pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A56

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pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A56

Postby fenderplucker » Thu Aug 30, 2018 11:30 am

First a disclaimer: I have no business connection to Kinman and got involved in the testing of the Kinman Impersonator pickups only through helping Hank to get a more vintage sound for the Reunited world tour and following CD. There have been some queries about these pickups on the chat sites and so I thought that the following might be helpful.

Prior to the tour, Chris Kinman sent over some early prototypes that were on the right track but not yet developed enough for Hank’s use. So we evaluated Fender Custom Shop 54 and 57/62 pickups and a couple of other ones that shall remain nameless and Hank finally settled on the CS54’s for the tour and CD. Later on he wanted to return a bit more to his modern sound, and he had me refit the FV-HMS Kinmans for a few tracks on the Without a Word CD. What he really needed was a pickup that could encompass the sound of both. During this time Chris had finished developing the Impersonator 54 and A56 pickups and sent some for Hank to evaluate. I put them into two of his Strats and we did a comparison with the FV-HMS, CS54 and the Seymour Duncan/DiMarzio sets fitted to some of the Fender Custom Shop Signature range. To cut a long story short, Hank decided upon the Impersonator 54’s, these being useful for both his current and vintage tunes and they are now fitted to his 3 Strats used for performance and recording.

However, I was interested in doing a more detailed comparison of the Impersonator 54 and A56’s with the CS54 pickups that I had been using for some time in my Strat. So we swapped them around and recorded a number of tunes with each pickup, featuring the neck (Peace Pipe), middle (Sleepwalk, Blue Star) and bridge (Apache, Kon Tiki) pickups in each case. We compared both the sound as-recorded and also equalised a bit where necessary to reproduce Hank’s original tone. I am slowly putting together a presentation comparing the sounds and should be able to post this soon.

What we found was the Impersonator A56’s are very close to the CS54’s, maybe just a dB down at 2.5 kHz. Here I need to add that the CS54’s can sound a bit thin and brittle if not set up quite close to the strings (nudging into “Stratitus” territory) and this was the setting used. It is also the setting that we use to get quite close to Hank’s vintage tone, as I hope is evident on the numerous tunes on the TVS Juke Box, most of which were done with my guitar. Even so, the A56’s had a slightly more solid mid-range that I think got even closer to Hank’s original tone. In comparison, the Impersonator 54’s had slightly less top (just a few dB less at 2.5kHz) but a very similar everywhere else. In fact, with a small amount of equalisation they could all be made to sound almost identical. Also, with a bit of top cut they sound very similar to the FV-HMS, giving Hank the best of both worlds!

So Hank has gone with the Impersonator 54’s while I have settled on the A56’s on the basis that it is best to use equalisation to remove frequencies rather than try to add them. Either way I think that Chris has done an exceptional job reproducing the sound of single coils in a noiseless format.

Paul.
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Re: pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A56

Postby Hank2k » Fri Aug 31, 2018 10:40 am

Hi Paul

Thanks for the update. Its always nice to hear what Hank is up to direct from you and i look forward to the comparison video.

I did have the old Kinman FVHMS in one of my previous Strats and actually found they nailed Hanks modern tone really well and of course being no hum it made things a lot easier recording wise
Hank2k
 

Re: pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A56

Postby fenderplucker » Tue Sep 25, 2018 5:25 am

An Update on the impersonator pickups.

I have done some further testing and found that with a low capacitance guitar cable, the difference between the Impersonator 56 and CS54 pickups, particularly on the lower wound strings, vanishes completely.

This is because the Impersonators have a higher inductance than the Fenders and a normal cable pushes the pickup resonance to lower frequencies losing the "bite" in the top end.

With input from Phil Coggan, I have also directly compared them to vintage 62 and 63 Strats and the differences, again with a low capacitance cable, are very small, if any.

Paul.
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Re: pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A5

Postby dave robinson » Tue Sep 25, 2018 11:53 am

I recently found my eighteen year old Kinman pickups in a drawer and fitted them onto a Strat body that had been laying around for a few years, adding a spare neck and some other bits and pieces, thus building a Strat from bits that I had discarded all that time ago.
To my amazement the guitar sounds terrific with my current set up and I honestly believe that the main problem back then in getting a satisfactory Hank sound was the Alesis Q2 which many of us used. My Kinmans are the traditional vintage set, not the Hank ones, the ‘in between’ sounds are spot on, unlike the Hank ones that lost it completely.
Thq Quad GT gave a more satisfactory sound than the Q2, but not many of us realised it at the time that the main problem was the mis-match of the Alesis Q2 input with the Strat, which took the ‘soul’ out of the tone we all loved.
I firmly believe that back then, many of us spent good money on changing pickups because we thought that’s where the problem lay. All of the pickups that I still have, collected over the years, sound great with my current rig, whether I use my Mesa Boogie, Peavey Delta Blues, Vox AC30, Katana, Watkins Dominator - or DI into our QSC TouchMix or RCF M-18.
I use several echo devices including my self programmed Line 6 Helix, Hall & Collins, Catalinbread Echorec, Zoom MS100 or the real deal Klemt Echolette or Copicats and all sound like the early Hank sound. Food for thought and reflection of wasted cash. ;)
Dave Robinson
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Re: pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A56

Postby fenderplucker » Tue Sep 25, 2018 1:16 pm

Hi Dave,

I wouldn't disagree with anything you have said, though I would add that there is a world of difference between "sounding great" and reproducing as exactly as possible the early sound of the Shadows. But, as they say, it's whatever floats your boat!
Regards,

Paul.
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Re: pickups: Kinman Impersonator 54 and A56

Postby dave robinson » Wed Sep 26, 2018 2:01 am

I should perhaps have used the phrase ‘sounds right’ rather than ‘sounds great’.
All I am certain of is that many people spent far too much money chasing something that was never lost in the first place.
In the right hands, all the available kit - and there is a lot from which to choose, will achieve the sound, how close it gets is entirely dependant on how much time you want to spend to get there. :idea:
Dave Robinson
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