Pickups...

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Re: Pickups...

Postby abstamaria » Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:13 am

Thanks, Rob. I didn’t mean the jag pole was pushed down after manufacture , but just set lower. Whether a shorter pole was used or the standard G pole just installed lower, I’m not concluding. (There is a photo though in the earlier thread that shows the pole protruding from the bottom bobbin, but that may be an after-manufacture fix. As you’ve seen flush bobbins, you must be right.)

BTW, Fender explained the bevelling was done to focus the magnetic field. Your explanation is probably the unglamorous truth.

I also did not think 34346 was specially made as in today’s custom shop, but just wondered why Leo Fender, who was very conscious of the effects of stagger, would have such pickups made in 1958-59. For what reason?

I think you are suggesting the short G slug was not a deliberate design, but just a stop-gap manufacturing solution to address a shortage of correct-height G poles. Which is maybe why Fender history hasn’t mentioned the hybrid stagger. They might prefer to forget the exigency that produced it! (Until Marvin fans cane along wanting to replicate it.)

Thanks for the patient explanations, Rob.

Andy
Last edited by abstamaria on Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Pickups...

Postby abstamaria » Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:22 am

And very entertaining stories, Rob! I enjoyed them.
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Re: Pickups...

Postby bor64 » Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:53 am

Andy,

I think the people back then and now don't give a t*ss about such tiny details because they run the line as fast as the could!
Leo was tinkering with magnets and wire to create something new, such unimportant details never reached his ears...and if so he wasn't paying attention...
Read the books about/of the people involved...he was a kind of "Sheldon Cooper" (Big Bang)....
When you learned more about the Fender plant the magic disappears....
Apparently the "faulty" 58 with almost same heights magnets didn't haltered the process either...and established is that they didn't archive anything...
The pu's with push trough the bottom G poles are also kinda anomaly but guess what, no fuss either back then... ;)
So my advice please don't loose sleep about it ;)
It's more likely just a run of the mill awkward anomaly happened in misty times and nobody couldn't care less except us ,because it's so difficult to get Apache spot on ....

Cheers Rob
"afterwards everyone is clairvoyant"
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Re: Pickups...

Postby abstamaria » Mon Oct 21, 2019 2:56 pm

Until someone comes up with something more concrete, I’ll consider your account the definitive one, Rob.

Not to worry; I’m not losing sleep. I’m just naturally curious.

“[A]nd nobody couldn't care less except us ,because it's so difficult to get Apache spot on ....” Funny that. But true.

Warm regards from the tropics,

Andy
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Re: Pickups...

Postby Hank2k » Tue Oct 22, 2019 1:48 pm

I do find this all very interesting but i do agree with Rob re the magic of these old strats.

I love them and i love the history behind them etc and id love to own one but in terms of sound and playing there isnt a massive difference with modern examples. I remember holding 343436 at the 2012 shadowmania and apart from holding my brief in case i dropped it, i was expecting some magic from it but of course the magic isnt the guitar, its Hanks hands. The magic of the guitar is the history behind it.
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Re: Pickups...

Postby dave robinson » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:06 pm

I have a couple of old Strats', a '62 slab board and a '63 veneer board. The pickups on the '63 gave me so much trouble with squealing that I ditched them in 1982 when there wasn't a lot of knowledge around and I swapped them for the pickups on a seventies Strat and they sounded great. Whilst I was ill recently, I found a guy in the USA who is a vintage pickup builder and I told him about my guitar and he made mea set of replica pickups of what would or should have been fitted to this particular guitar, materials were all identical, pole pieces and stagger, the lot. they came in at just under £200 with tax and shipping so I thought they weren't overpriced. They sound absolutely superb though, which is the main thing in my mind. I was able to compare with my old '63 Strat that I sold to a music shop in Leicester 50 years ago, as I gentleman who was selling me his 1960 Watkins Dominator had bought it 20 years ago and let me play it. Happily they sounded very, very similar so that's a result.
My '62 Strat was purchased last year and had Sliders Vintage pickups fitted and it sounds lovely. Whether or not these two guitars sound better than my two '62 ReIssues, one USA and one Japanese, I couldn't say as they are both so damn good and the 1993 USA one at £2,000 + doesn't sound any better than my Japanese one at £425 from 1993 also. It is a minefield out there and one of the reasons for my comparisons of recent recordings. The main thing is that I'm enjoying life again because of my music. :)
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Re: Pickups...

