase – the list goes on. I will be writing more blogs to cover all that at some point.
It’s always important to remember that here is no right or wrong, despite what you may read on social media. It’s all just a matter of personal taste. These wiring differences are all subtle too, the place to start is with great pickups.
The Tūmatauenga bridge pickup is the signature pickup of Lewis De Jong from the band Alien Weaponry.
This is no ordinary pickup, it’s specifically designed around Lewis’ requirements on stage and in the studio.
This pickup is aggressive and immediate, the bass is tight and punchy, mids powerful and clear with clear highs. It has power but also clarity to bring out the complex chords in Lewis’ playing.
These samples of the Tūmatauenga Alien Weaponry pickup were recorded by Lewis using: a DBZ Bolero guitar, D’addario 11-56 Nickel Wounds tuned to drop C#, Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 50 heads x2, Marshall MF280 4×12 with V30s x2, Shure Wireless/tuner, Ibanez Weeping Demon, Line 6 M5, Boss HM6, Radial ABY box (all off/bypassed for this demo), mics used – Sennheiser ES906, Audio i5
Photo:Taylor Baron
The Story of the Tūmatauenga Alien Weaponry Pickup
I was contacted by Alien Weaponry in December 2021 on their way back from a US tour. They were wondering if it was possible to have a NZ pickup made for Lewis. I jumped at the chance.
I’d been working on a pickup for extreme metal for some time and thought this might be me chance to use it. I loaded a test guitar with this pickup and headed to Waipu to meet Lewis. The band are based about 2 1/2 hours from my home so it was a great opportunity to do everything in person and ,of course, meet one of New Zealand’s best bands..
We plugged my test guitar into Lewis’ Marshall at their rehearsal room and it was obvious from their reaction that this wasn’t the sound they wanted. Okay, so it was going to take some work.
I had a listen to the pickups he was using and we had a long chat about what he wanted. I took one of their pickups out of his No.2 guitar to take back to the workshop to analyze.
Back at the workshop I measured all the parameters of the pickup and made a plan. I didn’t want to clone his existing sound but I couldn’t go too far away from it. I wanted to increase the punch of the bass and add a little clarity to the mids. One thing that was important was that it still sounded like their last album – you can’t go out on tour with a completely different sound.
I made a couple of prototypes and the following week headed back to Waipu.
I had one of the prototypes in my LTD test guitar and although it wasn’t exactly right is was close. From now on all the testing would be in Lewis’ own guitars. Once you’re close you need to minimize the parameters. And that’s how it went, swapping pickups and testing until Lewis was happy.
Finally we had the sound but that wasn’t all, it needed to look right.
The design on the pickup
The design on the pickup came from the band – here is what they say about it:
Mangopare (Hammerhead shark) is a kaitiaki (guardian) and tohu āriki (sacred chiefly symbol) of our family.
It is a traditional design motif that appears throughout Māoridom but is particularly treasured by my tribal group (Te Arawa) It stands for strength, courage and power.
Name of the pickup – Tūmatauenga (Māori god of war)
The name was decided to be Tūmatauenga (pronounced “2 ma toe enga”) the Māori god of war.
The Cool 90 is a P90 based pickup available in both Dogear and Soapbar. Designed with Jazz and Blues players in mind it produces a clear, full, well balanced tone. Never harsh, always full and musical.
The bridge pickup has an organic sound with a lower mid push ideally suited to dynamic lead lines and tight rhythm playing.
The neck pickup is clear and chiming with enough clarity to always be heard in the mix. It has that lovely woody tone especially in an archtop.
Here’s a demo of the Cool 90 sent to me by one of my customers. Go check out his band – The Bull Kelp Surfers
The Cool 90 Story
Like many of my pickups the this one started with a repair job. A customer sent be a faulty Gibson P90 out of a 1955 Les Paul Junior. Naturally, I took measurements and completely analyzed every detail of it. Unlike the information in the books (and internet) it had less windings and Alnico II magnets instead of Alnico V.
And what a great sounding pickup it was.
I decided to make my own version of it to compliment the ‘Sassy” P90 pickup I was already making. The Sassy has the classic “full fat” P90 tone, plenty of growl and cut through.
The idea was to make a lower powered version for the cleaner player. Still keeping the classic P90 character but with less grunt.
I experimented and tested and eventually came up with this design.
I like to support my customers as much as I can so here is my drawing of Gibson 50s wiring. Hopefully it will help you fit your new pickups.
The 50s wiring is great for players wanting to retain some treble when the guitar volume is turned down.
The difference between the 50’s and modern wiring is in how the tone capacitor is connected to the volume pot. It’s a very simple modification if you have modern wiring and are curious.
There really is nothing wrong with modern wiring, having your tone darken as you turn down the volume can be very useful in some settings. So try both and see which suits you best.
It seems that all the cool kids and ‘experts’ on the internet are telling us it has to be 50s wiring or nothing but for anyone with a soldering iron it’s an easy mod and completely reversible so experiment for yourself. You may find you like 50’s for the neck pickup and modern for the bridge.
You may have heard of Series Parallel wiring in guitars, here’s how to do it.
There are numerous ways to wire a humbucker. The standard way is in series, its the sound we all know, with that pushy lower mid tone.
Some players like to coil tap their humbucker to get the option of a thinner more Fender type tone. That is essentially switching one coil off.
A less well used way to thin the sound is with a series/parallel switch. A humbucker in parallel is more single coil like than in standard wiring, there’s less volume drop than coil tapping and it still hum cancels. I much prefer it.
So what is Series/Parallel all about?
The standard way of wiring a humbucker is in series. PAF’s are wired this way and it gives the traditional full sound with plenty of mids and bottom end. Its simply one coil following the other, the end of one coil connected to the beginning of the next.
Wiring a humbucker in parallel is quite a different sound. It’s much more similar to a single coil sound but the pickups is still hum cancelling. There is a drop in volume though not as much as with a coil tap (switching one coil off).
