CTN
The Drama Dude
So I got my handwound set of Rose Pickups single coils for my Strat today. Installed them and spent a good half an hour jamming/tweaking heights.
The Target:
This was my Strat before the transplant: Bit of a mean, rowdy kinda thing (exact pickup config in my sig), and not very stratty sounding. Shades of it here and there, because I had the Hot rails and JB jr in parallel, but not really the same.
So I talked to Ken Currie, the owner/winder at Rose Pickups and told him I wanted a neck pickup with piano-like depth and clarity, and a bridge pickup that's smooth, and punchy, with a good amount of presence in the midrange. He suggested a Robusta model for neck and middle (sort of a Fat 50's kinda design), and a Buff Beauty for the bridge (don't know what the Buff Beauty is based on, if it's based on anything at all). I ordered them as a handwound set.
The Pickups:
They come in minimal packaging (I wasn't expecting a whole lot, considering I paid $66 USD for the whole set)...I mean REALLY minimal. Just wrapped in bubble wrap along with a little baggie containing mounting screws. They were well cushioned in their shipping box with packing peanuts though. And that was enough to protect them quite well during their long voyage from California to Toronto over the course of a week and a half.
Not sure what the baseplate is made of, but the bobbin top looks like standard black vulcanized-fiber bobbin material. Magnets on both models are A5 rods I believe, and all are beveled. None of them are potted, at least it doesn't look like they are. The Neck and Middle Robustas measure in at 6k each, and the Bridge Buff Beauty is 11k (!!!) and wound with 43 awg. Ken Currie noted down the specs and signed the backs himself. Nice touch!
I installed them with CTS 250k pots, a CRL 5-way switch, a sprague .047uf cap, and cloth-covered push-back wire - officially my new favourite wire.
The Sound:
This is the real crux of the matter: Can a handwound set of pickups for 1/2 or 1/3 the price of the expensive big-name manufacturers be any good?
In a word, yes.
Now before I continue, let me say this little disclaimer: I am not an authority on single coil pickups. The last time my Strat had the stock single coils in it was probably around 10+ years ago (crappy sounding ceramic bar single coils that really sounded like crap, though I didn't know how to play single coils at the time either).
Since then I've gone through at least 3 or 4 different combinations of pickups on my strat, until I came up with the latest combination of JB8/JB jr/Hot Rails, with the two single coil sized bucker wired in always-in-parallel. For the longest time I have been a humbucker guy, because I had bad BAD memories of thin, plinky, lifeless, soulless, heartless, weakness from the Strat's old stock single coils. Lately, because I've been playing lots of blues and having a hankering for some juicy single coil tones that I could record, I decided it would be in my best interest to get some single coils to see if I could get along with them again.
In any case. The sound!! I am happy to report that Ken Currie knows his products to a T. What he suggested brought out EXACTLY the sound I wanted to hear from my Strat. The neck pickup is wonderfully warm, and has a lot of depth to it. Piano-esque lows, mids and highs. Nothing harsh at all. Very sweet sounding, extremely responsive to picking dynamics as well as volume/tone knob changes. The middle pickup, I don't have attached to a tone control at the moment, but I'm re-thinking that. It sounds good but has a weird aggressiveness to it that I think would be tamed by attaching to a tone pot, or maybe if I adjusted the height a bit. I didn't spend much time with it because it's not a sound I go for very often. The bridge pickup, being a different model, I thought might not sound as "together" with the other pickups as I had hoped. Fortunately, that fear was not even worth having. They sound great together. The bridge pickup is certainly punchy, and can be quite smooth, though it being a strat bridge pickup, it has a brash side to it. The nice thing is that the brashness totally works with the relatively higher output to make a seriously crunchy tone-monster. Also, holy crap, this thing dishes out pinch harmonics almost as well as the JB or Distortion. It too is really responsive to picking dynamics and vol/tone changes.
None of the pickups have any weird overtones or unnecessary buzzing (beyond 60-cycle hum). They all have a delicate-ness to their sound...in the sense that they sound organic, pulsating with life, not cold and clinical. I'm not sure if that's because they're single coils or because they're handwound.
