Waaah Music Store's red colored Tele pickups

[Antigua Tele]

A seller called "Waaah Music Store" on AliExpress is selling some unique Telecaster pickups https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003304410146.html . Someone posted a link to these about a month ago, but I can't find that post now, otherwise I'd give them a shout out for tipping me off to them.

They have a lot of things going for them, not only are they high quality, with real fiber board and AlNiCo 5 pole pieces, but the fiberboard is also colored red, and the neck pickup is tapped with a ~10% reduction. The only bad news is that the neck pickup's cover is brass, so the neck will sound dark if the cover is left on, but as you can see in the picture, the neck pickup has red bobbins too, so I think the correct move is to remove to cover and go for the unique red Tele pickup look. I have a red Telecaster that I'm planning to put them into. The neck coil is also tapped with kapton tape, so there is some protection aside from the brass cover. And the hookup leads are actual "pull back" cloth wire, the premium vintage Fender / StewMac style.

The bridge pickup has an inductance of 4.3H and a loaded resonant peak of 2.8kHz, that's a hot bridge pickup, very similar LCR values to the Cavalier Nashville Lion King https://www.tdpri.com/threads/cavalier-nashville-lion-lion-king-quick-test.698856/ . The base plate is steel.

The neck pickup's normal inductance is 3.1H, a bit hot for a neck, and 2.3H tapped, which is more normal. The loaded peak is 3.5kHz normally, or 4.2kHz tapped, which pretty ideally differentiates both vintage and "hot vintage" neck pickups. I think the main problem with a pickup with these tap points is that when you can quickly A/B vintage and "hot vintage", what seems like a big difference when you're swapping pickups somehow doesn't seem like that much of a difference when all it takes is the flip of a switch to go back and forth. That 500Hz difference happens in the high treble range. The bode plot suggests there will also be a 2.5dBV output drop when the neck pickup is tapped, which is equivalent to turning down the volume knob about half a notch. I do intend to wire up a Tele (a red colored one) to exploit the tap though, so I can try it out first hand.

I haven't put these in a guitar yet, I was more interested in sharing this info quickly. The neck pickup's tap lead is yellow. Remember that when you wire a coil tap, you don't want to shunt it like you would a coil split, because if the tapped-out portion of the coil is caused to have DC continuity when tapped, it will create an eddy current loop, so the DP/DT selector has to wire "either full or tapped" with each of the pickup's two lead wires connecting to either side of the DP/DT, and then the center post leads out the pickup selector switch.


Waaah Music Store Red Tele Pickups

Bridge
- DC Resistance: 8.557K ohms
- Q @1khz: 2.66
- Measured L: 4.395H
- Calculated C: 115.34pF
- Gauss: 1050G (AlNiCo 5)

Neck
- DC Resistance: 9.215K ohms, tapped: 7.846K
- Q @1khz: 1.642 tapped: 1.495
- Measured L: 3.120H tapped: 2.322H
- Calculated C: 111.26pF tapped: 123.89pF
- Gauss: 1050G (AlNiCo 5)

Bridge unloaded: dV: 12.4dB f: 5.87kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 4.8dB f: 2.83kHz (blue)

Neck no cover unloaded: dV: 13.7dB f: 8.65kHz (red)
Neck no cover loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 14.4dB f: 8.65kHz (green)
Neck no cover tap unloaded: dV: 6.1dB f: 3.55kHz (red)
Neck no cover tap loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 6.7dB f: 4.12kHz (green)

Bridge pickup, neck with the cover, normal and tapped

Neck pickup, cover removed, normal and tapped

 

[Bruxist]

Those looks very cool. Look forward to your real life test.

What is that baseplate made of?

 

[uriah1]

Rio Grande had some nice artistic ones too. And good pickups

 

[Peegoo]

They look well made. The base plate appears to be zinc-plated steel.

Wrap that bare neck pickup's coil with some cloth tape to protect the wire. If the high E string snags under the top flatwork it can kill the pickup.

 

[Antigua Tele]

They look well made. The base plate appears to be zinc-plated steel.

Wrap that bare neck pickup's coil with some cloth tape to protect the wire. If the high E string snags under the top flatwork it can kill the pickup.

The coil is taped with clear kapton tape, but more tape can't hurt.

 

[Antigua Tele]

Rio Grande had some nice artistic ones too. And good pickups

I think the colored fiber board looks great. It would be nice if there was some more options. A bright white that could be dyed any color, would be cool.

