MrGlyn Meets Your Maker

 Hi all, 

some of you will know how keen I am on NZ made musical gear. We have world class makers here in Aotearoa and the World needs to know about them.

Rather than just having a good moan I’ve been trying to think of ways I can help.

After many conversations with other small manufacturers I’ve come up with an idea.

 I’m starting a series of YouTube videos where I chat with NZ makers so we can all get to know them a little better. 

I figure that seeing and hearing the person behind the product, hearing their story, their philosophy, will help promote what they do beyond just their website. Some of these makers you may not even have heard of.

It’s a very simple format, just recording a Skype conversation. There is some editing mainly cutting out my own waffle but I do try and keep edits to a minimum.

I am not a professional presenter I’m just an ordinary bloke working with what I’ve got and this is way out of my comfort zone but I hope you’ll find the content interesting.

I’ve called the series “MrGlyn Meets Your Maker”. 

In episode #1 I’m talking with Aiden from Archetype Guitars in Palmerston North who very graciously agreed to go first.

If these videos go any way towards you considering buying NZ made then I’ve succeeded. 

Please share, link to, subscribe and spread the word, that’s how you can help.

 Thanks, 

Glyn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mIeamJ8eT0&t=14s

MrGlyn’s ‘Cruel Mistress’ demo

 A big thanks to Brett Kingman for this fantastic demo of my ‘Cruel Mistress’ Telecaster Pickups.

There is nothing like the high end snarl of a good Tele bridge pickup. However, Tele Pickups are complicated. It’s a sound that needs to be just right – too much treble and it can sound grating and obnoxious, too little and it just isn’t a Tele. The treble needs warmth while still cutting through a mix like a zombie banjo.

With the “Cruel Mistress” -hot Tele wanted to make a pickup with a bit more power to drive an amp harder while keeping the Tele character. My biggest concern was not losing what a Tele is all about. In my repair work I come across quite a few replacement Tele pickups that just don’t sound like Teles. Bridge pickups need grit and the neck a chimey clarity and together they should be full and open and matched well enough to create almost a reverb sound with the switch in the middle position.

The “Cruel Mistress” -hot Tele uses AlnicoV magnets to help with the attack and AWG43 wire to help with the snarl.

The neck pickup on a Tele needs to be smooth and warm and have a great balance with the bridge pickup so that the middle position rings with an almost reverb-like tone. The difficulty with Telecaster neck pickups is there just isn’t much space under that cover. As a result it can be a hard pickup to get right and there were a lot of experiments and disappointments on the way. Eventually I came on a design that has enough bottom end to sound full but not so much to sound boomy. And the final pickup was a great match to the bridge.

I had help from the ears of a couple of my regular customers who were generous enough to let me load their guitars with prototypes. The whole process takes time and only after many road tests and versions did I fix on a design. As a result, each of my designs have been developed over many years of subtle changes and road tests. Having help like this means my pickups are trialed through many different amps and playing styles. The neck/bridge balance as well as dynamics/compression need to be tested in as many situations as possible to find a pickup that will work for most players.

So if you need some grit and aggression from your Tele this is the set for you.

https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/03/29/cruel-mistress-hot-tele-pickups/

www.mrglynspickups.com

MrGlyn’s Pickups Bellbird demo

 Thanks to Jason Herbert for managing to use all 5 positions in the funkiest minute you’ll ever experience in this MrGlyn’s Pickups Bellbird demo.

The Bellbird pickup set is a vintage voiced Strat set reminiscent of the early 60's Fender pickups.

The Stratocaster has been around since 1954 and the legend continues. Reading the internet (!?) tells me there have been good and bad years or decades, guitars to avoid and ones worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve been repairing guitars since 1995 so I’ve played a lot of old Strats and analysed a lot of old pickups. Vintage pickups aren’t all great but the good ones are fantastic.

I’ve based my Vintage Strat set on the best of the old pickups I’ve had the pleasure of playing through . So I use AWG42 heavy formvar insulated wire – there’s something about the thickness of that insulation that just works with an old Strat pickup.

I’ve aimed for that old quacking chime that makes Strats wonderfully percussive but with a singing quality that’s so musical. Warm and clear with beautiful almost reverb-like clean tones – that’s what I want out of an old Strat. The neck needs to be fat, round and clear, the middle pickup needs to quack and the bridge a cut through twang without thinness. The all important ‘in between’ sounds in positions 2 and 4 must be balanced and characterful. Nothing says Strat more than these sounds.

The Bellbird set has been designed mainly for clean tones but they’re certainly not afraid to perform with a bit of gain. As part of a HSS set they’re great with one of my ‘Integrity’ humbuckers in the bridge position.

www.mrglynspickups.com

Jansen Pickup re-wind

A couple of weeks back I received this faulty old pickup from a Jansen stratphonic hollow bodied bass made in New Zealand.

The meter was showing it was ‘open circuit’ so after the usual tests for dry joints and removing the top layer of windings I decided it needed rewinding.

I do enjoy saving old dead pickups and this one looks so cool with that ‘toaster’ cover.

www.mrglynsguitars.com

Postage to Australia

 Postage to Aussie is just NZ$30 - just saying 😎

www.mrglynspickups.com

Pickup Height Adjustment

 Pickup Height Adjustment is crucial to your tone. I find that the better the quality of the pickup the more difference the height makes to the tone.

There is, of course, no correct distance from the string so the measurements I’ll give you are a guide and a great place to start. I recommend you set your MrGlyn’s Pickups to these heights when you installed them but feel free to tweak them to your own taste after.

The principal is, the closer to the strings the pickups are the louder and more dynamic the sound, further away is more compressed and quieter. 

But there’s another factor. Pickups work by magnetism, if a pickup is too close to the string the magnet will attract the string and cause a strange wobbly sound called a wolf tone. This is much more pronounced with single coil pickups and on the bass strings on the higher frets. These ‘wolf tones’ are sometimes called ‘Stratitis’.

The pickup height is measured from the top of the pickup pole (or cover) to the underside of the string when fretting the highest fret.

www.mrglynspickups.com

Here are my recommend heights:

https://mrglyn.blogspot.com/2016/10/treble-bleed-capacitors.html

How Pickups Work

Pickups for new builds

 This week I had an order from Trevor Binford at Binford Luthiery in Onehunga, Auckland. He runs fantastic  courses where you can make a guitar from scratch. 

http://www.binfordluthiery.com/guitar-buildshop

He wanted a set of Silver Lady Telecaster pickups for his own Tele and asked if I make a Precision Bass pickup. Well, they aren’t on the website (not yet) but I do make them. Always worth asking, eh

www.mrglynspickups.com