We can’t claim to have designed the humbucker, however we have extensively researched the theory behind guitar pickups.To find our tones, we went back to the drawing board by searching for and testing the materials that we believed would improve the quality of the final tone.
On the face of it there appears to be nothing special about winding coils, they are everywhere, from microphones to the starter motor in your car. The humbucking pickup is the marriage of a both an electrical and a magnetic circuit. When a humbucker is loaded into your guitar the magnetic circuit is extended through the strings. When you hit those strings, the movement generated in the magnetic circuit is converted into electrical energy in the coil which is then electrically amplified.
There are a number of useful variables which can be adjusted when making a pickup, the winding pattern and tension, the magnets used, wire type and the choice of material used for the coil screws, slugs, and keeper bar all play a role in determining the final tone
All our pickups are hand wound, one bobbin at a time on our own pickup winder. Very few pickups would be made if several thousand turns of wire were done completely by hand, so the term hand wound really means hand guided. The winding machine merely turns the bobbin and keeps count of the number of turns, all other variables are in direct control of the person doing the winding.
Whats the secret? Well it wouldn’t be a secret if we told you now would it?
We won’t tell you most of the techniques or ingredients used to make our pickups. Some of them are incredibly simple, but only after enough midnight oil was burned to find the recipe. So, just like Granny's secret cookie recipe, our recipe will also remain a secret.
It takes 8 hours of TLC to make a set of Vintage Reloaded pickups, a lot of which is spent machining and finishing components which can't be purchased off the shelf.
We test each and every pickup we make "in a guitar" not with an ohm meter. If they don't put an instant smile on our faces, we start again. There simply is no other way for us to consistently provide you with the quality we demand, and believe me... we've tried.