I see Rio Grande pickups cost ~$250 for a set, where as these are just around $50. Of course nobody can compete with China when it comes to pricing (other than Bootstrap), but the price difference here is pretty big.

 

[Bruxist]

Yeah, I would probably put some gaffer tape on the neck pickup coil.

 

[hopdybob]

for those that support US products, be aware that this seller could be somekind of a fraud

53.01US $ 10% OFF|Hand Made Alnico5 Sss Single Coil Vintage Pickup Voor Elektrische St Gitaar Pickup Pak Voor Oude 57 Strat Pickup set|Boot onderdelen & Accessoires| - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

nl.aliexpress.com

 

[Antigua Tele]

for those that support US products, be aware that this seller could be somekind of a fraud

53.01US $ 10% OFF|Hand Made Alnico5 Sss Single Coil Vintage Pickup Voor Elektrische St Gitaar Pickup Pak Voor Oude 57 Strat Pickup set|Boot onderdelen & Accessoires| - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

nl.aliexpress.com

Yeah, the counterfeiting is pretty rampant. Something I've been liking about the counterfeits is that it seems as though they make an extra effort to make the counterfeit product well, so that someone might actually mistake it for the real thing, whereas with a lot of the no-brand product, they don't even try. It's like if they're not trying to copy something good, that's all the more reason to make something sloppy. In the pickup above, they want us to think it's a Fender product, so they've used quality cloth pullback wire, AlNiCo magnets and real fiberboard, which is all good. On the other hand, it also looks like the pole pieces aren't well fit into the flatwork, and the shape of the flange is wrong, but that flaw won't impact how the pickup sounds, or looks from the outside.

 

[TX_Slinger]

Seems like they may have had a good product but with that CS logo pic shenanigans, I'd pass. Go with Tonerider for Chinese pickups from a UK company that isn't playing fast and loose with copyright infringement.

 

[Antigua Tele]

I put these pickups into a red Tele.

The coil tap on the neck pickup is pretty great. I didn't know what to expect, but when tapped, it sounds like a lower output "quacky" neck pickup, more Strat or even Lipstick-like where the high E and B are more prominent, and in full mode it has the more piano-like tone of a typical neck pickup, where the D and G string seem most prominent. The difference is not even as subtle as I had expected it would be.

Also the sound of the neck pickup is helped out by not having a cover over it. The included covers were the cheap brass type, so if you planned to use these with a cover, I'd buy a nickel silver cover and swap it out, but that would over up the cool red colored bobbin, which I think it a real selling point.

The bridge pickup sounds strong, sort of like a single coil trying to be a humbucker, which is fine with me.

 

[Bruxist]

I put these pickups into a red Tele.

The coil tap on the neck pickup is pretty great. I didn't know what to expect, but when tapped, it sounds like a lower output "quacky" neck pickup, more Strat or even Lipstick-like where the high E and B are more prominent, and in full mode it has the more piano-like tone of a typical neck pickup, where the D and G string seem most prominent. The difference is not even as subtle as I had expected it would be.

Also the sound of the neck pickup is helped out by not having a cover over it. The included covers were the cheap brass type, so if you planned to use these with a cover, I'd buy a nickel silver cover and swap it out, but that would over up the cool red colored bobbin, which I think it a real selling point.

The bridge pickup sounds strong, sort of like a single coil trying to be a humbucker, which is fine with me.

Looks great! Sounds like it sounds pretty fly too.

Using a push-pull for the neck split?

 

[Antigua Tele]

Looks great! Sounds like it sounds pretty fly too.

Using a push-pull for the neck split?

Yeah, you just run the full output to the two end-most pins, and the split output to the pins closest to the pot, and the two pins in the center lead out to the toggle switch.

I had bad results with Seymour Duncan tapped pickups, so I was surprised how well this worked. Usually SD is "very hot" and "very low" output, where as this one is more like "vintage" and "even more vintage"

 

[ChicknPickn]

A seller called "Waaah Music Store" on AliExpress is selling some unique Telecaster pickups https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003304410146.html . Someone posted a link to these about a month ago, but I can't find that post now, otherwise I'd give them a shout out for tipping me off to them.