This humbucker wiring diagram shows how to do it with a push/pull switch. With the switch down and the humbucker is wired in series (normal), pull it up and it’s in parallel. The wiring colour code is for Mr Glyn’s Pickups (I use the same colours as Seymour Duncan).
Series Parallel diagram
Not such a hard diagram to follow is it. I’m not sure why this modification isn’t more popular. Maybe it’s a little harder to understand than coil tapping, maybe it’s because its a little more complicated to wire up. I certainly prefer it in my guitars to give an extra tonal option without taking anything away from the original sound.
It would be great if you could subscribe to this blog (below) so you don’t miss out on any other pickup related articles.
I’m going to be posting a few more wiring diagrams in the near future. Keep an eye on this blog or my social media:
Mr Glyns Pickups is a small business which means I can communicate with my customers one to one. I’m always happy to discuss your requirements, answer questions and give advice. I want to know about the guitars my pickups are going in, send me pictures, send me recordings.
The ‘Mini’ is inspired by the Gibson mini humbuckers of the 70’s used in the Les Paul Deluxe.
The ‘Mini’ is a clean clear sounding mini humbucker with the warmth and clarity from an alnico II magnet combined with low winding strength. This gives them a full, smooth, chiming bass, clear mids and an almost jangly treble, present but never harsh.
Great for jazz, funk, blues, pop or any genre that requires a clean, low powered humbucker set.
Mini humbuckers are great pickups, lower in power than their full size sisters their clarity comes from less windings around a smaller bobbin. The smaller size of the pickup means they ‘hear’ less of the string length than a full size humbucker. The result is a clearer tone with less of the lower mid range push that you get from a PAF.
The neck pickup has a clear voice ideal for funk or jazz. The neck and bridge pickups together have a perfect balance when used together, ideal for clean rhythm playing. The bridge pickup alone has a cheeky ‘cut through’ quality pushing you to the front of any mix.
Although he Les Paul Deluxe was a short lived guitar in the Gibson range the mini humbucker has lived on. It is a very popular pickup in custom guitars particularly the neck pickup and is a great match for Mr Glyn’s ‘Cruel Mistress’ telecaster bridge pickup.
mini humbucker
If you’re looking for a pickup that is clearer than a PAF, has a less prominent lower mid spike with an even balanced tone then the mini humbucker could be the pickup for you.
The Minx mini humbucker is a hot mini humbucker designed for the blues and rock player.
The Minx has plenty of that mini humbucker clarity and tonality but with more power and more grit.
If you love your mini humbucker guitar but want a bit more power than standard Deluxe style pickups the ‘Minx’ mini humbucker is the pickup for you.
The ‘Minx’ is a clean clear sounding mini humbucker but with more power than the vintage Gibson’s. There is warmth and clarity but with more powerful windings than the ‘Mini’ along with an alnicoV magnet they will push your amp harder.
With narrower coils than a PAF mini humbuckers ‘hear’ a narrower part of the string resulting in cleaner highs, a less pushy lower mid range and a distinctive clear bass that’s never woofy or wooly.
The neck pickup has the same coils as the ‘Mini’ but with an alnicoV magnet they have a fatter power and make a great match to the Minx bridge pickup.
The bridge pickup has a characterful mid range with a bite and fullness that is lacking in most mini humbuckers. You wouldn’t describe this pickup as polite and it will certainly put you towards the front of any mix.
Great for the blues or rock player after dynamics – tickle it and it’s clean but when you dig in there’s enough power to push the front end of your amp into break up when you ask it to.
Although he Les Paul Deluxe was a short lived guitar in the Gibson range the mini humbucker has lived on. It is a very popular pickup in custom guitars particularly the neck pickup and is a great match for Mr Glyn’s ‘Cruel Mistress’ telecaster bridge pickup.
If you’re looking for a pickup that is clearer than a PAF, has a less prominent lower mid spike with an even balanced tone then the Minx – mini humbucker could be the pickup for you.
Take a Squire Affinity, give it to luthier Ramsay Phillips, add some Mr Glyn’s pickups Clear View humbucker set and see what you get? Superb demo from Jason Herbert – all 3 of him.
The Clear View humbucker set is something different. It’s a humbucker for players that don’t like humbuckers.
This pickup set is all about pure clarity. There are no pushy lower mids that make your clean sound a mush. The highs are clean and clear but not harsh, the bottom end is clear but with none of that humbucker woof.
If single coils are too harsh and unforgiving, conventional humbuckers too powerful and muddy then here’s the solution. The “Clear View” humbucker is low powered and balanced, designed for the textural player, great with reverbs and modulation, sits its the mix without getting in the way.
The Tron pickup set is based around the legendary Gretsch Filtertron pickups Of the 50’s and 60’s. To say The Tron has character is an understatement. The Tron is full and rounded with a well balanced mid range but with that distinctive ‘Clank’ that separates it from other pickups. The neck pickup is clear and fat and the bridge stands out from the mix without ever sounding harsh.
Table of Contents
The Tron demos
Here’s the full demo from Brett:
Development of The Tron
Over the years I’ve repaired a fair few old Gretsch pickups and noticed the best sounding ones are at the upper range for ohms. I’ve taken that design and tweaked it until I got the fullness I was looking for but without loosing clarity or clank.
Most of my pickups are made in collaboration with a professional player, but not TheTron. I started playing guitar at the age of 16 when I first heard Malcolm Young – a Filtertron through an almost clean valve amp. I didn’t feel I needed another set of ears for this one, I knew exactly what I wanted.
I needed this pickup set to be crystal clear with a clean amplifier but to come into its own when pushing an amp to clip. The neck pickup needed to be clear, full and chiming in both a big archtop and in the neck position of a Telecaster. The bridge pickup needed to have no shortage of character, a clean almost jangly tone when played gently but with enough go in it to push the front end of a valve amp to clip when you dig in.
Who is it for?
The Tron is the perfect pickup as a Gretsch upgrade, for the modern player wanting something other than Gibson style humbuckers, rockabilly players after that traditional tone, jazz players or, like me, Malcolm Young fans. There’s so much you can to with The Tron.
