tasteful ebay notice, Real; WIDE RANGE HUMBUCKERS

[Don Mare]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-1970s-Fe...item2a188034a0

Getting more RARE lately, these look very clean..

Not affiliated with auction,

I just wanted to let TDPRI-ers know about these, becasue I usually never see them go up anymore for sale.
Don

[hongaku]

Dang. $900, and the neck lead is too short?

They're in really good shape though otherwise. I should've bought that original thinline I liked (a black one in great condition), for $600 in the mid 1990's when I had the chance - but I was too busy looking for a Gibson at the time

[Mekhem]

Huh.. I wonder who that guy is...

[uriah1]

I have seen them go for $500+/pair

[Guitarmadcat]

To me, NO WAY would they be worth that. I had a Tele Deluxe for a few years in the '80s and although the pups were good - they definitely weren't great.

Values have rocketed due to scarcity and over-hype - definitely not due to quality of sound.

[Gibson]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that wide range pickups weren't particularly well regarded at the time they were new, and that they've only become so in the glow of their "vintage" cache?

Sent from my iPhone using TDPRI

[rolling56]

Sold........for $850

[uriah1]

Originally Posted by Gibson

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that wide range pickups weren't particularly well regarded at the time they were new, and that they've only become so in the glow of their "vintage" cache?

Sent from my iPhone using TDPRI

I think for antiquity value only. I personally thought they sxkd

[dan1952]

I tried to like the WR pickups back in the 70's, had a couple of Customs, 3 Deluxes, and about four Thinlines with those pickups...they were all AWFUL!

[hongaku]

In my humble opinion (this applies to all that follows), the surge in popularity was not because they are "vintage". The reason the prices started going up is because of the people who were playing guitars that used the wide range humbucker - lots of alt rock bands have utilized these pups, especially British ones, such as Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Blur, Coldplay, etc. Older alt rock bands have used them a lot as well, like Sonic Youth and the Edge from U2 has a old Tele Custom that he uses a fair amount live.
Blues guys have been turned on to them by Tab Benoit.
They really started getting more popular in the mid to late 90's, and even more so into the early 2000's.
All I'm saying is that the surge in popularity with them happened well before the pricing for originals started getting out of hand - which really only got out of hand during the last 7 years or so.
Original wide range pups sound really, really good for certain kinds of music; and I think with the right adjusment and amp settings can sound good for ANY style of music.
The fact that they are vintage and now becoming scarce certainly has something to do with their current ludicrous pricing - but they started becoming scarce because players WANTED them for their sound. Once the demand was there, the fact that they were vintage came into play - if there had been no demand then just being vintage wouldn't cut it and they could still be had for very cheap even today, vintage or not. Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: To clarify, I am not stating that Arcade Fire are British - just that they are an alt rock type of band that makes use of guitars with wide range pups

[TxTeleMan]

For $850 they better make you sound like God's own Telecaster player...

I had a 1975 Fender Telecaster Custom that I bought brand new. The guitar was crappy - the only thing good about the guitar was the sound of that humbucker. After I sold it, I went through a Music Man Sabre and a Strat before getting an '83 Tele, and promptly found a WRHB to put in there.

No those pickups weren't highly regarded when they were new, but I like the sound, and apparently some other people did too. When I bought that used one in '83 the price was about $50, but DiMarzio or Duncan Strat pickups were only $35 back then.

[Telenator]

One of the reasons they're so expensive is because they're nearly impossible to reproduce.

There is only one source in the world for a proper vintage spec WRHB repro using CuNiFe threaded magnets. Telenator.

It's not like a PAF, or vintage Strat pickups where all the parts to reproduce them are readily available, and some very skilled pickup makers have the process mastered.

If you don't have CuNiFe, you don't have a vintage spec WRHB. Since CuNiFe is so ridiculously hard to find and outrageously expensive, it makes reproducing accurate WRHB's almost impossible. That drives up the price of the originals.

This coupled with the fact that they do sound really terrific and unique makes for a very rare and desirable pickup.

[hongaku]

Originally Posted by Telenator

One of the reasons they're so expensive is because they're nearly impossible to reproduce.

There is only one source in the world for a proper vintage spec WRHB repro using CuNiFe threaded magnets. Telenator.