They have a lot of things going for them, not only are they high quality, with real fiber board and AlNiCo 5 pole pieces, but the fiberboard is also colored red, and the neck pickup is tapped with a ~10% reduction. The only bad news is that the neck pickup's cover is brass, so the neck will sound dark if the cover is left on, but as you can see in the picture, the neck pickup has red bobbins too, so I think the correct move is to remove to cover and go for the unique red Tele pickup look. I have a red Telecaster that I'm planning to put them into. The neck coil is also tapped with kapton tape, so there is some protection aside from the brass cover. And the hookup leads are actual "pull back" cloth wire, the premium vintage Fender / StewMac style.

The bridge pickup has an inductance of 4.3H and a loaded resonant peak of 2.8kHz, that's a hot bridge pickup, very similar LCR values to the Cavalier Nashville Lion King https://www.tdpri.com/threads/cavalier-nashville-lion-lion-king-quick-test.698856/ . The base plate is steel.

The neck pickup's normal inductance is 3.1H, a bit hot for a neck, and 2.3H tapped, which is more normal. The loaded peak is 3.5kHz normally, or 4.2kHz tapped, which pretty ideally differentiates both vintage and "hot vintage" neck pickups. I think the main problem with a pickup with these tap points is that when you can quickly A/B vintage and "hot vintage", what seems like a big difference when you're swapping pickups somehow doesn't seem like that much of a difference when all it takes is the flip of a switch to go back and forth. That 500Hz difference happens in the high treble range. The bode plot suggests there will also be a 2.5dBV output drop when the neck pickup is tapped, which is equivalent to turning down the volume knob about half a notch. I do intend to wire up a Tele (a red colored one) to exploit the tap though, so I can try it out first hand.

I haven't put these in a guitar yet, I was more interested in sharing this info quickly. The neck pickup's tap lead is yellow. Remember that when you wire a coil tap, you don't want to shunt it like you would a coil split, because if the tapped-out portion of the coil is caused to have DC continuity when tapped, it will create an eddy current loop, so the DP/DT selector has to wire "either full or tapped" with each of the pickup's two lead wires connecting to either side of the DP/DT, and then the center post leads out the pickup selector switch.


Waaah Music Store Red Tele Pickups

Bridge
- DC Resistance: 8.557K ohms
- Q @1khz: 2.66
- Measured L: 4.395H
- Calculated C: 115.34pF
- Gauss: 1050G (AlNiCo 5)

Neck
- DC Resistance: 9.215K ohms, tapped: 7.846K
- Q @1khz: 1.642 tapped: 1.495
- Measured L: 3.120H tapped: 2.322H
- Calculated C: 111.26pF tapped: 123.89pF
- Gauss: 1050G (AlNiCo 5)

Bridge unloaded: dV: 12.4dB f: 5.87kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 4.8dB f: 2.83kHz (blue)

Neck no cover unloaded: dV: 13.7dB f: 8.65kHz (red)
Neck no cover loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 14.4dB f: 8.65kHz (green)
Neck no cover tap unloaded: dV: 6.1dB f: 3.55kHz (red)
Neck no cover tap loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 6.7dB f: 4.12kHz (green)

Bridge pickup, neck with the cover, normal and tapped




Neck pickup, cover removed, normal and tapped

This is how you do a gear review. Very nice.

 

[dang]

I hope they sound really GREAT...

because they look really FUGLY!

 

[surfsup1955]

Man, that is one gorgeous body

 

[stylemessiah]

Sees line:

"I haven't put these in a guitar yet, I was more interested in sharing this info quickly"

runs other direction

usual response to shill comments

 

[Humbuckers]

Sees line:

"I haven't put these in a guitar yet, I was more interested in sharing this info quickly"

runs other direction

usual response to shill comments

Do you know who Antigua is? He’s the opposite of a shill; he’s added so much to my understanding of pickups with all the information he’s generously shared over the years. Information that I’m sure would irk a number of pickup manufacturers because of how it cuts through the ambiguous marketing gobbledygook.

 

[Powertrain]

At this price, they are quite tempting.

As far as the high construction quality and possible fraud: I could be that they are rejects from the supplier to an OEM (like Fender or Stew Mac) because they didn’t meet the spec. They are purchased as scrap, then resold with a different brand.

 

[Antigua Tele]

Sees line:

"I haven't put these in a guitar yet, I was more interested in sharing this info quickly"

runs other direction

usual response to shill comments

If shill info was this detailed I'd welcome it.