My Wolfetones have arrived.

[340swinger]

I've got a set of zebra Habaneros and would be interested in a trade. Just let me know if your interested,Jerry

[nwobhm]

The Firewaters, Habanereos, Godwoods. There all good but, ya never know if you like em' til' you try em' all!

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by 340swinger

I've got a set of zebra Habaneros and would be interested in a trade. Just let me know if your interested,Jerry

Email sent.

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by nwobhm

The Firewaters, Habanereos, Godwoods. There all good but, ya never know if you like em' til' you try em' all!

Ya, which is an expensive exercise

[340swinger]

Originally Posted by PINKBITS

Email sent.

did you receive my email?

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by 340swinger

did you receive my email?

Sorry mate, no I didn't. Can you just send me a PM on the forum here?

[340swinger]

I dont seem to have that option, I think I dont have enough posts yet. I'll try to email you again.

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by 340swinger

I dont seem to have that option, I think I dont have enough posts yet. I'll try to email you again.

Mate you don't need a specific number of posts. Just go into your user profile and adjust it.

[340swinger]

Originally Posted by PINKBITS

Mate you don't need a specific number of posts. Just go into your user profile and adjust it.

I just looked it up in the rules, you have to have 50 posts to have pm's activated. Oh well, I'm half way there.

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by 340swinger

I just looked it up in the rules, you have to have 50 posts to have pm's activated. Oh well, I'm half way there.

Well, just goes to show I don't know shit.

I did just leave you a visitor message on your page. Just leave one on mine if you like. That would probably be easiest.

Now, get posting and achieve the 50 mark

[WolfeMacleod]

Just caught this review, and have a couple questions for ya Pink. Hoping you haven't removed them and passed them on yet.

What brand strings are you using? My pickups prefer the GHS Boomers over anything else. They don't like D'Addario's much.
How close have you got them set to the strings? Anything closer than 1/8th inch, and they aren't going to like it. They tend to want to be just over 1/8th below the strings.
Did you tinker with the polepiece screws at all? If not, try it. Each pickup will have it's sweet spot, and when yu find it, YOU'LL KNOW. It'll stand out like a sore thumb.
I'd like to help you get these dialed in if you've still got 'em in the guitar...

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by WolfeMacleod

Just caught this review, and have a couple questions for ya Pink. Hoping you haven't removed them and passed them on yet.

What brand strings are you using? My pickups prefer the GHS Boomers over anything else. They don't like D'Addario's much.
How close have you got them set to the strings? Anything closer than 1/8th inch, and they aren't going to like it. They tend to want to be just over 1/8th below the strings.
Did you tinker with the polepiece screws at all? If not, try it. Each pickup will have it's sweet spot, and when yu find it, YOU'LL KNOW. It'll stand out like a sore thumb.
I'd like to help you get these dialed in if you've still got 'em in the guitar...

G'day Wolfe, certainly hope you weren't offended in anyway by my comments. I did like your pickups, they just didn't give me a tonal woody if you know what I mean

Personally I was glad that I felt I could honestly report what I thought with no fear of being flamed. It's great you can take your lumps.

First off, I do use D'Addario's. I did not know your winds were not partial to this brand of strings. However, I really don't like Boomers, I've tried all sorts of brands over the years and D'addario's are the best for me.

I did try mucking about with the heights, pole pieces but did not actually measure the heights as I was going. This obviously changed things but I could not get where I wanted to be.

[PINKBITS]

Forgot to mention that I don't still have them in the guitar but it's only a 15 minute job to get them back in.

If you believe it's just my serious lack of ability to set these baby's up right, I'm more than happy to have another crack at them. LOL.

Thanks Wolfe.

[WolfeMacleod]

Originally Posted by PINKBITS

Forgot to mention that I don't still have them in the guitar but it's only a 15 minute job to get them back in.

If you believe it's just my serious lack of ability to set these baby's up right, I'm more than happy to have another crack at them. LOL.

Thanks Wolfe.

Not offended at all! But, I'm pretty sure I can help get 'em dialed in for you. Your comment of the low end lacking is what reminded my to mention the D'Addario vs. Boomer strings. What didn't you like about the Boomers?
I'm not sure what the issue is with the D'Addario strings, but I think it's something in the metallurgy of them. Not enough magnetic content or something. I find them to be horrible with many different kinds of pickups, not just mine. I just don't think the magnetics "bite" enough with the D's. Mine also do well with Snake Oils, and another brand I can't remember at the moment. Perhaps the GHS preference is because that's what I play - strictly. They last a long time for me, and never break. When I worked at a guitar company, in '97/98 they used D'Addario as stock, and they broke all the time.

Using 300k or 500k pots?
Distance below the strings?
Polepeices raised high, or set low?
Which cap value?

Can you do a recording?