For the modern player with one foot in the past.
And as for the name “TheTron”? – I think you have to be a Kiwi…
The “Clear View” humbucker is something different. It’s a humbucker for players that don’t like humbuckers.
This pickup set is all about pure clarity. There are no pushy lower mids that make your clean sound a mush. The highs are clean and clear but not harsh, the bottom end is clear but with none of that humbucker woof.
If single coils are too harsh and unforgiving, conventional humbuckers too powerful and muddy then here’s the solution. The “Clear View” humbucker is low powered and balanced, designed for the textural player, great with reverbs and modulation, sits its the mix without getting in the way.
If you want a low powered ‘Vintage’ humbucker with all the character of a PAF get a MrGlyn’s ‘Integrity’ humbucker. If humbuckers sound too thick and you crave extra clarity then the ‘Clear View’ is for you.
And, of course, it’s hum cancelling.
This is not a pickup born to rock, it’s more than that.
Here’s a short video, clean with no effects, to show the clarity and balance of the “clear View” Pickups.
.
.
The Clear View humbucker Story
It started with a phone call from luthier Ramsay Phillips.
I’ve got huge respect for Ramsay, he’s worked all over the world and has a great client list (including Steve Vai). He knows guitars, knows tone and he’s a thinker. So when he calls to talk about a new pickup idea I listen.
He was interested in having a humbucker for people that didn’t like humbuckers (his phrase). A pickup with clear tone and low powered but not like a PAF, clearer than that. He wanted a mid range more like a single coil than a traditional humbucker. At first I thought my ‘Black Sand’ humbucker size P90 would suit him but as he talked I realized he didn’t want the grit of a P90. He’s very well practiced at describing sound so I felt I understood what he meant. He assured me he had customers asking about such a pickup.
He wasn’t in a rush which meant I could have a good ponder over what he’d said before making anything. It’s often best just to let a project sit rather than wade in and make a load of prototypes that don’t quite do it. Thinking time is important.
Then one morning about a week later I was out on the beach with the dogs. There was quite a big swell (the sea is never calm at Muriwai) and I was listening to the sea. When there’s a big swell the sea produced the full range of frequencies, it is pretty much pink noise. I was trying to figure out which frequencies in that sound I would need to remove to make Ramsay’s pickup. I often ponder problems this way and for me it often works. By the time I got home there was a plan.
I made a set of pickups, sent them to him and a few days later he called to say they were spot on. It isn’t usually that easy.
And the Clear View humbucker set was born.
Clear View humbucker
Here are some cover options for the Clear View humbucker set.
So How do Humbuckers Work? By a clever quirk of physics humbuckers manage to cancel out the hum they pick up. So how do they do it? Here’s a simple explanation with some help from Sammy the dog. https://mrglynspickups.com/
A mid to hot, pickup made specifically for blues/rock players who want to push the front end of their amps. Plenty of grunt, plenty of mids and enough cut through for you to stand out in the mix. https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/03/29/cloud-nine-hot-humbucker/
I’ve been repairing a few pickups recently and I thought I’d share this one with you. It’s a Fender Lead I Pickup that was sent to me by guitar repairer Jeff Baker from Oamaru.
The Fender Lead I was one of those obscure models that never really caught on and the pickup reflects that. It’s a little unusual and that’s what makes it interesting.
It even looks different with those square topped bobbins.
Not only is it unusual looking from the top but turn it over and it shows what it’s really all about. Those are 12 big adjustable poles screwed into substantial steel blocks and coupled to a powerful ceramic magnet.
This is clearly not a typical Fender pickup, this was designed to ROCK.
Inside a Fender Lead I Pickup
So what were Fender thinking? Well, this was 1979, the DiMarzio Super Distortion had been around for 5 years and was becoming very successful. Fender had nothing to compete with it. Looking at the spec of the Fender Lead I Pickup it is remarkably similar to the Super Distortion. Fender were making a Superstrat and it wasn’t even the 80’s yet.
Back to the repair – it came to me because it wasn’t working and typical for faulty humbuckers one coil was showing ‘open circuit’ on the test meter. In these cases I can use the good coil as a reference to what the faulty coil should be. It had a dc resistance of 7.61 KOhms. Wiki told me the final dc resistance of the whole pickup is approx. 13KOhms so that gave me a pretty good indication of how I should wind it. That’s a powerful set of coils to go with that magnet.
A bit of maths, plenty of experience and some intuition and I had a plan for winding it. Detailed information just isn’t available for the Fender Lead I Pickup.
I stripped the bobbin and wound the coil.
I potted it very lightly because these bobbins are made of butyrate that has a lower melting point than most modern ABS bobbins – I didn’t want it to deform with the heat, I wasn’t going to be able to get another bobbin.
Here you can see the chunky pole pieces, they’ll guide a fair bit of that ceramic magnet’s strength up to the strings.
If you have a faulty pickup or are interested in my range of handmade pickups have a look at the website.
I’ve been repairing a few broken old pickups recently so thought I’d share some pictures and thoughts on this classic old Gibson T-Top.
The T-Top is a fairly common pickup on my workbench. Not because there’s and common fault with them but simply there were so many made and they’re all getting quite old now.
The “T-Top” simply refers to the molding on the top of the bobbin. They were Gibson’s standard humbucker from 67/8 until around 1980 replacing the legendary PAF.
Gibson T-Top Mr Glyn’s Pickups
What is a Gibson T Top?
There were a few subtle changes from the PAF but enough to make a difference.
Although the bobbins look different the important dimensions were unchanged and they are still made of butyrate making it impractical to wax pot them. Butyrate distorts with heat.
The wire is poly insulated instead of the plain enamel used on PAF’s. Pretty much all T-Tops have a dc resistance of around 7.5 KOhms, neck and bridge the same. The coils are wound symmetrically and are unpotted so beware of squealing with high gain.