Postby martinmj » Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:57 pm

Hi.
As I have already said on another posting, I have found the Fender 57/62 pickups to get very close using the Hall and Collins and Vox AC30 amp sim on my Pod XT. the only other pickups that come close are my Ironstone hybrid pickups, and just to put a small cat amongst the pigeons, my own home-made set. And before you start praising my pickup winding ability, the base pickups were three ceramic single coils from one of my Strat-o-likes ( I can't even remember which one). Then I knocked off the ceramic bars, and put Alnico pole-pieces in place of the unmagnetised steel pole-pieces. In the bridge I put A5/3 slugs, 5s under the top 3, 3s under the bottom three. Then A3s in the middle, and A5s in the neck. Sounds beautiful, and of course, total dumb luck!-you never know what they will sound like... I've modified a number of pickups this way, and since the only cost of the pole-pieces is involved, there are some interesting results using a mix of A5/4/3 and 2 poles-pieces. I would not recommend doing this with fibreboard based pickups, but where the formers are plastic, the pole-pieces drift out and in quite nicely, aided by the wax used to bond the original pickups. The wax also means the pole-pieces , although held fimly in normal use, can be adjusted for individual stagger even when in situ . Have fun everyone who tries it!
Regards,
Mike
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Strat pickups perfected

Postby Chris Kinman » Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:39 am

I apologize for barging into this thread but there is some exciting news. As a lot of you will know I have had an ongoing relationship with Hank Marvin himself since 1998 when he took to using my pickups to solve the dreaded mains hum issue. About 2 years ago Paul Rossiter of TVS Echo Units fame alerted me to yet another flaw in Stratocaster pickups (copies and originals). We dubbed the fuzzy distorted sound from the low E-6th when picked with a strong upstroke on certain notes “Torn Cone Syndrome (TCS) because that’s what it sounds like. I actually have known about it since 1987 but Paul inspired me to do something about it. Having perfected my hum-cancelling technology and found a solution to excessively strong Alnico-5 magnets which shorten sustain and cause the strings to crash into frets I was dreading the next challenge.

So there I was two years ago faced with a huge challenge and I ended up spending a good deal of my time since then analyzing the reasons for, and experimenting and finally developing solutions for TCS. It’s is a complex, difficult to understand electro-magnetic problem which, in the end, required 4 new technologies to remedy. It’s no small wonder that the problem has gone unresolved until now, only a compulsive obsessive nut-case like myself would contemplate spending 2 years to find a solution. And by the way, all Strat pickups (originals and copies, non-noiseless and noiseless) produce TCS … that is until now.

Just a few weeks ago I sent Paul yet another pickup for testing, the latest in quite a number of test pickups, but I hoped this one would meet with his approval. I had an answer within a few days “You’ve done it” … I was overjoyed and breathed a huge sigh of relief as you might imagine. Little old me did what others neglected to do for the past 60 odd years so I gave myself a little pat on the back.

Paul and Gary Taylor of UB Hank fame recorded Dance On and Peace Pipe with the new pickup and they have stated it sounds better than a Fender CS54 noisy single coil and they prefer mine to the Fender. I have named the new Gen-3 model the Magnum Opus 59 with the inference I have turned Lead into Gold, an aspiration of the ancient Alchemists who never achieved that particular Magnum Opus.

Announcing the imminent release of the new Kinman Magnum Opus 59. It's the iconic but crude Strat pickup perfected. The improvements are ...
1) Zero-Hum
2) low string pull from less powerful magnets
3) optimum string-over-magnet alignment regardless of vintage or narrow modern bridges
4) inventing technology that produces absolutely authentic 50's Stratocaster sound in a noiseless pickup (almost the biggest challenge in my life)
5) eliminated harsh sound on high notes
6) minimizied TCS (torn cone syndrome - fuzzy distortion from strong plectrum upstrokes on certain notes on the low E-6th)

Listen to 'Dance On' played by Gary Taylor (UB Hank fame) on the neck pickup and see if you agree the sound is spot on vintage 60's Shadows https://kinman.com/mp3/dance-on-magnum-opus-e54.php

Also listen to 'Peace Pipe' also played by Gary https://kinman.com/mp3/peace-pipe%20magnum-opus-e54.php

For a sneak preview and more about the story of the new Magnum Opus '59 Zero-Hum perfected Stratocatser pickups https://kinman.com/model-products.php?p ... %20Pickups NOTE: these will be released within 2 weeks and may be ordered under the Hank Marvin product Tab https://kinman.com/model-products.php?p ... med%20Sets

This is a big thing for me and I'm waiting with bated breath to see your reactions. All the best and thanks for your interest, Chris Kinman
Last edited by Chris Kinman on Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Strat pickups perfected

Postby Iain Purdon » Tue Sep 29, 2020 10:52 pm

Chris Kinman wrote:Listen to 'Dance On' played by Gary Taylor (UB Hank fame) on the neck pickup and see if you agree the sound is spot on vintage 60's Shadows https://kinman.com/mp3/dance-on-magnum-opus-e54.php

Also listen to 'Peace Pipe' also played by Gary https://kinman.com/mp3/peace-pipe%20magnum-opus-e54.php


By using as backing the Shadows versions minus Hank, everything else was 'right', so all my attention was on how close the lead guitar sound was.
Impressive? Oh yes!
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Re: Pickups...

Postby roger bayliss » Wed Sep 30, 2020 12:45 am

They sound fabulous Chris Kinman well done great work.
American Pro Series Strat 2017, G&L S500 Natural Ash
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