A true Time Machine

[Mike Rice]

Don't know the seller and I'm just assuming this is for real, but he's got a point in saying you won't find one of these every day. The price is certainly out of my range but I suppose an arguement could be easily made for such an item in it's original package. If he had a pair of them he could probably more than double the price.

I have to admit, I'd love to hear it wired up if for nothing but nostalgia's sake. I played so many 70s Customs and Deluxe Teles back in the day, it would really be a hoot.

[SteveY]

They are great humbuckers.
Very sweet.
Makes me miss my ol' CBS Tele Custom. Gigged it six years before I had to have a "normal REAL" Tele!

[GuitarJonz]

I remember a time not so long ago, probably late 80s/early 90s, when I needed one of these wide range buckers to replace a blown one on a Tele Custom. This was well before the internet and ebay, back when you had to pick up the phone and call around. Anyway, I ended up calling Mandolin Bros. in NY, and they had an NOS pickup, just like this one. It set me back all of $35.00! Ah, those were the days

[blauserk]

I posted about a week ago about my love of the wide-range pickup. Really sweet pickups--fat sounding without losing clarity, and really outstanding in the neck position.

That said, I don't mind a pickup with some scratches on it, so I'm fine buying ones people have pulled from used guitars. I think the last time I bought a spare wide-range pickup, which was probably a year ago, it set me back $125.

[Ed Bickert]

Isn't that one overpriced? For the price of two of them you can get the guitar it goes in thrown in for an extra grand or so.

And I thought the general knowledge was that CBS models (not so much the pikcups) were of sub-par quality. It's amazing how much CBS guitars go for now. Especially considering how blacklisted they were not too long ago. You can see a big price difference between a 1964 Tele and a 1965 Tele on eBay too.

Funny how something once considered a poorly constructed guitar with an eye for the dollar and no eye on quality control can start commanding vintage prices. I suppose if it's old it gets the money. But for 3,500 I'd rather buy a 2006 Custom Shop Tele. Wich i suspect has far more quality in it than a CBS-era product.

And yes, I know there's exceptions to every rule. If some moron can sell a peice of toast with St. Mary's face on it for a grand then it stands to reason that, if only by luck, a good many of the CBS era guitars are good. But still. Without playing it, who would throw so much money away on what only a decade ago was considered Fedner's darkest years?

But maybe it's worth buying them to sell them by parts. Especially if you can get 500.00 per pickup.

[Pete Galati]

How are the humbuckers like that that Fender sells these days? Are they as good as the original ones?

I've always wondered about those because they look pretty cool, but their price kind of scared me off.

Pete

[blauserk]

Originally Posted by Pete Galati

How are the humbuckers like that that Fender sells these days? Are they as good as the original ones?

I think the only similarities are cosmetic. The construction looks to be quite different. See the Wikipedia entry on the pickups below.

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The Wide Range pickup was conceived to be sonically closer to Fenders single coil pickups that Gibson humbuckers. This concept called for the use of cunife rod magnets as pole pieces within the coil structures, more closely resembling a regular Strat pickup than a Gibson humbucker. The cunife magnets were threaded and slotted to function and resemble the adjustable screw type poles of a Gibson humbucker. The pickup bobbins were wound with approximately 10,000 turns of copper wire around Cunife (Copper/Nickel/Ferrite) magnetized pole-pieces.

The 2004 re-issued pickup, despite an almost identical appearance, is constructed very differently from the original 1970s unit. Like a Gibson humbucker it features a bar magnet underneath the bobbins that abutted to 6 screw type pole-pieces in each coil; the 2004 Wide Range is in fact an ordinary humbucker placed in a larger casing, and the gap is filled with cloth. This is one important reason the re-issue sounds very different from the original pickup. Another reason is the use of 500 KΩ volume pots, the original used 1 MΩ pots. Using 500 KΩ pots on very high-output humbuckers produces a sound described as "dark" and "muddy". Original "Wide Range" are described as sounding "fat" but with noticeable more clarity and detail than Gibson humbuckers. The same re-issued pickups are used on the 1972 Custom Telecaster Re-issue.