The magnets varied, often Alnico III, V or even Ceramic so not all T Tops sound the same.
Gibson T-Top Mr Glyn’s Pickups
This one came to me with a dead coil in need of a re-wind. the magnet is a rough cast Alnico V and from the good coil the finished dc reading I was after was 7.4 KOhms.
Get in touch if you have any old pickups in need of repair. Although most of my day is spent making new pickups I do enjoy repairing classic old pickups.
The Attitude 7 string humbucker is designed for the modern metal/fusion player. A humbucker set with clarity, articulation, dynamics with just the right compression. The low B has plenty of punch with none of the flub associated with 7 strings.
In 2020 I was working on extending my range of humbucking pickups for rock players. The Cloud Nine will do just about anything but I wanted to offer a more specific pickup for modern rock/metal, a 7 string humbucker.
I wanted a tight bottom end, singing highs and a balanced midrange with that slight compression to smooth the dynamics.
I decided to start with a 7 string humbucker which is a slightly unorthodox way of going about it but I was concerned with getting the bottom end right. If there was any sogginess in the bottom end a 7 string would show it up more than a 6 string.
7 string humbucker pickups are not like others. The low bass string reacts so differently, there’s a lot of string deflection and low harmonics. My mission was to tame this bass and keep it tight but not to sacrifice the sound quality of the treble strings. The treble still needed to be sweet and singing. The mids needed to be balanced and noticeable. I didn’t want this pickup scooped; the mids had to stand out from the mix when needed to.
So in October 2019 I got back in touch with my old mate Graham Young in Yorkshire. He’s an amazing player and really knows his gear.
Back in 1998 I wound a 6 string humbucker for Graham. In those days I had a guitar shop and repair business in Leeds in the North of England and he wanted a bridge pickup to suit his style for a parts caster.
Years passed and he became a 7 string player, so when I decided to develop a 7 string pickup Graham was the person I asked to be test pilot. We’d very loosely kept in touch over the years and it turned out he was still using the 6 string pickup I’d made for him back in the 90’s.
We had a chat via messenger and it turned out he’d tried a lot of pickups but none quite did it for him. So I listened to his thoughts, came up with a design and went away and made a prototype.
The first one wasn’t quite right, so he sent it back and I changed a few things and returned it. I don’t know how many adjustments I made but that pickup accumulated quite a few air miles between NZ and the UK over the next few months.
Every time we got closer, every adjustment less than the one before. When you get that close you know you’ve got a good pickup. I was at the point when I felt we really had something great but I just needed that confirmation.
Then Covid 19 happened, the mail got too unreliable to send stuff overseas with any confidence of it arriving and the process was put on hold.
At the end of June 2020 I got a call from Gabe Dovaston in Papamoa. He’d done some demos for me with some of my other pickups and was asking if I did a 7 string, just in case, for an Ibanez of his. Well, this seemed like a chance to test my new pickup on fresh ears. I made a copy of the last one I’d sent Graham, the one I was happy with, and got it off in the post. I sat back and waited. It only took a few days and I got a very happy call, he loved it and he’d already made a demo that he’d put on YouTube.
Graham Young
Graham Young
Great news, but what was I going to call it? The pickup was already on YouTube, it wasn’t on my website yet and it didn’t even have a name!
I got on Facebook and asked people to come up with a name; there were so many excellent suggestions but nothing quite did it. In the end this pickup that had taken so much work to develop, travelled so far and refused to go away I called the “Attitude”. https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/07/29/attitude-humbucker/
The Attitude is available as a 6 or 7 string humbucker, for neck and bridge positions.
There’s a lot talked about the original Fender Wide Range humbucker especially now with Fender re-introducing these classics with vintage correct CuNiFe magnets.
For the full back story on what makes these magnets so important here’s a great interview on my favorite podcast with the man who brought CuNiFe back, Tim Shaw.
The Fender Wide Range humbucker was the invention of Seth Lover. He’d previously worked at Gibson and is responsible for the PAF Humbucker
In 1967 he went to work for Fender and was asked to make an equivalent to the PAF to compete with Gibson. He was still obliged under the PAF copyright (even though it was under his own name) to make something completely different and that’s what he did.
So why CuNiFe ?
Fender guitars are known for their percussive treble. A bit part of which is achieved by having the magnet located inside the coil unlike Gibson style pickups with the magnet outside. He was clearly keen to have adjustable poles too so that left the question of – how do I make magnetic threaded bar? The answer is CuNiFe. Other magnetic material needs to be cast where as CuNiFe – an alloy of copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), iron (Fe) – can be machined.
The primary use for CuNiFe at the time was in speedometers where this threaded magnet was used in calibration. But when the automotive industry moved on to better methods of measuring speed CuNiFe stopped being produced. So the traditional Wide Range ceased production in 1979. The re-introduced Wide Range humbuckers of the 1980’s have a Gibson PAF style bar magnet underneath the coils. They might look like Wide Ranges but they really aren’t.
Why is the Fender Wide Range humbucker so big?
CuNiFe does not make strong magnets and has quite a trebly tone. To offset this Seth needed to design powerful coils. The more windings on a bobbin the more power but also the more bass and less treble. The whole eq is shifted to the bass side. Compered to a PAF the Wide Range coils are very overwound. So much so the bobbins had to be made bigger to accommodate them and therefore the whole pickup is bigger. Wide Ranges are wound to around 10.6KOhms where as a traditional humbucker is closer to 8KOhms.
Then there’s the much ignored steel plate under the coils. Putting a steel plate under a magnet will help push the magnetic field up towards the strings creating a bit more power and a bit more bass. This works in the same way as in my Tui pickup – here’s more on that.
The result of all this is a clear, full sounding pickup loved by many.
Interesting eh.
Repairing a Wide Range
A while ago I had a faulty Fender Wide Range humbucker sent to me for repair and took the chance to take some pictures. This one is from 1975 as you can see from the last 2 digits of the serial number. From the underneath you can also see the sneaky way he used the threaded magnets fitting half of the upside-down.
