Posted on April 19, 2023November 17, 2025 by mrglynspickups — 1 Comment

The Duchess Tele set

Single The Duchess Tele – NZ$139 for NZ customers. If you’re overseas it’s GST free; $NZ120.87

Pair The Duchess Tele – NZ$269 for NZ customers. If you’re overseas they’re GST free; $NZ233.91

Alnico 5; Bridge 7.28KOhms, Neck 7.1KOhms

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The Duchess Tele set is for the Telecaster player in need of that distinctive smooth Tele twang but with none of the ice pick cut. The neck pickup is warm and balanced with a full clarity and string separation. This a medium powered set that sits nicely in my range between the Silver Lady and Cruel Mistress.

The Duchess Telecaster set by MrGlyns Pickups — The Duchess Tele Set

The Duchess Tele pickup set will do just about everything from ‘vintage’ Tele twang to a platform for pedals.

The Duchess’ beginnings

The idea for this pickup started in 2021. I had some work at Roundhead recording studios in Auckland looking after the guitars of an American recording artist. During the process, the producer and engineer (working from the US) decided to send over their favorite ‘magic’ telecaster because they wanted that sound on the record.

The guitar arrived and it was an original ’61 Fender Esquire Custom, sunburst, double bound and just beautiful.

Although it was an Esquire it had a neck pickup that they told me had been added later. After taking the pick guard off it looked more like the neck pickup had been fitted in the factory so maybe it was a custom order. There are often strange anomalies with vintage guitars. We’re so used to models being standardized these days but it wasn’t always this way.

My job was to check over this guitar and set it up for the recording.

The Duchess telecaster - MrGlyns Pickups

I plugged it in and loved the sound immediately, now I understood why they’d shipped it over from the US for this session. So, I got my test meters out to analyze every aspect of the pickup. It was rather unusual for a Fender pickup of that time so maybe it had been re-wound at some stage. That didn’t matter, it sounded great, so I set out to make a Telecaster set in that style but with my own spin.

I made quite a few prototypes and did all the usual testing but didn’t quite get around to releasing the pickup. It often works that way, the last part, the part where I actually put the pickup on the website can take quite a while.

The Duchess Tele is finally born

Then in 2022 I had the idea for my Pandora 3-way pickup. I used the design for The Duchess bridge pickup as the middle position for the Pandora. I knew all along the Pandora was never going to be for everyone but was pleasantly surprised when the idea caught on.

An order for a Pandora came in from an old friend of mine in the UK. He’s called Darren Driver and he’s in a well-established Springsteen tribute band – The Boss and the Beeston Street Band

Darren had been a customer of mine when I had a guitar shop in Leeds in the late 90’s. He was a Telecaster player back then and it seems he still is. It’s always good to re-connect with people.

A couple of months later Darren got in touch saying how the mid position of the Pandora was his ideal Telecaster sound. Well, that was all it took. I got into the workshop and made a matching neck pickup for the Duchess. That week’s band practice I tested the set next to the drummer and was still really happy with it. So, I sent a set off to Yorkshire. I needed to make sure it was exactly what he wanted.

Darren said he was happy to make a demo of the pickups once he had got them into him number one Telecaster. That’s him in the video above.

And so The Duchess Tele set was born.

The Duchess – Tele set is great with either 250KOhm or 500KOhm volume pots. It’s really up to you – 500K will give more high-end Tele twang while the 250K will sound warmer. It really is a great pickup set either way.

The choice of capacitor is up to you. The more traditional 0.047 will roll off more treble with a lower value (0.022 for example) will be more subtle. I often get asked to recommend capacitors but it is a personal choice, there’s no right or wrong here.

The Duchess Telecaster pickup set explained

I have made a couple of short videos to explain my thinking behind these two pickups:

Check out our YouTube

The Duchess has been a useful addition to the Mr Glyn’s pickup range. Click on the links below to hear the other Telecaster pickups we make.

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buy The Duchess single

updated 28 April 2025

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Silver Lady telecaster pickup set by MrGlyns Pickups

Cruel Mistress tele pickup set, by MrGlyns Pickups

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updated 17 May 2023

The Duchess – Tele set

Posted on April 3, 2023September 18, 2025 by mrglynspickups — Leave a comment

Kāhu hot Strat

Single Kāhu NZ$139 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$120.87

Set Kāhu NZ$375 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas they’re GST free; NZ$326.09

Specifications: Flat Pole AlnicoV – Neck 7.KOhms, 1.75H, Middle 7.6KOhms, 1.75H, Bridge 11KOhms, 3.98H

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Kāhu Description

The Kāhu hot Strat Pickups set is for blues/rock players in need of that bit more power. With cleaner neck and middle pickups and a hotter, grittier bridge pickup it’s a set that acts more like a HSS set than a conventional Strat.

