“Silver Lady” Telecaster Pickups

I make two flavors of Telecaster Pickups. Here’s the low powered “Silver Lady in the hands of Jason Herbert.

To hear the “Cruel Mistress” Tele set and lots more demos go to my YouTube channel.

Telecasters are brutally honest guitars. There’s no hiding behind fat mushy tones – if you can do it on a Tele then you really can do it.

I wanted to make a Telecaster Pickups set that would reflect the clear honest tone of an old Tele. It’s a delicate balance to get enough treble and for the top end to have sufficient warmth to be usable, but with no hint of woof or boom in the bottom. The bottom needs to be full and clear with no hint of muddiness. The bridge needs a twang but it has to be a warm twang without being over harsh. I’ve used Alnico III magnets with a vintage style wind on both these pickups

Through my repair work I’ve re-wound a lot of old Tele pickups. This is invaluable experience for designing my own version. I enlisted the help of a couple of experienced Telecaster players as test pilots. I really needed plenty of opinions and testing through a variety of amplifiers to get this one right.

I’m really happy with the warm classic tone of this set, clear and chiming with just the right twang. So I have given them a classic name – “Silver Lady”.

https://mrglynspickups.com/2020/03/29/silver-lady-vintage-telecaster/

CRUEL MISTRESS

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/

https://mrglynspickups.com/

7 String Humbucker - “Attitude” by MrGlyn’s Pickups

 Thinking of a 7 String Humbucker for modern metal/fusion? 

MrGlyn’s “Attitude” humbucker (6 or 7 string) was developed in collaboration with Graham Young in the UK. He’s a pretty demanding player with an amazing ear for detail. 

For the full story of how we did it and for more demos go to my blog:

https://mrglynspickups.com/2021/05/17/7-string-humbucker/

https://www.facebook.com/grahammarkyoung/videos/10159284278801800/?t=0

 

 

Attitude humbucker - Mr Glyn's Pickups

 

For a while I’ve been working on extending my range of humbucking pickups for rock players. The Cloud Nine will do just about anything but I wanted to offer a more specific pickup for modern rock/metal.

I decided to start with a 7 string which is a slightly unorthodox way of going about it but I was concerned with getting the bottom end right. If there was any sogginess in the bottom end a 7 string would show it up more than a 6 string.

7 string pickups are not like others. The low bass string reacts so differently, there’s a lot of string deflection and low harmonics. My mission was to tame this bass and keep it tight but not to sacrifice the sound quality of the treble strings. The treble still needed to be sweet and singing. The mids needed to be balanced and noticeable. I didn’t want this pickup scooped; the mids had to stand out from the mix when needed to.

So in October 2019 I got back in touch with my old mate Graham Young in Yorkshire. He’s an amazing player and really knows his gear.

Back in 1998 I wound a 6 string humbucker for Graham. In those days I had a guitar shop and repair business in Leeds in the North of England and he wanted a bridge pickup to suit his style for a parts caster.

Years passed and he became a 7 string player, so when I decided to develop a 7 string pickup Graham was the person I asked to be test pilot. We’d very loosely kept in touch over the years and it turned out he was still using the 6 string pickup I’d made for him back in the 90’s.

We had a chat via messenger and it turned out he’d tried a lot of pickups but none quite did it for him. So I listened to his thoughts, came up with a design and went away and made a prototype.

The first one wasn’t quite right, so he sent it back and I changed a few things and returned it. I don’t know how many adjustments I made but that pickup accumulated quite a few air miles between NZ and the UK over the next few months.

Every time we got closer, every adjustment less than the one before. When you get that close you know you’ve got a good pickup. I was at the point when I felt we really had something great but I just needed that confirmation.

Then Covid 19 happened, the mail got too unreliable to send stuff overseas with any confidence of it arriving and the process was put on hold.

At the end of June 2020 I got a call from Gabe Dovaston in Papamoa. He’d done some demos for me with some of my other pickups and was asking if I did a 7 string, just in case, for an Ibanez of his. Well, this seemed like a chance to test my new pickup on fresh ears. I made a copy of the last one I’d sent Graham, the one I was happy with, and got it off in the post. I sat back and waited. It only took a few days and I got a very happy call, he loved it and he’d already made a demo that he’d put on YouTube.

Great news, but what was I going to call it? The pickup was already on YouTube, it wasn’t on my website yet and it didn’t even have a name!

I got on Facebook and asked people to come up with a name; there were so many excellent suggestions but nothing quite did it. In the end this pickup that had taken so much work to develop, traveled so far and refused to go away I called the “Attitude”.

The Attitude is available in 6 and 7 string, for neck and bridge positions.

https://mrglynspickups.com/

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.