With the cover off we get a good look at these unique bobbins. There’s a small metal tab at each end of them to help with connecting the winding wire with the hookup wire.
With one bobbin removed there’s that steel plate underneath directing the magnetic field and adding inductance to the coils. The black wire connects the 2 coils together in series and it’s tucked away between the coils when the pickup is together.
You can see that even though this is an oversized bobbin it’s full up with wire.
Here’s a really interesting blog post on a Wide Range copy by Tym Guitars in Australia. You can see the difference between an original Fender Wide Range humbucker and what looks like an exact replica.
The height of your pickups is crucial to your tone. I find that the better the quality of the pickup the more sensitive they are to changes in height. Pickup Height Adjustment is an essential part of your sound, it’s worth finding out a bit about it.
I give measurements at the end of this post but they are just suggestions. The point of writing this is to help you understand the mechanics of what’s happening and to be able to make your own informed choice as to what suits you best. It’s like choosing picks or strings, not everyone likes the same thing and there’s no right or wrong.
Pickup Height Adjustment – what you need to know and some stuff you don’t
Table of Contents
What I mean by pickup height adjustmentt is setting the distance from the top of the pickup to the bottom of the string. It’s like how close to the microphone you’re singing. But it doesn’t just change how loud your guitar is – there’s a lot more to it.
There is, of course, no correct distance from the string so the measurements I’ll give you are a guide and a great place to start. I recommend you set your MrGlyn’s Pickups to these heights when you install them but feel free to tweak them to your own taste after.
In this article I’d like to arm you with a start point, some information and the confidence to find your own correct pickup height.
The principle of Pickup Height Adjustment is, the closer to the strings the pickups are the louder and more dynamic the sound, further away is more compressed and quieter.
So what does that mean?
Imagine someone whispering in your ear. This is like a pickup close to the strings. It not only sounds loud and clear, you can hear every detail of the sound. You are very sensitive to and variation in volume, its very dynamic. Then imagine if the voice is the other side of a room. The voice is less dynamic, you aren’e as sensitive to slight changes in volume, it’s more compressed. Keep that in mind when setting your pickups.
Shall I set the pickup as high as possible?
But there’s another factor. Pickups work by magnetism, if a pickup is too close to the string the magnet will attract the string and cause a strange wobbly sound called a wolf tone. This is much more pronounced with single coil pickups and on the bass strings on the higher frets. These ‘wolf tones’ are sometimes called ‘Stratitis’.
The pickup height is measured from the top of the pickup pole (or cover) to the underside of the string when fretting the highest fret.
Pickup Height – MrGlyns Pickups
Are all pickups the same?
This is where it gets really interesting and I’ll introduce you to a new word – ‘Stratitis’
In general humbuckers can be set closer to the strings than single coil pickups. By single coil pickups I’m thinking mainly of Strats.
A Strat pickup has rod magnets running vertically through them. They’re usually South up, North down. This creates a magnetic pull on the string (it actually makes the string into a temporary magnet but lets not over complicate it).
If the magnet is too close to the string it starts to change the way the string vibrates. There are various names for the sound of this but Stratitis is the common one.
At this point I realise I’m going to have to write hundreds of words unsucessfully trying to explain the sound of this so I’m going to make a video.
The aspect of pickup height I didn’t cover in this video is feel. The guitar reacts quite differently and feels like a different instrument with the pickups are set hight. The extra dynamics and sensitivity can steer you in a direction you might not go in with a pickup set low. Try it, it’s worth finding out which you prefer.
Humbuckers have one coil with North polarity and the other with South and to an extent they cancel each other out so as not to pull on the string in quite the same way. Humbuckers are way less susceptible to stratitis than single coils.
Tele neck pickups
Just a sidenote – Telecaster neck pickups are inside a cover. When adjusting the height just remenber you’re thinking of the distance from the magnet to the string and not from cover to string. The reality is you can usually set them as high as possible without the string hitting the cover. It can make a huge difference to how they perform.
Humbucker pole adjustment
With standard humbuckers there is usually a row of six pole screws that can be height adjusted. It isn’t usually necessary to change the height of these. If you do decide there is an inballance between your individual string volumes the first thing to do is put a fresh set of string on. In nearly every case it’s the strings that are at fault. Adjusting individual poles is a fiddly business and best left alone.
Strat pole height
I’ve come across quite a few Strat pickups where the poles have been pushed in because people have wanted to change the vintage stagger profile. Please don’t try this it will kill the pickup. There are a few lower quality Strat type pickups with plastic bobbins that you can do this on but you need to be 100% sure before trying it. I might save this one for another blog.
P90 height adjusting
For Soapbar P90’s just follow the basic idea of height adjusting. Dogears are a little different – to raise them you need shims – check out this blog post for more info:- P90 Pickup Height – it’s a pretty comprehensive look into P90 height. If you need shims I can supply you with free drawings for 3d printing (you don’t have to buy a pickup), just email and I’ll send it to you. P90’s generally like to be close to the strings.
P Bass Pickup height
Precision basses with the split pair of coils making up one pickup are slightly different to adjust. Treat the two coils as seperate pickups. So set the bass sise coil to be an even distance from the E and A strings and the treble side to be an even distance from the D and G strings. You’ll find the 2 coils wont end up looking flat across all of the strings but they will sound even.
Like with most Fender pickup types be aware of Stratitis (see above) when setting them, it isn’t just a Strat thing.
General principle of pickup height adjustment
There are plenty of pickups out there without recommended heights. The general principle of setting them is to get them as high as possible and listen to how they sound. Be aware of what Stratitis is and sounds like. If you hear stratitis lower them. By ear is the best way. Not all magnets are of the same strength, you’ll be able to get a lot closer to an alnico 3 than an alnico 5.
Once you’ve found your height have a good play of the guitar, do a bit of tweaking and fiddling and a lot of listening.
Pretty soon you’ll find the spot that sounds best for you. Then forget it. You can spend more time fiddling with guitars than playing them. If you’re really not sure about any of this stuff take your guitar to an experienced luthier and trust them.
