why such a Price range in quality pickups?

I see pickups all good quality sold from $50 to 100+. Is cost is building so different for one builder as another?

It's not the materials so much as it is what winders want to charge for their time. I wanted to give a handwound pickup at a mass manufactured price, and it bit me in the ass timewise.

Allot of winding machines and parts came available in the recent years, that were never there 6 years ago.. so it allowed for new winders to get involved and charge a little less then the normal 100.00 each that was trade standard pricing back then for hand wound pickups... ( IMO, this was most likely done to try to catch some sales or get started - its a free market - price fixing is not allowed LOL) but even with the connivance... it does not take long before the cost of running a business and the time involved -- bites you where it hurts! as Fezz stated!...

I've held out with my 80-100ea pricing for 6 years, and all the parts involved has sky rocketed,, copper increased 180% next comes end of year tax time & business licenses etc., whats left in the Ol' savings at each years end is very discouraging! all that hard work and long-long hours for that?... you sorta get up a fence in this trade and get stuck up that fence, and most of us one man operations do not ever-get rich in this trade, there's no ski boats and corvettes to be seen among most of us at all if any of us , just compacts and dingys ;-)( especially us single coil only winders) now a good long run on $500.00 a set PAF Humbuckers may play out much differently.. but Ive seen that backfire horribly on some makers and especially the pre-paid buyers etc..

for mass pup manufacturers - read that as machine wound - they'll charge what the traffic and hype will bear and crank out pups by the hundreds. for hand guide winders, it's a lotta time invested in winding just one coil so yer paying for time and not so much parts, thus the higher price tag. also there's the materials quantity factor - big difference in price between 100 and 10,000 pieces of whatever pup part. and lastly, any goober who charges $60 for a hand guided tele bridge pup is stupid nuts. avoid him like the plague! :mrgreen:

Thank you guys for explaining that, makes sense.