IMHO: "the best way to compare pickups"

Note from Don,

"the best way to compare my pickups is at a Vintage Guitar Show, or at a store that sells loads of vintage Fenders.. that's how we did our test here for many years. ( 8 years in all)
we did these side by side test until we were 100% confidant that I had unlocked Fenders best ever Vintage pickups..

put any pickup I make up against a equal vintage counterpart, and let it speak for itself.

take the other makers with you and do the same comparisons...

otherwise its all he said she said - I like oranges - you like apples..etc..
but that was never my quest.. I was out to nail vintage tone or nothing.
I never wanted to sell a thing .. my quest was a personal one for me and a few artist I was tech-in for..

for 6 years Ive never disappointed one vintage purist... not one..
and those guys are the toughest pickup customers on earth..


if you ever think you have a partsocaster with real vintage tone, do yourself a favor do what we did - get out there and do, a few in room A & B test comparisons with real vintage guitars - preferably with lots of them -
Now: if you can walk away happy - please call me and tell me about it, I'd love to hear from anyone who's done it, and HONESTLY did not walk away from the test with his tail between his legs!!, or going-- "hey were only 85% max .. but not 100%", "and its that 10% or 15% that will drive u nutz..." (on many early test, we left the building with our tails tucked and saying 80% 85% - many times before we got this vintage purist thing 100% down... and we started all these test, with the TOP makers of the month..etc.., this was long before I wound one single pickup!... then we did the same test to mine until we flat out nailed it!))

when you have owners of vintage guitars telling you they hear everything in yours that's in that vintage, and some say they like yours a little more, then its mission accomplished.. at least it was for the Artist and myself here.. and that's the day I opened to the public... not one day earlier.
I was dead set on getting this tone or die trying.. it was very-very serious here.."
Don Mare

PS.. youtube "10k keefer"

Don, I agree with you absolutely 100%

Although Telenator is relatively new in the pickup game, we had our CuNiFe rod for well over a year before we released that first pickup. I have a background in design and manufacturing, and my partner is a skilled luthier and pickup winder with 30 years experience. Together we made a major assault on our local vendors, music stores and owners of vintage Teles with WRHBs in their guitars. People don't realize the amount of work, revisions, vendor difficulties, testing and outright labor that goes into truly capturing a vintage tone. When you set your standards that high, being in the pickup business is a great way to broke!

We feel that because our CuNiFe WRBHs use better materials and are built to tighter tolerances that the originals, that we're not only more consistant, but Custom Shop quality.

Absolutely, the only way to really compare, is to go out and compare! It can be difficult for the customer though, in that there are just so many good choices and the process can become laborious. Of course, most pickup builders will take their product back if a customer is displeased so, at least a player isn't stuck with a great pickup that just didn't get along with his guitar, amp, effects, etc.

Having recently made this collossal effort, your words here really hit home!

I'm firmly in the "you have to hear 'em in person" camp. That's one of the reasons that I don't do sound clips. Unless you hear 'em live and in person, it's a leap of faith.:lol:

I really struggled with the sound clips issue. In the end, it was the endless requests from people to provide them that finally put me over the edge. Personally, I like sound clips because, even though the sound over the net isn't great, I can still hear that the key elements of a given pickup are either there or not. I can't hear the difference between a '52 and a '62 Strat bridge pickup, but I can hear that they're at least in the vintage ballpark.

I agree with you guys 100%. As someone looking to try new pickups for my AV52RI it's tough to decide when you can't actually hear the pickups in a similar setup with the same style of music. For me there are no vintage stores that I can just go and compare pickups. Like Fezz said, it's a complete leap of and faith. I'm mostly relying on what people say in this forum and even that narrows it down to 3 or 4 builders.

This sounds like sage advice to me, at least in terms of nailing down the kind of sound an individual is looking for. But I'm not sure it gets past the "apples and oranges" problem. Listening to and playing a bunch of vintage pickups and settling on the ones you like best does not mean that you've nailed the one, true, definitive "vintage tone." (The fact that there are rooms full of vintage guitars to compare suggests that there IS no one, true, definitive "vintage tone.") It means you've settled in on the one you like best. This isn't a bad thing, of course, especially when you've got several pair of good ears agreeing in something, but it is still a matter of personal preference. (IMHO, of course...)

I see your point Don, but comparing 2 different guitars with different pickups is not the same as comparing 2 different pickups. I've put the same pickups in 2 different guitars and they sounded different.

Years ago I got 2 Fender AVRI strats to use on the road, so I didn't have to travel with my vintage strat. They sounded good... when it was time to record, we put the vintage stat vs. the AVRI on tape and a/b'ed them in a blind test. The AVRI sounded better to everyone in the room... maybe because the frets were fresher.

The lead guitar here is the stock AVRI following that test.

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But what's funny is that I still get asked what pickups people should put in their AVRI strat to get that sound....

I think soundclips can have merit, but for me, it's best to hear the pickups clean, and recorded with some level decent level of fidelity. If you're hearing the clips through a high gain amp, you are hearing mostly the characteristics if that particular hi gain amp.