Without loosing their distinctively Strat personality the Kāhu are definitely Strat sounding but with an ugly streak. This is a true single coil set so they retain all the dynamics and feel of traditional pickups but with a fatness and power to bring out something different in your Strat.

The heart of the Kāhu hot Strat Pickups set is the bridge pickup, it’s warm and punchy and sustaining with a much greater output than a traditional bridge pickup. The highs are smoother, mids honky and the bass full. They’re designed to push your amp into overdrive rather than for clean sounds.

Kahu contemporary strat pickup, MrGlyns Pickups

For the blues player the true single coil nature of these pickups gives the dynamics and feel you expect from a Strat but with the singing sustain from more powerful pickups.

Clean Demo

The bridge pickup is a true single coil but it could be used as an alternative to a HSS set. No need to route out the body and pickguard for a humbucker, this bridge pickup will give you the fat lead tone you need.

The middle and neck pickups were designed to match but with a cleaner vibe, again thinking of using this as almost a HSS set. With less high end and considerably more mids and lows than a traditional Strat set the Kāhu set is for a non-traditional Strat player.

Dirty Demo

With the volume control backed off a tad the Kāhu set cleans up creating huge versatility through a dirty amp.

250k or 500kOhm pots?

Although this set was designed around a 250k volume pot (my preference) they also work well (some might say better) with a 500kOhm volume pot letting through more high end. They work well with a treble bleed if you don’t want treble roll off when using the volume control. If you’re buying a set I’ll send you one.

If you are wanting ‘vintage’ low powered pickups then look at the Bellbird or Kokako sets.

An Explanation

Here is an explanation of this design in my own words:

The Kāhu hot Strat Story

The Kāhu story is the story of the struggles of many of my customers when I was repairing guitars. A lot of people have a hard time with Strat pickups in particular the bridge. Strats have comfort and balance, the controls are fantastic, the 5 way, the volume control in just the right place. It’s a guitar that has everything right but for many players, especially from a humbucker background, the ‘vintage’ voiced pickups just don’t do it.

But Strats can be modified in so many ways to make them your own.

The starting point for this set was my Cruel Mistress Telecaster set. It’s my most popular pickup set and really brings a Telecaster to life. It’s based around the early Fender Broadcaster pickup. I wanted to do similar for the Stratocaster but with it’s own uniquely Stratocaster voice.

The Kāhu was in the development stage for nearly 2 years. A lot of the prototypes were close but were not quite right in some aspect. I don’t know how many gigs I did with these until they were just right.

The Strat should have its own unique voice and that idea was a big part of the design of these pickups. I wanted to retain that Strat character but give it something different as well.

The bridge pickup is designed to be an all purpose crunch rhythm and lead pickup with the middle and neck acting as cleaner, more traditional Strat tones. Think HSS, that’s what I’m going for here.

Here are all my Strat pickup demos on YouTube.

All my Strat sets are named after New Zealand birds. The Kāhu is a large harrier, an opportunistic predator, I see them from my house every day, patrolling the fields and hedges for prey.

Strat pickup set, black covers. Mr Glyn's Pickups — Kahu Set

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Updated September 2024

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updated September 2025

Posted on September 13, 2021July 18, 2024 by mrglynspickups — 2 Comments

Gretsch FilterTron – a look inside

The Gretsch FilterTron is something rather special. Originally designed in 1954/5 by Ray Butts for guitarist Chet Atkins who wasn’t satisfied by the DynaSonic pickup he was using. It has become a classic but often misunderstood pickup.

What is the Filtertron sound?

It has left a distinct mark on the sound of Rock’n’Roll. It’s the sound of Malcolm Young, Brian Setzer, Billy Duffy and plenty more. That unmistakable ‘Clank’ on the attack of the note is the essence of the FilterTron.

I started playing guitar because of the sound of a Gretsch FilterTron. Listen to Malcolm Young on the intro to “Jailbreak” – that’s what I’m talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRo2m6RYJpI

But you don’t only find FilterTrons in Gretches, there’s the rather cool Fender Cabronita Telecaster for instance.

So what’s inside a Gretsch FilterTron?

So how does it make that distinctive sound? What makes it so different from a PAF?

Here’s a vintage Gretsch FilterTron from 1961, let’s take a look under the hood.

With the cover off it looks quite different from a PAF. There are 2 rows of adjustable poles and they’re bigger than on a Gibson. The top of the bobbins are rather neatly hidden by a thin plate.

The Technical Stuff

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Those are very narrow bobbins and this one measures only 4.2KOhms. Not a lot of coil strength there but look what they’re sitting on. That is one fat magnet. It’s an Alnico V and literally twice the thickness of the magnet that you’d find in a PAF. So not only more powerful magnetic material but double the amount of it compared to a Gibson. That makes it quite a different beast.