The Verdict (aka TL;DR)
All in all, I gotta say, I am suitably impressed. For $66 bucks, this is a bargain. I can't wait to spend some more time jamming tomorrow. Li'l ol' Strat has taken on a whole new personality
The Target:
This was my Strat before the transplant: Bit of a mean, rowdy kinda thing (exact pickup config in my sig), and not very stratty sounding. Shades of it here and there, because I had the Hot rails and JB jr in parallel, but not really the same.
So I talked to Ken Currie, the owner/winder at Rose Pickups and told him I wanted a neck pickup with piano-like depth and clarity, and a bridge pickup that's smooth, and punchy, with a good amount of presence in the midrange. He suggested a Robusta model for neck and middle (sort of a Fat 50's kinda design), and a Buff Beauty for the bridge (don't know what the Buff Beauty is based on, if it's based on anything at all). I ordered them as a handwound set.
The Pickups:
They come in minimal packaging (I wasn't expecting a whole lot, considering I paid $66 USD for the whole set)...I mean REALLY minimal. Just wrapped in bubble wrap along with a little baggie containing mounting screws. They were well cushioned in their shipping box with packing peanuts though. And that was enough to protect them quite well during their long voyage from California to Toronto over the course of a week and a half.
Not sure what the baseplate is made of, but the bobbin top looks like standard black vulcanized-fiber bobbin material. Magnets on both models are A5 rods I believe, and all are beveled. None of them are potted, at least it doesn't look like they are. The Neck and Middle Robustas measure in at 6k each, and the Bridge Buff Beauty is 11k (!!!) and wound with 43 awg. Ken Currie noted down the specs and signed the backs himself. Nice touch!
I installed them with CTS 250k pots, a CRL 5-way switch, a sprague .047uf cap, and cloth-covered push-back wire - officially my new favourite wire.
The Sound:
This is the real crux of the matter: Can a handwound set of pickups for 1/2 or 1/3 the price of the expensive big-name manufacturers be any good?
In a word, yes.
Now before I continue, let me say this little disclaimer: I am not an authority on single coil pickups. The last time my Strat had the stock single coils in it was probably around 10+ years ago (crappy sounding ceramic bar single coils that really sounded like crap, though I didn't know how to play single coils at the time either).
Since then I've gone through at least 3 or 4 different combinations of pickups on my strat, until I came up with the latest combination of JB8/JB jr/Hot Rails, with the two single coil sized bucker wired in always-in-parallel. For the longest time I have been a humbucker guy, because I had bad BAD memories of thin, plinky, lifeless, soulless, heartless, weakness from the Strat's old stock single coils. Lately, because I've been playing lots of blues and having a hankering for some juicy single coil tones that I could record, I decided it would be in my best interest to get some single coils to see if I could get along with them again.
In any case. The sound!! I am happy to report that Ken Currie knows his products to a T. What he suggested brought out EXACTLY the sound I wanted to hear from my Strat. The neck pickup is wonderfully warm, and has a lot of depth to it. Piano-esque lows, mids and highs. Nothing harsh at all. Very sweet sounding, extremely responsive to picking dynamics as well as volume/tone knob changes. The middle pickup, I don't have attached to a tone control at the moment, but I'm re-thinking that. It sounds good but has a weird aggressiveness to it that I think would be tamed by attaching to a tone pot, or maybe if I adjusted the height a bit. I didn't spend much time with it because it's not a sound I go for very often. The bridge pickup, being a different model, I thought might not sound as "together" with the other pickups as I had hoped. Fortunately, that fear was not even worth having. They sound great together. The bridge pickup is certainly punchy, and can be quite smooth, though it being a strat bridge pickup, it has a brash side to it. The nice thing is that the brashness totally works with the relatively higher output to make a seriously crunchy tone-monster. Also, holy crap, this thing dishes out pinch harmonics almost as well as the JB or Distortion. It too is really responsive to picking dynamics and vol/tone changes.
None of the pickups have any weird overtones or unnecessary buzzing (beyond 60-cycle hum). They all have a delicate-ness to their sound...in the sense that they sound organic, pulsating with life, not cold and clinical. I'm not sure if that's because they're single coils or because they're handwound.
The Verdict (aka TL;DR)
All in all, I gotta say, I am suitably impressed. For $66 bucks, this is a bargain. I can't wait to spend some more time jamming tomorrow. Li'l ol' Strat has taken on a whole new personality
