Free Stuff for NZ Music Month

 

New Zealand Music Month is here and to celebrate MrGlyn’s Pickups wants to help you look good.

With every pickup set bought from the website in May we’re going to give you a free “Robo Aotearoa” T-Shirt.

If you buy a single pickup we’ll give you a treble bleed and a pick holder as usual but if you get a pickup set you get a T-Shirt too.

Here I am modelling (luckily not my chosen career)

 

And here’s the choice of colours and sizes.

 

 

When you order your pickup set just write in ‘Order Notes” at the checkout to let us know which size and colour you’d like. Don’t order it from the “Merchandise” page, it will try and charge you and then it’s not free.

This is only for New Zealand retail customers, only for full sets of pickups and only in May, simple.

If you just want the T-Shirt and no pickups you can buy one from the “Merchandise “ page.

https://mrglynspickups.com/

Support NZ music – go and see some live bands and buy some music.

Don’t forget to check out my YouTube series “Mr Glyn Meets Your Maker” for interviews with NZ guitar and pedal makers .

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcDggiRTQyFec5KAVHsC2xA/videos

Ep#10 Mr Glyn Meets Your Maker - Rod Capper Guitars

 

Rod Capper has been making classical guitars near Auckland for 35 years. I was interested in discussing the conflict between tradition and innovation in the classical guitar making world. I got way more than I bargained for. Rod's constant experimentation has led him to some interesting conclusions and caused me to re-think my view of how guitars work. 

 

 

 http://www.capperguitars.com/​ 

 

 

 https://mrglynspickups.com/​

 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJyHCacbFMk

Ep#9 Mr Glyn Meets Your Maker – Red Witch Pedals

 This was a real treat for me, getting to have a chat with Ben Fulton from Red Witch pedals. He’s a Kiwi legend and has designed some of the most imaginative pedals out there. I’m amazed at his constant evolution and pushing the boundaries.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTU96pdw0Q

www.mrglynspickups.com

Ep#8 ‘MrGlyn Meets Your Maker’ - Trevor Binford

Trevor Binford is the real deal. As well as a top class guitar maker he runs a school of guitar making in Auckland NZ. I wanted to find out how he got to where he is and where he learned his craft. Turns out we're very lucky to have him here in New Zealand.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejs52QSSiPk

Mr Glyn's Pickups 'Bellbird' demo

 

If you don't know Andy Marra from Christchurch and his beautiful guitar playing here's your chance:

 

 

 

https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/03/29/bellbird-vintage-strat-set/

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.

Fender ‘Wide Range’ humbucker

I had a 1975 Wide Range’ humbucker in for a rewind the other day and took the chance to take some pictures. I thought I’d explain why these are different from ‘normal’ humbuckers and show you what its innards look like.

The main difference is with the magnets. A tradition ‘Gibson ‘ style humbucker has a single bar magnet underneath the coils with the pole pieces ‘conducting’ this magnetic flux up through the coils towards the strings.

The Wide Range is much more similar to a Fender pickup (like a Strat) with the poles being individual magnets, 12 of them. This produces a more trebly, percussive, clearer tone than a traditional humbucker. To offset this high end Wide Ranges have overwound coils. The more wire you put on a coil the more bass you get so Wide Ranges are wound to around 10.6KOhms where as a traditional humbucker is closer to 8KOhms. This adds bass and balances out the tone from the magnets giving a balanced, full, clear tone. To give space for these extra windings the pickup was made physically bigger.

Interesting eh.

Oh, and the magnets have a different chemical composition, but that’s another story.

www.mrglynspickups.co

 

“Integrity” humbucker (Blue Sky)

 Last weekend I discovered that another pickup maker has a humbucker called a “Blue Sky” and they’d been using the name longer than us.

We were left with a problem – what to do.

There wasn’t really an option, the decent thing to do would be to contact the other maker and explain and change the name of our pickup.

But what to call it?

We asked that question to the NZGuitarist/Bassist Facebook group, wow, what a response! Over 300 suggestions!

In the end the name we chose was “Integrity” and the winner gets a T-shirt. Which reminds me – a merchandise page will be up in the website in the next few weeks.