Help! Need to know how to tell if a pickup is a Joe Barden!

[Ian Hooper]

Hey guys

I have the oppurtunity to buy this tele plus really cheap. It has a single coil sized humbucker in the neck position that looks like a Joe Barden but the owner has no idea what kind of pickup it is. Is there a way to tell if it is a Joe Barden? writing somewhere on it? wires?

thanks in advance!


Ian

[moonshiner]

Only way I know is that the rails are offset...

Someone with Bardens might be able to help you better...

[Ian Hooper]

Here is a picture if anybody wants to see one

http://photobucket.com/albums/a162/c...=joebarden.jpg



Ian

[mark norwine]

to say for sure, you gotta see the bottom....look for a sticker with the assembler's initials & date.

[Tele295]

The glare in that pic makes it tough.

There are not a lot of double-rail, Tele size neck pups out there. There are more bridge units that are similar but for the offset rails. Necks pups are tougher. If the rails are stainless steel, the chances of it being a Barden improve. The next step woule be to look at the bottom. I can't describe it, but the wiring work is very identifiable, as well as the initials that Mark mentioned.

[Ian Hooper]

Hey guys

The person selling the guitar said this to me in an email. "There is a sticker with a s on the left and a 13 on the right and what looks like a capital I in the middle."

does this sound like the kind of sticker that would be on a Joe Barden? any help would be appreciated!

thanks!

Ian

[Spidercaster]

Hope this helps.

[stephent2]

The Bardens I bought in the mid 90s (a dozen or so sets) had no stickers and no markings on the back, but looked the same as Spidercaster's exellent pic.

[Tele295]

Originally Posted by Spidercaster

Hope this helps.

The way the bundled leads are glued to the blade (as in Spider's picture) is one distinctive Barden wiring feature.

[GuitarJonz]

You say that the neck pup is dual rail, and single coil sized? Does that mean tele or strat sized? There are lots of strat sized dual rail neck pups out there from GFS, Bill Lawrence L-250, DiMarzio, Duncan etc. I don't know of any tele sized dual rail neck pups, except Barden. However, a guy on the FDP says that GFS will have a tele sized dual rail neck pup soon:

GFS will also have a matching neck 2 rail pup out in a couple of weeks, with at least 2 versions of the cleaner, twangier, "Lil Puncher" set, one even designed to replicate Bardens design, according to an Email I received from Jay at GFS....

[mark norwine]

I'm a long time Barden user, and with the recent lack of availabliity, I decided....just for grins...to try a GFS "lil puncher".

Not even close. Not even close to being close.

I hold out no hopes regarding their forthcoming neck pickup....

[Tele295]

Thanks, Mark. I was wondering if it was in the ballpark. Have you tried the parallel wiring on a DiMarzio Fast Track T - rumour has it that will get into Bardenland. If not in the ballpark, maybe as far as the parking lot?

Dang it, Joe, start making these things again!

[mark norwine]

No, I've not tried the DiMarzio. {as a kid in the late 70's, we called them "de-noise-e-o's}

I'm taken aback by the notion of a parallel hookup getting near a Barden tone.....Bardens are, indeed, series connected {well, they're 4-wire, so I guess you could do whatever you want, but as supplied stock, they're series}, so I'm thinking that the DiMarzios must sound awful thin to need to be "beefed up" via parallel winding....

Then again...as I said...I haven't tried them, so I can say {before y'all do!} that I have no idea what I'm talking about vis-a-vis the DiMarzio's

[JoeAArthur]

Originally Posted by mark norwine

I'm a long time Barden user, and with the recent lack of availabliity, I decided....just for grins...to try a GFS "lil puncher".

Not even close. Not even close to being close.

I hold out no hopes regarding their forthcoming neck pickup....

Not to diss GFS... I've got two of their pickups (not the lil puncher or any of its derivatives) just waiting to go into a partscaster.

And certainly not to further hype or instill any quality of magic to the Bardens...

The two pickups are made quite differently. The GFS models have their blade/coils parallel within a rectangle defined by the pickup base. The Bardens have their blade/coils parallel... but within a parallelogram defined by the strings and their relationship to the pickup - at least from what I can tell. I ain't ever owned one.

But this difference alone is sufficient to have the two pickups sound different (notice I didn't say better or worse - that is in the ear of the beholder). Different areas of the strings are sensed (or not).

Personally I wouldn't get a GFS or any other maker's model of a similar pickup. Simply because a humbucker ain't a single coil.

If I wanted humbuckers, I would put in a real one.

edited afterthought: If GFS is coming out with a similar to Barden neck pickup - then there might not be enough structural differences. It might be an interesting comparison. Then again... it's still a humbucker for me.