If that's being recorded with a camcorder, it is pointless.

I really struggled with the sound clips issue. In the end, it was the endless requests from people to provide them that finally put me over the edge.

Me too. And also trying to explain that the smallest variation (right down to the cable) in the signal chain can give you a totally different experience.

While I appreciate all of the work you guys have put in over the years to get to the level of quality you are, I'm willing to bet that 90% of us aren't looking for 99%.

As a pickup consumer, and only familiar with the basic theory, I'm looking for "my tone," not "vintage tone." There is some crossover between the two, but they are not one and the same.

However, I look forward to partaking in something from each one of you vendors who have posted here in this thread and who have made valuable contributions to this forum over the years.

This sounds like sage advice to me, at least in terms of nailing down the kind of sound an individual is looking for. But I'm not sure it gets past the "apples and oranges" problem. Listening to and playing a bunch of vintage pickups and settling on the ones you like best does not mean that you've nailed the one, true, definitive "vintage tone." (The fact that there are rooms full of vintage guitars to compare suggests that there IS no one, true, definitive "vintage tone.") It means you've settled in on the one you like best. This isn't a bad thing, of course, especially when you've got several pair of good ears agreeing in something, but it is still a matter of personal preference. (IMHO, of course...)

.......
There was only a few winders at Fender, maybe 3 to 6, one was known as a fact to have a better hand at winding.. Leo even said that himself..
there was not 100's of variations to real Vintage tone, just a few variations - some naturally better then others.. depending on how they wrapped those coils... they all fell into a natural rhythm to get them wrapped.. they never went in to work and tossed a whole new pattern onto those bobbins..
Ive seen what I feel is the whole collection of variations.. and general consensus pointed to one winder, and thats the one I spent eight months learning how the heck she did it.. you cant do it on the first go - even if you memorized her pattern.. it took months for me to get to where I was able to reproduce that wrap.. I used to jump out of bed with answer's, but I knew it was the one to go with, because the broken ones with her warp had rich historys from the owners of how it blew away others of the same vintage and how all their friends liked that fender the best out of many..
when I first tested that wrap - it blew us away! I knew I was on to better vintage then we had ever been able to have recreated in our experiences here... while chasing that holy grail of vintage.:wink:

While I appreciate all of the work you guys have put in over the years to get to the level of quality you are, I'm willing to bet that 90% of us aren't looking for 99%.

As a pickup consumer, and only familiar with the basic theory, I'm looking for "my tone," not "vintage tone." There is some crossover between the two, but they are not one and the same.

However, I look forward to partaking in something from each one of you vendors who have posted here in this thread and who have made valuable contributions to this forum over the years.


I understand what your saying, thanks
and yes this is the case for many players....
but my case is this:

Vintage tone is what was on all those Blues Records and most of my Rock records.. all those records are built into my brains catalog of licks and notes... and here I am trying to mimic that stuff.. yet I was not getting that "sound" from modern stuff or even the flavor of the month stuff.. all this prior to my ever winding a single pickup.. I bought pickups every payday for years.. I was desperately seeking GREAT VINTAGE TONE... and also Roy Buchanan Nancys tone.. and my Blues Friends Junior Watson and Rick Holmstrom, and lots of others were also into it....
So - together we all ran the gauntlet of pickups out there.. and never found any that would compare side by side in the Vintage Room at guitar center Hollywood or at Vintage Shows..
we could not afford to take Vintage gear on planes anymore after 911- it got harder to "carry on" so these guys wanted vintage clones.. and so did I.. ( cause I could no way afford 53 Teles at $25k from a $10hr job)

and as the quest went on, and I started to test wind, luck came my way -and being in the right place at the right time all seemed to run in my favor..

lastly (BLUNTLY) if i may be so bold.. IMHO, We decided this:
unless a pickup maker can reproduce vintage and whats on those records... and prove his wares in side by sides,
then we no longer wanted to hear their jargon on how they may have "BETTER engineered" that pickup one way or the other.. we paid the cash and read the hype... but in the real world "our world of vintage experts-that we shared here" nothing was panning out onstage with the bands we were in.. until I got very lucky and most likely blessed..

Its been six years of solid success... and its not because I decided one day "hey i wanna make pickups and make money" it happened because I was after that elusive Vintage tone that was on most of those old guitars ( not all of em) but usually :the one that got away story" etc.. those are the ones..
and when i hear a guy with that story, I always say have no fear, I can get that sound back for you.. and for 6 years I've done that for those guys.. never disappointing a single one of them...

cheers:wink:
DM

Don, that's a great post. Probably the post of the year. No compromises, no excuses, no apologies. It's a great explaination of where you are coming from. I admire that.

Don, that's a great post. Probably the post of the year. No compromises, no excuses, no apologies. It's a great explaination of where you are coming from. I admire that.

Likewise. The very best solutions are born from a true and genuine desire to simply do what's right.

Don has really accomplished something very difficult maybe close to impossible.
I only take inspiration from certain vintage tones on some pups but always strive to come up with something different tonally with each set and not try and reproduce a copy of a specific vintage pickup there are already people like Don who make the vintage clones very well.