$65.78
$109.19
ToneShaper calibrated pickup set for Stratocaster. Non-staggered alnico 5 magnets, 42 ga copper wire, Forbon flatwork. Vintage magnet pole spacing, fits standard Fender pickup covers. Approximate DC resistance: 6.1k Neck/Middle, 7.1k Bridge. RWRP middle. In the past, Toneshaper carried many lines of pickups. For five years (2004 – 2009) we were Lollar’s only online dealer. For several of those same years we were Lindy Fralin’s largest dealer. In the world. We’ve stocked pickups from Seymour Duncan, Suhr Guitars, Van Zandt, Grosh Guitars, Raw Vintage, Don Mare, Bare Knuckle, Fender Custom Shop, Joe Barden, and more. Under the Acme Guitar Works brand we built and sold thousands of prewired Strat and Tele wired assemblies. So we know pickups. We think there are lots of pickup makers out there who make great pickups. But we don’t think any of them know secrets that no one else has figured out. Pickups are simple things in the end, no one has “better sounding copper”, after all, or “better sounding Forbon”. So we’ve decided to sell our own pickups. These are made in Korea to our specs, which is to say, as similar to ’50s Fender pickups as we can get, though with a couple of nods to modernity. We like Korea by the way – they make Hyundai and Kia cars and other good stuff. Plus they have great copper (turns out it’s the same element on both sides of the globe!), and they know the formulation for alnico 5 (8% aluminum, 14% nickel, 24% cobalt, 3% copper, 51% iron). So they probably looked that up on Wikipedia. We hope you’re getting that we’re being tongue-in-cheek here – we’re just trying to drag the murky mysteries of this stuff out into the light so reasonable people can see that pickups don’t have to be made by mad scientists in the USA in order to sound good. Our pickups are well made and sound just like you’re hoping they will, and they’re available at a cost that many more people can afford. Nothing against the makers we’ve known for decades, but not everyone can afford $330 for a set of Strat pickups. “Nods to modernity” you say, what is that? The first is that we have a RWRP middle pickup, so that you can get hum-cancelling in the 2 & 4 positions. Fender didn’t ship a Strat with a 5-way switch until 1977, so none of the ’50s or ’60s “golden era” guitars supported the neck/middle or bridge/middle positions, so there was no need for hum-canceling in those positions. But the 2/4 positions have become a staple for many, many players since, and if you’re going to play a Strat in the 2 or 4 position, why not have hum-cancelling? Seems like a good thing. And we also have a stronger bridge pickup. The deal with a Strat is that if you put three pickups in it that all have the same output, and adjust them to the same height, then the bridge position will be the weakest and the neck position will be the strongest and loudest. The reason is that the string is fixed at either end by the nut and the bridge, so it vibrates more in the middle. There is more “excursion” of the strings – wider movement – over the neck pickup than over the bridge. And this translates into an increase in voltage, so more output. You can compensate for this somewhat by adjusting the pickup height, so you might see a Strat with its bridge pickup jacked way up high and the neck pickup right down nearly flush with the pickguard. But this can also cause problems: Because a Strat pickup’s magnets run through the coil, the magnetic pull at the top of the pickup is high (compared with a humbucker for example). If you get a Strat or Tele pickup too close to the strings, then you can dampen the string’s ability to vibrate, as the magnetic pull exerts force on the string. There’s a better way: Compensate for this “strong position / weak position” thing with a slightly hotter bridge pickup. This is what we mean when we say “calibrated set”. We’re not adding winds to the bridge coil in order to push your amp into overdrive, we’re looking for balanced output here. So the bridge coil has more turns of wire on it to compensate for its inherently weaker position in the guitar. You might still fine-tune the pickup balance using height adjustment, but you’ll find that you don’t need to be as extreme in your settings, the stronger coil carries some of the load. So there you are. A fine set of Strat pickups proffered by people with as much experience with America’s pickup makers as anybody. This is the good stuff, and at very reasonable prices so you can save a few bucks for that new pedal you’ve been eyeballing. Get some! Harness – Standard 5 Way or Blender Included: (3) CTS 250k vintage taper audio split Brass shaft 7% tolerance potentiometers (1) Blender Pot (1) Oak/Grigsby 5-way switch (1) Switchcraft mono input jack (1) Orangedrop .047uf capacitor Cloth covered black wire Cloth covered white wire Please Email With Harness Type and Pickguard Choice
Harnesses & Pickups
