Just installed my hotrails.

Mykel

Mykel

New member
In the bridge of my Agile tele and all I can say is WOW. It sounds amazing. Much fuller and thicker than most american teles ive played. And the distortion on it is so thick and creamy. I am in LOVE. any ideas on a neck pickup? they dont make very many for teles.
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

pinto79 said:
the best neck pickup I have aver used for a Tele is the GFS Modern Vintage Rails

http://store.guitarfetish.com/lilpumvinepi.html

They are cheap and the tone is thick but clear and in a word, amazing.
Click to expand...

The Rails on those GFS Tele Neck Pickups Aren't as wide as the String spread at the tele neck Possition. Which means the High e, and Low E strings Don't get picked up as well as the Rest of the strings, So they are MUCH quieter. Which (for Me at least), basically makes the pickup useless.

Not only are the Rails not as wide as the String spread, but To make matters even worse The rails are radiused at 7 1/4", so if your Useing a guitar with a modern Fretboard radius (Most modern Fender telecasters, and similar guitars, have 9.5" radius), its just gonna accentuate the unevenness in string Volume even More when on the D, or G String, Compared to the E strings.

Now if you were to Grind The Rails to a Flat Radius, Rework your Nut AND bridge for a narrower String spread, and Be willing to Open up the hole on your Pickgaurd a bit (did I mention the GFS Lil'punchers are also To large to Fit in a standard sized tele pickgaurd route?)........Then Sure Its a great pickup.

Personally I wouldn't recomend those pickups to anyone. I recently bought a set of they're "Modern Vintage" Lil' Punchers. And they Do SOUND good, And they're Cheap. But with all of the Problems with them, I wouldn't recommend those to anyone. Other Gfs Pickups I've tried were fantastic, But I wouldn't recommend the Lil' punchers.....I mean Unless someone only wants to Hear Four Strings when they hit an Open G chord.
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

Low_fidelity2100 said:
The Rails on those GFS Tele Neck Pickups Aren't as wide as the String spread at the tele neck Possition. Which means the High e, and Low E strings Don't get picked up as well as the Rest of the strings, So they are MUCH quieter. Which (for Me at least), basically makes the pickup useless.

Not only are the Rails not as wide as the String spread, but To make matters even worse The rails are radiused at 7 1/4", so if your Useing a guitar with a modern Fretboard radius (Most modern Fender telecasters, and similar guitars, have 9.5" radius), its just gonna accentuate the unevenness in string Volume even More when on the D, or G String, Compared to the E strings.

Now if you were to Grind The Rails to a Flat Radius, Rework your Nut AND bridge for a narrower String spread, and Be willing to Open up the hole on your Pickgaurd a bit (did I mention the GFS Lil'punchers are also To large to Fit in a standard sized tele pickgaurd route?)........Then Sure Its a great pickup.

Personally I wouldn't recomend those pickups to anyone. I recently bought a set of they're "Modern Vintage" Lil' Punchers. And they Do SOUND good, And they're Cheap. But with all of the Problems with them, I wouldn't recommend those to anyone. Other Gfs Pickups I've tried were fantastic, But I wouldn't recommend the Lil' punchers.....I mean Unless someone only wants to Hear Four Strings when they hit an Open G chord.
Click to expand...

I have a set in my Kramer Classic III and I have no problems with the E's or the radius for that matter and the guitar has a 12" radius and a Floyd Rose. I dare say that it's my best sounding neck pickup at the moment.

Pic:

CloseUpofNeckPupGFSH36.jpg
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

Pinto your pic is for a strat are the rails for Tele like Low Fidelity stated. I am curious to try the Rails for tele, but not if the strings arent over the rails.
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

This pic is a Kramer Classic III which is a Tele style with a Floyd Rose.
It's really very solid sounding and no problems with the Es despite the wide spacing at the bridge. The nut if I remember correctly is 1-5/8"

The stock neck pickup was a chrome covered one, exactly like a regular Tele.

Pic of the whole thing:

Body-GFSPair.jpg
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

Pinto sweet guitar!!! I am not familiar with that model. Was it a pre-music yo Kramer? I am surprised I have never seen it before.

So you can honestly say there aren't volume issues with the outside strings? Curious why you and Low Fidelity have 2 opposite views on the same pickup.
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

Fusion1 said:
Pinto sweet guitar!!! I am not familiar with that model. Was it a pre-music yo Kramer? I am surprised I have never seen it before.

So you can honestly say there aren't volume issues with the outside strings? Curious why you and Low Fidelity have 2 opposite views on the same pickup.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I don't have any trouble with the outside strings. The Es on this guitar run right at the edge as you can see in the pics... Now, I use 9s and have a reasonably light touch, at least when I'm doing leads, so the strings aren't flying all over the place either...

The guitar is from 1988, Made in Japan. There is actually very little info on them. They made 3 in the Classic Series, a Strat Style and 2 Teles.

I can record a clip if you like...
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

Yeah if you can record a clip that would be great. High gain and clean. I searched on the Vintage Kramer forum and there are 2 kinds of guitars like yours. 1 is the Classic series (Thought these were made in the US from what I read) Kramer Classic III. Then apparantly there was a Focus Classic series which would be made in Japan, called a Focus Classic III I believe. Can you take a smaller pic of just the guitar not zoomed in? Thanks.
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

pinto79 said:
This pic is a Kramer Classic III which is a Tele style with a Floyd Rose.
It's really very solid sounding and no problems with the Es despite the wide spacing at the bridge. The nut if I remember correctly is 1-5/8"

The stock neck pickup was a chrome covered one, exactly like a regular Tele.

Pic of the whole thing:

Body-GFSPair.jpg
Click to expand...


Odd....

How long ago did you purchase yours? I just got mine earlyer this month. Yours appear to have substantially wider rails than mine do. And the pictures on they're website show the wider rails like yours. So I'm thinking perhaps they've changed the design since you got yours (and since the pictures on the site were taken). That probably explains why you're not having the same problems as I am. Everyone else I've talked to that has the same GFS pickups has experianced the same issues as me with e strings (Go to the telemodders forums to see). So maybe you just got lucky and got some before they shortened the rails.

Either way, your right. It is an amazing sounding Neck pickup. I just personally wouldn't recommend them to anyone, just due to my not so great experiance with string balance issues.
 
Re: Just installed my hotrails.

Fusion1 said:
Yeah if you can record a clip that would be great. High gain and clean. I searched on the Vintage Kramer forum and there are 2 kinds of guitars like yours. 1 is the Classic series (Thought these were made in the US from what I read) Kramer Classic III. Then apparantly there was a Focus Classic series which would be made in Japan, called a Focus Classic III I believe. Can you take a smaller pic of just the guitar not zoomed in? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Here's a full shot, it was taken before I installed the GFS pups, it had a Tele HotRails and the stock neck pup then. PM sent about a clip...

KramerClassicIII.jpg
 
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