Pickup Balance
It’s worth having a think about pickup balance. By that I mean the relative volume of each pickup.
Instinctively you might think that having pickups with the same volume but with different tone would be the best. That is true for a lot of situations but it’s worth thinking if that’s true for your situation and not just following the norm.
You may want a louder bridge pickup to push through in a band situation, for instance.
There are a lot of factors to consider whith pickup height adjustment. I think the point I’m trying to make is find what’s right for you by experimenting. It’s easy to adjust pickups so have fun mucking about with them.
Pickup height measurements
Here I have some ideas for pickup heights. Remember, these are not set in stone.
Consider them maximum heights and remember that these are measured from the bottom of the string to the top of the magnet or pole piece when holding down the last fret. They may seem a bit close but the istances will be more when playing around the middle of the board.
Seymour Duncan JB humbuckers are such a classic pickup, loud and aggressive with no shortage of high end attack. This particular one has had a hard life and finally gave up so it arrived at my workshop for repair. It’s not the first Duncan JB Re-Wind I’ve had to do but this time I’ve taken some pics.
Duncan JB
This one had stopped working altogether. With the tape off the hook up wires are exposed and it’s possible to identify which coil has the problem. It’s usually just one coil.
It turned out to be the coil with the screws in this case.
The coil with the lugs in fine and showing 8.42KOhms and from that I can figure out what size wire they used and calculate the number of turns needed to re-wind the duff coil.
Pretty routine stuff this Duncan JB Re-Wind but always nice to have a look inside a classic pickup. https://mrglynspickups.com/
The other day I had a DiMarzio Super Distortion in for a re-wind. A classic pickup, first made in 1972 and still ROCKS. I’m not sure how old this one is but it has certainly had a life.
DiMarzio SuperDistortion repair
I love seeing the Ohms of each coil hand written on the underside of the bobbins.
The whole thing is powered by that over thick ceramic magnet, offset to one side and with a steel bar down the side of one set of bolts to compensate for it. It’s that magnet that gives it the power, articulation and sensitivity.
Never judge a pickup by its ohms!
You will have heard these on thousands of recordings the DiMarzio Super Distortion is such a classic.
Pickup re-winds are a big part of what I do.
In the early days back in the 1990’s I re-wound a lot of pickups. It was an invaluable introduction into the inner workings of electric guitar pickups.
Back then there were a lot of 60’s and 70’s quality pickups around to practice on, they weren’t as valuable or sought after as they are now. Because of that I got to see how pickups were put together in the old days, the construction, the potting material…
There wasn’t much information available so experimentation was the only way to learn. I made so many bad pickups back then but made a note of every single one, how I’d wound it and what the result was. By using that method I got closer and closer to what I wanted. I also made a note of all the re-winds I did and the original spec if I could get it. I’m still writing in that note book to this day and it’s becoming a fantastic reference tool when I receive an unusual pickup repair from a customer.
I still really enjoy re-winding pickups, I think I have a strong instinct to fix things. I would much rather repair a faulty old pickup than sell a customer a new one. Sometimes, of course, the customer wants a different sound that the old pickup can’t give them and a new pickup is the way to go.
Please feel free to contact me about any faulty pickup by email (mrglynspickups@gmail.com) or by phone (021 912 678).
With a few models of my pickups I give a treble bleed. It makes such a difference to how the volume control works. They aren’t for everyone but it’s worth experimenting and finding out if it works for you.
Here’s the diagram:
Pretty simple eh, it just straddles the ‘in’ and ‘out’ legs of the volume pot. Easy to fit, completely reversable and cheap – what’s not to like? Let’s take a deeper look.
A brief explanation of how a treble bleed circuit works and why you might need one
With some help from Sammy the dog
Here’s a more wordy explanation:
You may have noticed that when you turn the volume control down on an electric guitar it not only gets quieter but also more muddy, some of the high frequencies are lost.
As the volume goes down so does the clarity. This can, of course, be useful. Quite often you’ll want to be able to take some sparkle off the sound especially with single coil pickups. But with humbuckers for many of us they just get too wooly and undefined as the volume goes down. So here’s the solution, it’s cheap and simple, easy to fit and makes humbuckers so much more versatile without taking anything away from the full volume sound. I’m talking about treble bleed circuits.
What do capacitors do?
For our purposes all you need to know about capacitors (caps for short) is they allow treble frequencies to pass through them but block bass. The frequencies involved depend on the value of the cap. The details of how caps work can get very complicated but that’s all we need to know to understand what’s going on here. They’re more commonly used in tone circuits but that’s another story. The volume control (potentiometer or pot) on an electric guitar looks like this:
It’s a fairly simple device, As you turn the volume down the resistance between the ‘in’ and ‘out’ leg increases. This makes it increasingly harder for the signal from your pickups to get through. Less signal means quieter. That’s what happens when you turn your volume down. It’s very simple and works well except for that treble loss. On some guitars a bit less treble can be a useful (Strats for me) but not always. Here’s the same thing with our cunning little circuit added:
Where do you put a treble bleed?
This one has the ‘Orange Drop’ treble bleed which has a resistor added to it. This resistor softens the treble as you turn down making the effect more subtle.
What does it sound like?
So as you turn down the volume and the the resistance increases there’s an alternative path for the signal – through the cap. But, as we know, the cap will only let treble through. This means your sound not only gets quieter but also thinner from the treble sneaking through the treble bleed.
As you turn the volume down you’re also turning the bass down. As a result you have a usable single coil (ish) sound when the volume is low. If you’re overdriving an amp the result is cleaning your sound up. So with a high gain amp and your volume at about 1/4 you get a bluesy breaking up sound , crank the volume on the guitar and you’re rocking.
Capacitor and resistor values
It really is something worth playing around with. There are a few variations on the circuit but the idea is the same. If you want a less subtle effect just use a 0.001micro farad cap on it’s own. To soften the effect add a 150KOhm resistor in parallel. These values are just common values, play around with them, these are cheap components.