So that Gretsch FilterTron sound consists of a weaker, thin sounding coil so lots of highs and twang from the windings and getting the aggression, attack and ‘clank’ from the powerful magnet. A powerful magnet gives an immediacy to tone. You can really feel it when you play a guitar with a larger magnet.

This is the original Gretsch FilterTron, the design didn’t change much through to the late 60’s although there are plenty of inconsistencies. They can have a dc resistance from 4KOhms up to 5KOhms.

By the 1970’s they had changed the design and really they just didn’t sound like Gretsch’s any more.

A lot of the modern ones are simply small Gibson style humbuckers with cool looking covers and just miss the whole point of the FilterTron sound. This tone is not for everyone but for some of us it’s simple the best sound an electric guitar can make.

It’s all about those weak coils and that monster magnet. There is more than one way to make an electric guitar pickup.

The work I did on this original set of Gretsch pickup really inspired me to design my own take on the Filtertron pickup. I call it ‘The Tron’. It has the same magnet as the original to give it that character but with slightly different coils. I have wound the bridge pickup to be on the upper end of the old ones to balance it with then neck pickup. Back in the day the bridge and neck were identical.

The Tron is available with a few different insert colors – for more information follow the link below.

Updated July 2024

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My own version of the FilterTron is now available:

TheTron

Feel free to get in touch for pickup repairs or new pickups mrglynspickups@gmail.com. 021 912 678 https://mrglynspickups.com/

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Posted on June 27, 2021October 20, 2023 by mrglynspickups — Leave a comment

Fender Lead I Pickup

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.

Here’s some more great info on the Fender Lead series: https://chrisandricktalkguitars.com/fenders-lead-series-cbs-era-gems/

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Gibson T-Top pickup repair — Gibson T-Top repair

'68 Tele Bridge Pickup. Fender Telecasterbridge pickup from 1968 — Gibson T-Top repair

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https://mrglynspickups.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/MrGlynsPickups/videos

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Di Marzio Super Distortion repair — DiMarzio SuperDistortion repair

Tele Elite pickup from 1983 — DiMarzio SuperDistortion repair

updated 3 April 2023

Posted on March 29, 2020September 25, 2025 by mrglynspickups — Leave a comment

Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster

Single Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster NZ$139 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$120.87

Set Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster NZ$269 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$233.91

Alnico III, Bridge 5.9 KOhms, 3.18H, Neck 7.25 KOhms, 2.39H

Testimonials

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Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster pickup set is designed for the traditional telecaster player. The bridge pickup has plenty of twang and clarity but is never harsh. The neck pickup full, clear and perfectly balanced with the bridge pickup.

Telecasters are brutally honest guitars. There’s no hiding behind fat mushy tones . If you can do it on a Telecaster then you really can really do it.

I wanted to make a Telecaster set that would reflect the clear honest tone of an old Tele. It’s a delicate balance to get enough treble and for the top end to have sufficient warmth to be usable, but with no hint of woof or boom in the bottom. The bottom needs to be full and clear with no hint of muddiness. The bridge needs a twang but it has to be a warm twang without being over harsh. I’ve used Alnico III magnets with a vintage style wind on both these pickups

Alnico III have low string pull which increases sustain. The lower power magnets let the strings ring more clearly.

All my magnets are specially made for me, they need to be just right.

This pickup set is primarily for clean Telecaster players. They are ideal for those classic country tones or for textural rhythm players. They’re great for giving a pure signal for modulation effects.

Through my repair work I’ve re-wound a lot of old Tele pickups. This is invaluable experience for designing my own version. I enlisted the help of a couple of experienced Telecaster players as test pilots. I really needed plenty of opinions and testing through a variety of amplifiers to get this one right.

I’m really happy with the warm classic tone of this set, clear and chiming with just the right twang. So I have given them a classic name – “Silver Lady”.

Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster

https://www.youtube.com/c/MrGlynsPickups/videos

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Pandora 3 way esquire pickup by MrGlyns Pickups

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The Duchess Tele set

Table of Contents

The Duchess’ beginnings

The Duchess Tele is finally born

The Duchess Telecaster pickup set explained

Kāhu hot Strat

Table of Contents

Kāhu Description

Clean Demo

Dirty Demo

250k or 500kOhm pots?

An Explanation

The Kāhu hot Strat Story

Gretsch FilterTron – a look inside

Table of Contents

What is the Filtertron sound?

So what’s inside a Gretsch FilterTron?

The Technical Stuff

Fender Lead I Pickup

Inside a Fender Lead I Pickup

Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster

Silver Lady-vintage Telecaster

Follow the links to find out more