Extreme metal pickup
Single NZ$219 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas it’s GST free; NZ$190.43
Pair NZ$399 for NZ customers, if you’re overseas they’re GST free; NZ$346.96
Ceramic x2 – Bridge 9.5KOhms, 6.74H, Ceramic- Neck 8.2KOhms 5.58H
The Warwolf is a brutal, hard hitting guitar pickup set designed for extreme metal in drop tunings.
Immediate, punchy bass, smooth mids with plenty of character and a present top end give these pickups the ability to cut through the mix no matter how low your tuning. The combination of brutality and clarity make the Warwolf essential both on stage and in the studio.
The bridge humbucker has the bite and grunt to power your riffs and bring them out in the mix. The neck humbucker has a bell like clarity perfect for clean passages or fat lead tones.
There is plenty of power to push the front end of a 5150 but with a frequency response to work with amp modeling.
Table of Contents
The Warwolf doesn’t have the spec you might expect from a powerful pickup but this has been a re-think of the requirements of pickups for metal guitar and a re-working of what is actually needed to produce a crushing tone in both sound and feel.
At the beginning of the process I had assumed I needed coils with high dc resistance but I discovered that was not the case. To get the maximum punch, clarity and dynamics this pickup has a lower powered coil but big magnets. The coils produce clarity and a balanced frequency range. Big magnets give a big punch. It’s all about the immediacy of the note. To achieve that brutal feel the note needs to start and stop instantly, that comes from the magnets.
The Concept
The oversized ceramic magnets in the bridge pickup are asymmetrically mounted to emphasize one coil over another, the idea is to reduce the magnetic window to give the pickup character and focus.
The neck pickup has a more conventional magnetic symmetry.
Although this style of guitar pickup needs a certain amount of power that is not the whole story. Without clarity and punch it’s worthless. Ceramic magnets give a dryer, more immediate attack than alnico. We don’t want a warm smooth, soggy bass – it needs to react instantly, have an immediate kick.
Ceramic can be guilty of sounding scooped but with the coils providing mid range there’s a balance. The treble is present but not harsh. The winding method provides clarity- it’s all about clarity.
Sound Sample
Here is the Warwolf in a mix:
And the guitar tracks isolated:
The Design
Here is the design concept of both neck and bridge pickups described in my own words:
The Backstory
The design of this pickup set started back in August 2020 when I approached Raj Singarajah from Dynamic Rage Studio to be the ‘test pilot’ for this project. Some musical genres need expert ears and I knew I needed someone with taste and experience to steer my designs.
After about 6 months of prototypes we had what we were after. That time taught me a lot about designing pickups for this extremely demanding style. It was then that I realized that I had to manufacture so many difficult parts for this particular pickup that is just wasn’t going to be practical for me to make in any quantity. The project got put on hold. But I had learnt a lot about what a pickup was required to do to work in this very difficult environment.
Then at the beginning of 2022 I was contacted by New Zealand band Alien Weaponry to make a signature pickup for guitarist Lewis DeJong. I thought this was where I could use my design ideas. But one of the design requirements for Lewis’ pickup was it needed to have a sound similar to their last album so they could tour with it. My ideas about lower impedance weren’t going to work. Lewis’ set up is old school using Marshall heads powering 4×12’s so I took a more traditional approach to his pickup. You can find out more about the signature pickup for Lewis DeJong from Alien Weaponry here.
The idea for my extreme metal pickup was still churning around in my head but I needed help to get it off the ground.
Then in July 2024 I saw a post on Facebook by Richie Simpson. Richie is an award winning artist and producer of New Way Home and City of Souls. He had been a customer of mine when I was repairing guitars. I remembered he had been for ever swapping pickups in his many guitars searching for a tone.
He had experience of all the metal pickups out there, he’s a great player, knows this genre intimately and is a top human being. So I messaged him and he said yes. There followed a long phone conversation to establish what the brief was. It really felt we were on the same page.
A week later I was at his studio with a guitar loaded with the first prototypes. I was quite prepared for these first pickups to be a total failure, I just needed to sound him out. I needed to find out what sound was in his head and the best way to do that was to have an example with me. But I also wanted my idea to work.
