Been sayin this....

HAs anybody tried the gold foil pickups?
Either vintage ones-or newer updated/upgraded ones
(& not just regular pickups dressed up as gold foils--those exit as well)

Some of the best information I've seen on the old gold-foil Japanese pickups came from Mike Reilander when he was active on AxeTalk. I particularly recall him talking about the oldies having those very flat refrigerator magnets that gave them such a flat profile. I was left with the impression that the proportions and profile were responsible for the unique sound characteristics and that modern gold foil-appearing pickups wouldn't necessarily sound the same because the basic materials would be different.

My one experience with old gold foils was in my first guitar, my single pickup Zenon. While I never realized there was anything special about it when I was young, when I bought my first guitar back a few years ago, I was quite impressed with the pickup. I've posted a picture that's from the eBay ad where I relocated my first guitar, and you can see the style of pickup. There were at least two or three Zenon models that used that style. One of the most famous people to use a Zenon guitar was Zal Yanovsky, the lead guitar player for the Lovin' Spoonful. When you listen to cuts like "Do You Believe In Magic", you can hear what a fine pickup Zenon was building at the time.

i.vgy.me/yIKP5k.jpg

Lovin' Spoonful is a band with some interesting history. I was always fascinated by Zal Yanovsky because he was a Canadian. The stories about his firing from the Spoonful are illuminating. What's really cool is that the band still exists, although in a much changed form from the original lineup. John Sebastion is gone of course, and the original drummer, Joe Butler is now the lead guitarist and main singer.

Well if the cheap pickups that came in my LP copy ever get popular I have a set I could sell.
I have the Duncans in there, as I've already mentioned.

But if I got a good price for them--I'd sell the pickups.

On the other hand, I'm not holding my breath.

It's dark pink. looks red from some angles--but yeah, same guitar.
This is what it looked like when I got it:

the pink pickup is a Seymour Duncan JB.
I knew I wanted new pickups but didn't want to spend a lot--after some research I decided on Kent Armstrong pickups & went to store I knew carried them.
they didn't have the pickups I was looking torso they offered to order them
While the salesman was checking that out I saw the Pink JB and asked about it.
Since you can order customs colour bobbins for many SD pickups someone had ordered the pink JB from them, but backed out from buying it
They eat lowering the price & nobody bought it.
Since it was the now the same price as the Kent Armstrong pickup I decided to buy it.
If I didn't like the look I could always get a cover--but I like it--so no cover.

The other pickup is a Seymour Duncan P=Rail--which I also got a good price on.
At a different store I was checking out pickups, but wanted a 4 conductor one so I could wire it series/parallel and/or coil split it.
Then I saw the P-Rail, asked boat it and they knocked down the price to match the others I was considering.

The JB is wired for series/parallel/split and the P-Rail for P-90/Rail/humbucker

Ah yes I remember that one!

Or P-90s?

I considered a humbucker sized P-90, but when I got that great deal on a P-Rail--I went for that.

Ain't nothing like a P-90.

But I do like the P-rail--because it gets me that sound, and the hum bucker sound I like and a Rail/Strat type one as well.

Although I'd say I sue the P-90 setting about 2/3s of the time-at least--and the hum bucker the most after that.

But I like the rail when used with the split bridge humbucker.

I've never bent Jersey.
I've been in 5 US states.

Most of the way across the continent --and much closer to Spell...

Yeah I figured

Do it

(And if I did get Alumitones I would consider their P90 version

One of my favourite pickups of all time is the vintage-style Rickenbacker Toasters for guitar. Not those inexpensive Toaster look-a-likes that appeared to be the real thing but sounded like pooh, but real Rickenbackers. A while ago, I resolved to build a guitar with those pickups in mind. I put together a Telecaster and ordered a pair of Rickenbacker Toasters.

When they came in, I was in a bit of a quandry....It was obvious that they were made for a guitar that was designed for surface-mount pickups, which would have made them well-suited to thinline archtop-design guitars, but not so good in a lot of solid-body flat-top guitars like Telecasters and Strats. I decided to try to mount them underneath and try to raise them as high as possible. What I discovered is that by the time the pickup was mounted underneath and projecting through a pickguard or a bridge plate,even when it was cranked up as high as it would go, the pickup wasn't close enough to the string to produce a really focused articulate sound.That prevented the pickup from getting into that sweet spot that let the Ricky pickups produce the chime or jangle that made them sound special.