GFS Pick-ups as bad as I think?

Decent performance from

Mean 90
Lipstick for strat
Dream 180
Tele bridge, vintage wind

Most tend to float in and out of guitars, in right after the build, and then out once I get a feel for the guitar and decide exactly what I want as a replacement/upgrade.

The ones that have stayed permanent are the lipsticks because they happend to be a very good match from the start.

 

I've got a dream 90 neck pu paired with a genuine Gibson p-94 bridge and I kinda like the sound of the dream 90. The Gibson is very well balanced and sounds awesome, but the dream 90 has excellent attack - almost as twangy as a bridge pu. Probably a lot of the same sounds as the O.P. is reporting, but mine feels like it has enough low end to compensate. Either way, it sounds good for the playing I do and I'm happy with it.

 

Love my GFS pickups, and everyone that has heard them loved them, and are suprised when I tell them they are GFS.

Too each his own.

 

I fitted Surf 90's to an Ibanez that I wanted to sound more like a tele, and I'm happy with them, nice clean twangy country sound. I've used three or four sets of GFS's in tele builds and they are fine - the cheaper ones are a bit tinnier, right enough. You get fair value for what you pay.

 

i like the sound of the plain single coils. i have also bought 2 of the lil punchers and not liked them at all. that being said i bought a set of the tele pups in the clearance section and was very happy with them.

 

i have had great success with these pickups. think i am on my 4th one.

http://stores.ebay.ca/OnlyMusic/_i.html?_nkw=pickup&submit=Search&_sid=9830487

 

Think so too. I Know that their Eric Clapton mid range boost kit is actually an Artec QTA I've bought both same board.

I also get Artec pickups from a Hong Kong seller and some of them I cannot tell apart from GFS.

 

I have a set of Liverpool Filtertrons , mean 90 and a lil' puncher tele bridge pick up. filtertron and mean 90 for the price great. lil puncher wasn't bad but I missed tele sound and took it out. may use it later in a hot rod or something.

 

Just put together a Strat starting with a 90's MIM neck and body. Used GFS Pro Series 59 Strat pickups vintage wound. It is the black one pictured, the white one is my buddy's Fender Custom Shop 50's Strat. He said mine sounded amazing, I'm not going to argue with him.

 

Just a stab in the dark here... Maybe there's some other issue? You replaced your original pickups with GFS, why?

 

As other posters have mentioned, they're wound by Artec in Asia. Some of their stuff is a clear rebranding of existing Artec lines, but many are wound to GFS spec by Artec.

I'm a big Artec fan for budget-conscious consumers. Like anything else, you have to watch what to buy. If you get a $8 ceramic strat pickup, don't expect anything more than an $8 ceramic strat pickup. Their Giovanni stuff is really good for the money. They also have a "Vintage Authentic" line which is pretty outstanding regardless of price point.

No, they aren't wound on the bank of a fabled mountain stream to the sound of harps playing and birds chirping, but they're good for the money. Almost anything is better than what comes in most MIM (or below) Teles, at least that's my humble opinion.

 

I got a coupla their JM vintage-winds; I like 'em fine, but I might not be picky enough.

 

Anyone know how their unpotted PAF copies fare?

http://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-pro...Humbucker-Nickel-Case-Neck-Pickup_p_4158.html

 

I also find the GFS pickups I've bought have left me disappointed they just seem to lack something. The one set of pickups that I bought that really surprised me were Tonerider's for the price well worth the money.

 

I'm with ya on these guys. I ordered a pair of dog ear P-90's in black for a rewire on a semi-hollowbody that had cheap soap bars in it.
I had to do a little mod to get them to fit right, but these are some nice P-90's.
I can roll back the volume and get some sweet mellow jazzy tones, or crank it and get a nice warm overdrive that i can control with just pick attack.
When they are cranked I don't hear a lot if swirly noise like a lot of pickups.
I used 50's style wire and grounded everything to the ground side of the output jack, and it's the lowest hum I've ever got from a single coil and way better than the soap bars that were wired real cheap and were very noisey. In the middle position it's dead quite.
Didn't mean to hi jack your thread, just thought I'd pass along my experience with this brand of pickup.
If you like P-90's these guys a worth a look, can't speak to any other pickups they make.

 

sorry, GFS is just junk to me....ive been burned by them to many times....better products on the market...as far as pups go i bought a set of the EVH pups for one of my gigging guitars. i had to pull the bridge one out immediately, it sounded like crap...the neck one is still in there & is weak to my ears compaired to a duncan 59 or dimarzio air classic wich are my fav neck pups....i just havent had time to remove it yet...there is an old saying i live by...maybe you heard it...you get what you pay for....if GFS was selling anything that good they would be getting amazing artists to work for them & play it instead of that has-been hack earl slick!...have you seen his videos on the site? i can play better then that in my sleep!

 

I put one of those in the middle of my Nashville Tele. Sounds really cool. I put a set of GFS Hot Leads in my mim strat, big improvement. I put a Fat Body in my Tele neck, a big, big improvement over stock.

 

I've tried 3 different sets, the Retroton hot ceramic (name escapes me) and the rails Tele which I found so terrible I didn't even keep them in the spares bin, just dumped then, the Dream 90's on the other hand I love, they are in a Washburn J9V which I use live in a rockabilly band. I have a much more expensive humbucker size P90 in another guitar (Duncan Phat cat) and the Dreams are as good imo.


EDIT, after seeing the above post I remember I also have a GFS Fatbody in a Tele neck position and that is a great pickup also.

 

I'm using the '60s hot repro Tele bridge pickup in my Squier Std. Tele, along with the overwound vintage Tele neck pickup. The bridge pickup sounded great from the get-go; some real midrange girth, not shrill but still has a little spank. The neck took some dialing in to get the right height, but now the combo sounds perfect. At 9.6k and 9k ohms respectively, (yeah, yeah...I know...there's more to a pickup than DCR; it's just my point of comparison) these would be in the range of the Texas Specials, I would imagine.

 

My only experience with GFS pickups: out of curiousity, ordered the Xaviere XV-950, which is a thin-line hollowbody, comes stock with the GFS "Nashville retrotrons". The body of the guitar was well built as was the neck, except for some sloppy fret ends. However, for a new guitar, the trapeze bridge and the pot knobs were all corroded and the bridge post on the treble side had been installed too deeply, making about a 1/8' bulge on the underside of the bridge. After pointing out the defects, GFS provided suitable replacements, except for the bridge and it was (in hindsight) a comical effort on their part.
The Nashville Retrotrons, which GFS describes as their "famed Retrotrons" were actually ok. Are they as good as the real deal? Not in my opinion, but not bad and maybe I just need a little more time with them.
It's kind of a fun guitar, and I more or less got what I paid for. Maybe more, since I got it on sale and maybe less, in that getting it up and playable was not an "out of the box" fun experience.