When I got to his studio Richie was tracking guitars. We listened to one of his guitars with a ‘boutique’ pickup in the bridge position, then plugged in the Warwolf to A/B. I could tell from his face he was ‘feeling it’.
The neck pickup was right first time and the bridge was close. I’d won round 1 on clarity and punch. It turned out that was his #2 guitar.
So now for the #1.
It was pretty obvious this was no longer just a concept- this was the real thing.
He kept that guitar for a week to get a feel for it and to make sure it was exactly right. It was close but not quite there. We had a chat, I made another.
Then he came to my workshop and I fitted a set into one of his guitars to see how that worked.
A week later we talked. He was completely happy with the neck pickup but the bridge needed more mids. That’s how it proceeded for a few months.
I tweaked the design. Time passed and he wanted that pickup in his number one guitar just to eliminate the difference in the guitar bodies.
Whenever I collaborate with a player I’m very aware that each guitar sounds different. My test guitar for this genre is a very neutral sounding basswood body 25.5 inch scale LTD guitar. It’s got a very even frequency response so ideal for testing.
The plan is to get the pickups sounding good in this guitar and then transfer them to the player’s guitar to compare.
The body wood does make a difference – I find it unbelievable that debate is still going on. I swap a lot of pickups and the guitar they’re going into matters, I wish it didn’t. Just listen to two electric guitars played acoustically, that’s the sound the pickups are hearing.
A Player’s Perspective
Here it is in Richie’s words:
August 2024
The Warwolf is much more than your average over compressed, one dimensional metal pickup. Through a fastidious back and forth phase over the course of 6 months, using multiple guitars and amps, a balance was struck.
The brief: “Classic, punchy nineties heavy tone. Attack, tightness, aggression and detail while retaining balance, bloom, string separation and weight to chords. Ideal for alternative or groove metal, thrash and heavy rock.
If mid nineties Jerry Cantrell, Steph Carpenter and Dimebag Darrell had a baby with Terry Date”
Using more robust rails and larger powerful ceramic magnets has allowed for a more open wind while still maintaining the snap and mid range aggression required for heavy music. Avoiding the brittle harshness often associated with ceramic rails.
The Warwolf punches when it chugs, steering away from clanky single coil-esque pick attack and the upper mid bias cliche of many metal pickups. It’s open, organic and balanced nature gives size to a mix, width and note separation to chords under high gain while retaining excellent tightness, a commanding mid range bark and muscular thump during palm muting.
Response to your playing feels natural, without the sense you are fighting with a loose, low output pickup or conversely like the pickup is doing all the driving for you and hiding nuance or preventing clean up. Just enough compression for a mean high gain rhythm tone while still letting your right hand do the talking (Or yelling).
Leads are clear and liquid. Mid gain and clean tones are full and balanced but if you play aggressively, the Warwolf will tear your face right off and drop it back at your feet.
“This is what I’ve been after for a LONG time”.
When you bend a note on these pickups you don’t get strings dropping out as they pass over different bobbins, or if other strings are ringing out they’re not cutting through the bending string signal and vice versa. That’s the beauty of Glyn’s rail design.
The magnetic field is balanced more evenly across the strings and that opens a lot of doors to ideas that might only translate with this kind of pickup. The Warwolf design does something to the mid range that I really dig too. Like a harmonic overtone smearing that is really pleasing for heavy riffs. With each strings signal being represented in a more evenly powered way you can almost get the feel of a boost pedal or active pickup while retaining the more expressive dynamic range of a passive.
That feel responds well to a boost pedal if you are so inclined and doesn’t squish out or lose definition like a super hot pickup can.
I genuinely love how these things feel and sound. They’re unique and alive, translate well to a mix and most importantly they make me want to play! (Not to mention they look cool as hell) Glyn has absolutely nailed it.”
The Warwolf name
It’s always hard choosing a name but this one comes with a story.
I wanted a name that would represent a heavy crushing force, something fearful and powerful.
The Warwolf was the largest trebuchet ever made. It was built in 1304 for king Edward I of England during the siege of Stirling Castle in Scotland.
It took so long to build that the siege was over by the time it was completed. He used it anyway.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwolf
Edward I was my 24th great grandfather.
Here’s a fun Hollywood reconstruction of the Warwolf trebuchet
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