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by WolfeMacleod

Not offended at all! But, I'm pretty sure I can help get 'em dialed in for you. Your comment of the low end lacking is what reminded my to mention the D'Addario vs. Boomer strings. What didn't you like about the Boomers?
I'm not sure what the issue is with the D'Addario strings, but I think it's something in the metallurgy of them. Not enough magnetic content or something. I find them to be horrible with many different kinds of pickups, not just mine. I just don't think the magnetics "bite" enough with the D's. Mine also do well with Snake Oils, and another brand I can't remember at the moment. Perhaps the GHS preference is because that's what I play - strictly. They last a long time for me, and never break. When I worked at a guitar company, in '97/98 they used D'Addario as stock, and they broke all the time.

Using 300k or 500k pots?
Distance below the strings?
Polepeices raised high, or set low?
Which cap value?

Can you do a recording?

Using 500k plus pots wired modern style.

Distance below strings I will measure when I reinstall. As a guide I had the bridge set pretty high and the neck set about level with the pickup ring. This is where I usually set my pu's.

Poles were set mainly level with covers

Caps were sprague vit q PIO .022 bridge and neck.

No I can not do a recording.

What I will do is start from scratch. Fully reinstall and check all solders.

[SKATTERBRANE]

Yes, good pickups are seldom a "drop 'em in and leave 'em" affair. They need to be dialed in, experimented with. Setup is important. And they also sound better after a week of use.

[analog.matt]

My Legends set took less than 2 weeks to arrive.

Btw, I'm from Western Australia.

[JM Vasek]

Originally Posted by WolfeMacleod

Just caught this review, and have a couple questions for ya Pink. Hoping you haven't removed them and passed them on yet.

What brand strings are you using? My pickups prefer the GHS Boomers over anything else. They don't like D'Addario's much.
How close have you got them set to the strings? Anything closer than 1/8th inch, and they aren't going to like it. They tend to want to be just over 1/8th below the strings.
Did you tinker with the polepiece screws at all? If not, try it. Each pickup will have it's sweet spot, and when yu find it, YOU'LL KNOW. It'll stand out like a sore thumb.
I'd like to help you get these dialed in if you've still got 'em in the guitar...

I have the Dr. Vintages in my LP. I can attest that they are VERY sensitive to adjustments. Takes some tweaking, but well worth the minimal effort before you move on to other pups.

I'm using DR Pure Nickel strings at the moment, and they play well together.

[PINKBITS]

Reinstalled pickups last night but it was about 11pm when I finished so didn't get a chance to play them.

I also put both pu's on the multimeter, neck measured 7.9 and bridge was 8.8

I really am hoping this is just an adjustment issue. As already said I did adjust height of both pickups just didn't use a feeler gauge to check the actual height.

I have of course adjusted pickup height to taste many times. I must say the only other set of pu's I had a little trouble dialling in was a set of Fender Custom Shop 69's. I must say they took a little work to get right.

Usually though just buy adjusting up or down and playing I can get them where I want pretty quick. I have always found with buckers at least that the best position is pretty well level with the pickup ring. This seems to give good balance with the bridge whilst allowing the right amount of output/highs/lows etc.

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by analog.matt

My Legends set took less than 2 weeks to arrive.

Btw, I'm from Western Australia.

Yes, I can say that Wolfes customer service is second to none.

I really could not have been happier with the whole transaction and now as you can see he is attempting to help me out further. Rather than be impatient and just think they just weren't my thing I should have sent him an email asking for some advice. My bad.

Wolfe is a really nice bloke.

[b-squared]

FWIW we put a set in Kickstand's LP Traditional plus, and we had the same response as Pinkbits.

The bridge pickup was exceedingly bright, more so than my Strat. We had a definite lack of low end punch as well.

The neck was gorgeous when playing clean; it sounded like a Gibson L-5 or something...very jazzy and articulate. When we hit it with OD it tended to get a bit muddy, and lost the articulation it had when clean.

We also heard a lack of balance between the pickups; the bridge was much louder than the neck, even after adjustments.

I'm not sure what strings Kickstand uses, but we adjusted and readjusted the pickups for about 20 minutes trying to dial in a tone.

The string info might be good to put on the website, if it isn't there already. I'm pretty attached to my EB 10s...

Additionally, we were using an RS kit with .022 on the bridge, .016 on the neck. The neck pot was rated at around 520k, so that would explain some of that brightness, but those pickups were really bright.

BB

[PINKBITS]

That's interesting B. I would understand different brands of strings bringing out the "best" in a pickup, small tonal charactaristics etc, but I don't understand how they would change the fundamental charactaristics. When I say fundamental charactaristics I mean the punch/bottom end/sustain etc. I am of course open to opinion, I'm certainly no tone guru

I didn't find either Marshallhead were overly bright like you B, yeh they were on the bright side, but I didn't find that unpleasent nor undesirable. My main issue was the lack of shove, bottom end thump out of the bridge and no singing lead tone out of the neck. Didn't hear/feel the pick cutting through the strings.

