Dave Robinson, like Hank Marvin himself, more and more players are realizing hum is a dissonant, un-harmonious and generally annoying noise that pollutes their sound. Kinman pickups provides a solution without sacrificing sonic character … and now we’ve gone one better in perfecting Hank’s 60’s sounds along with Zero-Hum. You obviously have no understanding of what it took to design a noiseless pickup that is this good, there is not another noiseless that even comes close to the Magnum Opus and even Fender’s CS-54 falls short. And be aware I am just one little bloke doing my RE&D, not part of a big company that has an R&D budget … and yet my products outshine theirs.
And contrary to your insinuation that I am peddling ordinary products to gullible people solely for profit I assure you that, given the technology and the 26 odd years of development that bought me to this high point, my products represent extreme value for money … in fact a bargain considering what goes into them. Should be twice the price.
There are other benefits too,
-low string pull that minimizes that confounded Strat-itis.
-Optimized string-over-magnet alignment regardless of Vintage or Modern narrow bridges (there is more to that than simply arranging a closer magnet spread which buggers up the sound).
-Balanced G-3rd string output level.
-Beautiful pristine crystaline highs without the ragged ice pick of Fender pickups.
-Better clarity and transparency than Fender pickups which many customers testify sound veiled in side-by-side comparisons with the latest Gen-2 Kinmans.
The latter two being Paul Rossiter and Gary Taylors observations as well as a lot of my customers, they all can’t be wrong. But of course some players have wooden ears and can not discern the sonic flaws nearly as well as other players do
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
I’m afraid you are displaying ignorance and lack of awareness with your simplistic assertion that “
pickups are magnets & wire, nothing more, nothing less”. Kinman pickups are most certainly a hellava lot more than magnets and wire, there are 4 silicon steel core strips, 3 silicon steel magnetic shields, 2 types of steel core pins, wrap-around insulators that prevent short-circuiting between coil and core pins & magnets, 2 different coils wound with different turns count and different gauge wire, other stuff that grounds the magnets but not the magnetic shields and not the lower 11 steel core pins, embedded eyelets and printed circuitry that saves space by eliminating bulky hook-up wires and a few other things ... as well there are seven (7) Electrical Engineering Patents to prove it (and more coming soon). The new Magnum Opus pickups are packed with un-obvious technologies in order to solve the above-mentioned flaws with Fender pickups. These technologies are the fruits of a lifetime of dedication to improving the flaws that Leo failed to address and which, over time, became increasingly objectionable to discerning and fastidious players.
As with echo units, amplifiers, strings and indeed guitars and pickups there are good ones and there are bad ones and I'm happy to say more than one American guitar manufacturer report they have not heard a less-than-average Kinman yet, they all are outstanding.
I have found that practically all Fender type Stratocaster pickups produced after 1960 succumb to TCS. I have a set of Fender 1963 pickups and a bunch of others from later years and all of them have TCS, some are worse than others. Paul and Gary agree, they tested many. I believe Hanks original 1959 specimens are among the last pickups made that don’t easily succumb to TCS. Either that or his picking technique is so highly sophisticated and orchestrated as to avoid it.
However, one must invest in a high quality low capacitance lead. Read our Blog article “Any old cable won’t do”
https://kinman.com/Bad-things-cables-can-do.php Maybe that’s the reason you had a bad experience a long time ago. Ordinary cables make good pickups sound dull and uninteresting.
CK