It's not like a PAF, or vintage Strat pickups where all the parts to reproduce them are readily available, and some very skilled pickup makers have the process mastered.

If you don't have CuNiFe, you don't have a vintage spec WRHB. Since CuNiFe is so ridiculously hard to find and outrageously expensive, it makes reproducing accurate WRHB's almost impossible. That drives up the price of the originals.

This coupled with the fact that they do sound really terrific and unique makes for a very rare and desirable pickup.

Yes, but if nobody desired them, it wouldn't make any difference that CuNiFe is practically unavailable - before certain bands and players put these pups in the spotlight they were pretty dang cheap, and that was just a few short years ago. But yes, now that they are desirable, their scarcity and the fact that it is so difficult to reproduce because of the materials involved in the construction absolutely factor in (much more than the fact that they are "vintage" IMO); I'm certainly not going to dispute you on that one!

[Telenator]

They do sound terrific. I've never heard a humbucker with such sweet, tight lows. It's the only humbucker I really like in the neck position of a guitar. Big, fat, articulate tones that you won't find in any bar magnet neck humbucker. Clarity for days! LOL

The whole reason our repros exist is because I built a '72 re-issue partsocaster a few years ago and was simply horrified by the stock re-issue pickups. My little quest to just build one set for myself actually turned into a fun little business!

It's all about the tone man! :)

[Guitarmadcat]

Originally Posted by Telenator

They do sound terrific. I've never heard a humbucker with such sweet, tight lows. It's the only humbucker I really like in the neck position of a guitar. Big, fat, articulate tones that you won't find in any bar magnet neck humbucker. Clarity for days! LOL...............

It's all about the tone man! :)

To be fair and with due respect, you can't expect us to swallow all that - after all, you do have a vested interest!

[Telenator]

Indeed I do have a vested interest!

But it was "that sound" that drove me to want to recreate the original!

[kingpinlonnie]

I resemble that remark! Yeah, I'm the knucklehead who bought the really clean pair of original WRHB's for $850.

I guess I'm in the middle of a WRHB frenzy! Back before they were VINTAGE, when they were just ugly Telecasters, I had a funky brown Telecaster Custom and it was just a joy to play, the more I played it the better it sounded. One thing led to another and before you know it that guitar was just a fond memory.

So last November I decided to to build a project guitar to replace it. I went to a local guitar show and met a guy they call "Telenator", who makes the only CuNiFe WRHB repro out there, and in a fit of excitement I bought one of his pickups ($450!).

Then I started looking on ebay for the rest of the parts. Oops, what I found was a real 70's WRHB, quite worn but fully functonal, for $350 - so NATURALLY I bought that too. Then right after Christmas I got a great deal on a new Telecaster American Standard neck.
So now I have two pickups and I'm thinking I'll build a thinline, and so last week I bought a used Fender Telecaster Classic Player Thinline Deluxe body (3-tone sunburst). It's got a 4-bolt neck pocket so the neck should drop right in, and it's got separate volume and tone controls for each pickup so I can go with 1 meg pots all around and blend the pickups variably.

So far so good. Except, and here's where the sickness really starts to creep in, one pickup is very worn and one is dead mint!
Oh no, wtf was I thinking? That and the fact that I really wasn't sure I was ready for the parts hunt to end led me to continue lurking the WRHB corner of ebay, just in time for the matching set in question to show up.

So now I'm still not sure exactly what I'll do with all this, probably put the shiny vintage set I just bought in the thinline, and assemble a Tele Custom or La Cabronita with either the Telenator or the "well-worn" 70's WRHB in the neck slot and a NoCaster bridge pickup. In the process I will have a chance A/B the Telenator against THREE vintage WRHB's.

I've got a lot of stuff I don't play that much that I'll have to sell before I can get a good night's sleep (wanna buy a 1953 ES-125? or a DeArmond 1100 Rhythm Chief "monkey on a stick"?), but at the other end is a couple of really cool Tele's. They don't look nearly so ugly now that they're VINTAGE.

[musicalmartin]

Surely GFS have come up with a solution by now ?

[kingpinlonnie]

Okay you got me, what's GFS?

[fezz parka]

Originally Posted by Telenator

It's the only humbucker I really like in the neck position of a guitar.

It's all about the tone man! :)

Ditto, Bob.