I put the set of Gibson 57 Classics out of my Traditional into the Standard and they sounded really good. Plenty of thump and the neck pickup had a nice sustaining smooth lead tone. From memory I think they measured about 7.5 and 8.5. I will have to chuck them on the meter again and check that though.

For me it was as if the Marshallheads were at half power which is another reason why I put the Classics in. Thought if I had stuffed up the main wiring or I had a pot issue etc the Classics would show the same problem.

I should also add that my string gauge is 10-46

As I said I did fully rewire everthing last night so will be interested to see if that changes anything.

[b-squared]

We compared his Traditional + to my guitars (76 LP Custom, R7, R9) and it was night and day.

While wiring up the Trad+ I noticed that it looks like they took a BUNCH of wood out of that thing; the wire channels were huge...like a 4-lane highway.

I'm not sure, but maybe that had an effect as well--my LPs are all pretty dense, from 8.5 - 11 lbs or so...his Trad+ was sub-8 lbs, or so it felt.

I would have loved to experiment more with it, but Kickstand is a weekly gigging player and couldn't afford to have a guitar that wouldn't work for his rig. The pickups got pulled, and were sold to another MLP member, I believe.

Looking at my post, I could have over-stated the brightness...to me it was ice-picky; to you maybe not.

BB

[Fixxxer]

No bottom end? I'm a little puzzled at the reviews. I had an A5 pair in a custom and current have an A2 set in a 58 reissue.

I am not taking my set out of my lester. They are fat, they cut and they have girth to them.

My experience differs from you and BB with the high end piercing cut. I don't really dial in an measure things, but never had that experience. With other pickups I have had issues getting the girth and have had thinness on the lower strings accredited to a "faulty magnet". My advice would be to raise the bass string pole pieces and go from there.

As for strings, hmmmmmm. Tones do change with strings, there are boutique makers of strings so I can see that. I hate D'Darrio's and use EB's

Again, my experiences have differed.

[PINKBITS]

Originally Posted by Fixxxer

No bottom end? I'm a little puzzled at the reviews. I had an A5 pair in a custom and current have an A2 set in a 58 reissue.

I am not taking my set out of my lester. They are fat, they cut and they have girth to them.

My experience differs from you and BB with the high end piercing cut. I don't really dial in an measure things, but never had that experience. With other pickups I have had issues getting the girth and have had thinness on the lower strings accredited to a "faulty magnet". My advice would be to raise the bass string pole pieces and go from there.

As for strings, hmmmmmm. Tones do change with strings, there are boutique makers of strings so I can see that. I hate D'Darrio's and use EB's

Again, my experiences have differed.

Thanks for the post Fix. I didn't get piercing highs, I just found them on the bright side. I didn't mind this at all.

My issue was purely a lack of thump/shove out of the bridge and lack of singing lead out of the neck.

As I said the best way I can describe it is as if the pickups were only working on 4 cylinders instead of all 8.

On Wolfes advice I'm going to try a few things and see how i go. I could have quite easily had a bad solder . If I make some changes and they I will certainly be revising my review.

I can take my lumps too.

[b-squared]

All I can say is...we pulled out the MHs, put in another winder's pickups, and tried again...no change in guitar or amp settings.

Jeff played a riff on each setting, turned to me, and said "There it is!"

As they say on TV, 'Your mileage may vary.'

BB

[analog.matt]

Originally Posted by PINKBITS

Yes, I can say that Wolfes customer service is second to none.

I really could not have been happier with the whole transaction and now as you can see he is attempting to help me out further. Rather than be impatient and just think they just weren't my thing I should have sent him an email asking for some advice. My bad.

Wolfe is a really nice bloke.

Yep. I totally agree.

before purchasing the Legends set, i sent him a lot of emails and was very patient enough to answer all my questions.

[Fixxxer]

Originally Posted by b-squared

All I can say is...we pulled out the MHs, put in another winder's pickups, and tried again...no change in guitar or amp settings.

Jeff played a riff on each setting, turned to me, and said "There it is!"

As they say on TV, 'Your mileage may vary.'

BB

This does not surprise me. To each his own.

[PINKBITS]

In all honesty, I have only just started doing my own solder work. Some of them look like a pelican shit on the pots

I am improving pretty quickly though, you never learn if you don't have a go

What are the main solders that may have an impact on the output of a pickup?

I've got the two conductor leads so I just soldered the braided bit of the lead to the top of the volume pot and the end of the lead to the volume pot lug. I'll post a pic but please be gentle on me .

These pots have had a few sets of pu's in and out so the solder is starting to look a bit messy. I did order a new modern wiring kit today from RS because of this. Thought I would start from scratch and use the old harness to practice on.

Here's a pic after I rewired it all last night.

I haven't shortened the pickup leads as if I do decide to sell them it leaves plenty for the new buyer.

[PINKBITS]

I used this as a guide.