GFS take on the Twangbanger

dilney

dilney

New member
Hi!

I am building a strat parts-o-caster and want to try the GFS pickups. Not because I think they will sound as good as SD or Fender Custom Shop, but because they seem to sound good and are cheap.

Does anyone have any experience with the brass-baseplate single-coil PU for strat they sell? What's your opinion? Does it sound like a tele at all? Tele pickups usually have a steel plate, so I'm confused...

I am considering the grey bobbins for neck/middle and the 9k baseplate for the bridge.

Thanks!
 
Re: GFS take on the Twangbanger

I also consider just getting the matched set with a HOT bridge SC and buying a steel baseplate from Callaham.

How difficult is it to solder(?)/attach the baseplate to the pickup? I am no expert in pickups, but I've installed a bunch of pickups and they always worked :)
 
Re: GFS take on the Twangbanger

It's probably steel under the copper plating as Tele baseplates are. They have to be steel because if it's not a magnetic metal, it won't have the Tele sound the baseplate is designed to help get for you.

You don't really solder the baseplate to the pickup. It's held in place by wax between the plate and the pickup and in the case of a real Tele bridge, by the pickup mount screws, and to some degree by the rod magnets.

On a Strat-style pu with a baseplate, you need to have plenty of wax between the plate and the pickup or it will squeal like crazy. It's not quite as much of an issue with a real Tele pu because there are three mounting screws which stabilizes it better than two, but Tele bridge pu's can squeal too if you don't get enough wax in there, no matter how well potted it is.
 
Re: GFS take on the Twangbanger

ALSO: A real Tele bridge has the baseplate grounded via the mount screws which touch the Tele surround bridge, which is steel and which in turn obviously touches the bridge ground wire.

In the case of a Twangbanger or any sort of Twangbanger clone (Strat-style pu with baseplate), the pickup is mounted to the plastic pickguard or in some cases to the wood (depending on guitar you put it in) and so the plate would NOT be automatically grounded.

In that case you would need to solder a little wire to the baseplate at one end and at the beginning of your ground lead at the other end. Or if you think you might be occasionally reversing the leads on that pickup (for phase-switching if you're into that), just solder another long lead directly to the baseplate and the other end to ground (say, the back of one of the pots) so that the grounding of the plate is independent of the hot and ground leads.
 
Re: GFS take on the Twangbanger

Sometimes those plates don't line up with the screw holes for height adjustment.

You might have to drill out the hole in the plate. That means it must be mounted very solidly on the pickup.

Try a pair of plastic clamps on the part of the pickup were the screw holes are and dip the bottom of the pickup in melted wax for a few minutes than put it in the freezer for a while.

That should do it, I would also add a piece of copper foil between the magnets and plate, why? Because that's what Duncan does with their twangbanger.
 
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