On most of my guitars I prefer a simple treble bleed, no coil taps or series parallel. Just the volume control. This isn’t a mod to just automatically use on every guitar, I find with Strats I welcome some tone roll off. With a 2 volume control set up it may be worth treating the neck and bridge pickups differently.
Then there’s the matter of the 50’s wiring circuit in Les Pauls. With this wiring a treble bleed does very little. As the difference between the 50’s wiring and modern wiring is just in how the tone control is wired to the volume control it is possible to use both systems on the same guitar. With a Les Paul type set up the neck pickup could be wired with the ‘modern’ circuit with the addition of a treble bleed and the bridge to 50’s wiring.
There really are a lot of options here and a lot of experimenting to be done. It’s always worth remembering there really is no right or wrong way to do this despite what you might read on the internet. If you come up with anythis fantastic be sure to let me know.
So with a most models of my pickups I give you a bleed circuit or two. If I think it works with that pickup I’ll pop one or two in the box. I know a lot of manufacturers give sticker or a guitar pick for free with their pickups but I thought I’d give a more practical little gift. It’s great if you use it, quite a few of my customers have tried one for the first time and liked it but even if it isn’t your thing maybe you have a Mate who’d be interested.
If you have any ideas os subject matter for blog articles on pickup related topics please let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
If you like this blog please subscribe to it and check out our social media below:
The Attitude Humbucker is a powerful, well balanced pickup set designed for modern metal or fusion players. Sensitive enough to ‘hear’ the detail in your legato, a smooth present mid range to push you forward in the mix but with a bass that stays tight whatever you throw at it. The Attitude makes a great 6 or 7 string pickup set.
.
.
.
,
The story of the Attitude Humbucker
For a while I’ve been working on extending my range of humbucking pickups for rock players. The Cloud Nine will do just about anything but I wanted to offer a more specific pickup for modern rock/metal.
I decided to start with a 7 string which is a slightly unorthodox way of going about it but I was concerned with getting the bottom end right. If there was any sogginess in the bottom end a 7 string would show it up more than a 6 string.
7 string pickups are not like others. The low bass string reacts so differently, there’s a lot of string deflection and low harmonics. My mission was to tame this bass and keep it tight but not to sacrifice the sound quality of the treble strings. The treble still needed to be sweet and singing. The mids needed to be balanced and noticeable. I didn’t want this pickup scooped; the mids had to stand out from the mix when needed to.
Attitude Humbucker development
So in October 2019 I got back in touch with my old mate Graham Young in Yorkshire. He’s an amazing player and really knows his gear.
Back in 1998 I wound a 6 string humbucker for Graham. In those days I had a guitar shop and repair business in Leeds in the North of England and he wanted a bridge pickup to suit his style for a parts caster.
Years passed and he became a 7 string player, so when I decided to develop a 7 string pickup Graham was the person I asked to be test pilot. We’d very loosely kept in touch over the years and it turned out he was still using the 6 string pickup I’d made for him back in the 90’s.
We had a chat via messenger and it turned out he’d tried a lot of pickups but none quite did it for him. So I listened to his thoughts, came up with a design and went away and made a prototype.
The first one wasn’t quite right, so he sent it back and I changed a few things and returned it. I don’t know how many adjustments I made but that pickup accumulated quite a few air miles between NZ and the UK over the next few months.
Every time we got closer, every adjustment less than the one before. When you get that close you know you’ve got a good pickup. I was at the point when I felt we really had something great but I just needed that confirmation.
Then Covid 19 happened, the mail got too unreliable to send stuff overseas with any confidence of it arriving and the process was put on hold.
Attitude Humbucker set is born
At the end of June 2020 I got a call from Gabe Dovaston in Papamoa. He’d done some demos for me with some of my other pickups and was asking if I did a 7 string, just in case, for an Ibanez of his. Well, this seemed like a chance to test my new pickup on fresh ears. I made a copy of the last one I’d sent Graham, the one I was happy with, and got it off in the post. I sat back and waited. It only took a few days and I got a very happy call, he loved it and he’d already made a demo that he’d put on YouTube.
Great news, but what was I going to call it? The pickup was already on YouTube, it wasn’t on my website yet and it didn’t even have a name!
I got on Facebook and asked people to come up with a name; there were so many excellent suggestions but nothing quite did it. In the end this pickup that had taken so much work to develop, traveled so far and refused to go away I called the Attitude Humbucker.
The Attitude Humbucker is available in 6 and 7 string, for neck and bridge positions.
The Cloud Nine-hot humbucker is a versatile ROCK pickup with plenty of mids, plenty of power but with enough clarity to help you stand out in the mix. A great pickup set for the Blues/Rock player but also well suited to heavier sounds , think Randy Rhodes or EVH. It with push the front end of an amp but will also clean up especially with a treble bleed.
Table of Contents
Cloud Nine in a Super Strat
Design
There are many factors determining the performance of a pickup. The Cloud Nine bridge pickup has asymmetrically wound coils. It not only has a different number of winds on each coil but they’re wound with a different number of turns per layer. Each of the two coils has a slightly different mid range response, This gives not only plenty of mids but a real mid range clarity. It means the pickup sits well in a mix.
The alnico 5 magnet that powers both neck and bridge are specially made for me to my spec.
The neck pickup is also asymmetrically wound for the same reasons. It’s wound to be fairly hot for neck pickup standards but with the alnico 5 magnet there is still high end clarity. It’s a big fat but clear neck pickup sound. This is a great fat lead tone rather than a funky rhythm pickup.
In a PRS SE
.
.
Out of the blue I received an email from a customer in Tasmania who had recently bought a Cloud Nine-hot humbucker bridge pickup. He sent me a link to these clips. In The Final Countdown the rhythm guitars are the Cloud Nine coil tapped.
.
In a Les Paul
It’s worth mentioning how many Les Paul players use the Cloud Nine. It may be the scale length or particular dynamics of a Les Paul but these pickups just sing in a LP.
Description
Cloud Nine-hot humbucker Story
I am at heart a man of ROCK.
Since the advent of the DiMarzio Super Distortion players have been able to get some power out of their pickups, enough to really push an amp.
The neck pickup needed to be clear and present but with enough power for some of those sweet lead lines.
I wanted the bridge pickup to have power to scream with the best of them while retaining enough clarity to have definition. When I play a 7th chord I want to hear it as a 7th and not sound mushy like a John Deere tractor at full throttle.
It’s a real danger with hot pickups that they lose character and tone. I needed a crunchy rhythm with strong mids and an over the top lead sound. I want to get squawking pinched harmonics whenever I please. Not only that but I need it it to clean up nicely and react well to a treble bleed circuit. A humbucker for every situation, for players not afraid of a bit of gain.
Not much to ask, eh!
I got through a lot of wire and magnets experimenting over the years to get this set right. I suppose I worked on it for about 5 years, different magnets, winds, wire thickness, insulation, winds per layer – there are a lot of factors. Whenever I felt I was close I used them at a gig to hear how they sat in the band. Pickups can sound quite different next to a drummer or in a mix. I tweaked and adjusted…
Eventually I was happy with the design and I was lucky enough to have legendary Kiwi band ‘Head Like A Hole’ help out with road testing. I knew if they came back from tour happy then I was on to a winner. They did.
When you get it right it feels so good, a sensitive pickup rich in harmonics is so much fun so I called it the “Cloud Nine” which how I felt at the end of it all.
This is the pickup set I gig with myself in my covers band now. I have them in an Epiphone Sheraton and also in my Flying V. With this set up it works for everything from The Smiths to Metallica and all points in between. I don’t feel the need to swap guitar – these pickups work for everything.
Inspired by the early Gibson PAF pickups the Integrity-vintage humbucker give the classic full balanced tone we all love.
Asymmetric coils give an open sounding mid range and the rough cast Alnico II magnet gives clarity and balance. A rich bottom end, characterful mids and sweet treble make this a pickup set for every situation – Jazz, Blues, Rock, it does it all.
Table of Contents
.
Every pickup manufacturer makes a “Vintage” humbucker based on the Gibson PAF, of course they do – old Gibsons sound so good.
So how come they all sound so different? Well, the simple answer is that PAF’s were all different. I’ve been a full time luthier since 1995, whenever I come across an old humbucker I test the ohms and the gause and have a good listen. They’re all different. My conclusion is that pickup manufacturers have taken the PAF they like and based their own version on that. Old PAF’s vary so much so modern ones do as well.
.
Here is Nik Dobbin show off an Integrity set in an all mahogany PRS Santana SE II from the early 2000’s.
.
Integrity-vintage humbucker requirements
I have designed my own version to be clear sounding, have obvious string separation and definition and to keep clarity no matter how much gain. The mids must be strong and woody, this is not a “scooped” pickup. The clean sound needs to be chimey and clear with no mush; through a valve amp I want clarity. When I tickle it I want clean and vocal sounding when it clips. The bridge pickup needs to be well behaved with high gain and clear with enough cut through so the drummer knows you’re there. The neck smooth, clear and articulate. Warm but with none of the boom you get with a more powerful pickup.
I don’t want much do I.
My “Integrity”-vintage humbucker has a rough cast Alnico II magnet and I’ve used plain enamel insulated magnet wire with asymmetric coils to open up the mids, jusy like the originals.
The very first pickup I ever made back in 1995 was a PAF style and I’ve been tweaking the recipe ever since.
Studying the intricacies of this pickup design have given me a huge respect for Seth Lover the designer of the original Gibson PAF. Its hard to imagine the guitar world without it. Would Gibson be such a popular band without his contribution? Its hard to say.
Like all my pickups I’ve used a number of test pilot players in its development as well as gigging it myself. A huge thanks to all the players and engineers involved in the development.
These pickups were played in studios and on stages in the hands of numerous players long before I gave them a name or built this website.
I t wasn’t until around 2015 that I finally settled on this particular design. It had been a very long road for the Integrity humbucker set and I’m delighted to be offering them to you.
A Pickup in 4 Flavours
This pickup is available in 4 flavours to cover the various applications of this versatile pickup. You can select your option at the checkout.
The idea behind the 4 flavours is to simplify things for you. Rather than have 4 separate pickups with a similar vibe I’ve put them all under the umbrella of ‘Integrity’.
The Standard wind –
This is the one I feel is the best balance between output and tone. All the demos are of this version. After my years of experimenting this is the version I like the best and use myself.
5% Underwound –
This has 5% less windings than the standard pickup. Less wire means less power but it also reduces the bass and gives a little more high end sparkle. If you want a low powered very clean humbucker this is for you. This one is all about clarity. Especially suited to archtop guitars.
5% Overwound –
More windings mean a little more power but more significantly an increase in bass. Ideal for players wanting a classic rock tone or in HSS Strats.
10% Overwound –
An increase in power and bass from the standard pickup. Still very much the PAF vibe but with a bit more. This is a great rock pickup with the dynamic range to clean up nicely but with the power to push you amp. Suited to players using dirtier sounds from classic rock to Slash to early Van Halen.
The Integrity comes with 4 conductor wire to give you all the switching options. I very lightly wax pot the Integrity to reduce microphonic feedback but to retain some of the microphonic character of the originals.
.
.
.
The full and honest sound of the Integrity-vintage humbucker along with it’s timeless tone inspired the name “Integrity”. https://mrglynspickups.com/
I put the integrity pick ups into my Jim Root Jazzmaster last week. I gigged with the guitar on Sat night and am so happy. They have the versatility that I’m looking for. Thanks
Bought a set of Mr Glyn’s Integrity humbuckers and they are awesome! These pickups do everything from clean to blues rock to screaming distorted rock tones. So great to just roll off the volume, have it clean up but still stay loud and defined. My guitar is now super versatile and sounds great! Thanks
