What Parts do you use?
We use as many American Made parts as possible: Musikraft or KNE Bodies, Musikraft Necks, Klien or Stan Hinesly Hand Wound pickups. We use Gotoh, Grover or Sperzel tuners, Wilkingson & Gotoh Bridges, CTS Potentiometers and CRL Switches and Sprague Orange Drop tone caps. All wiring is done with vintage style cloth wiring.
What's the deal with "Hand Wound" pickups?
When it comes to vintage style pickups, there simply is no substitute for hand winding. Yes, a machine rotates the bobbins, but with hand winding, a person guides the coil wires on to the bobbin, not the automated armature of some machine. The reasons Hand Winding is superior for a true vintage sound, for one is because that's how vintage pickups were wound. The tone of a hand wound pickup simply cannot be duplicated by a machine, and it's a matter of physics. When all of the wires of a coil line up in perfect, parallel lines as a machine would wind, as opposed to a more random pattern (sometimes hand winding is called "scatter winding"), 2 distinct phenomenon that drastically effect the tone of the pickup take place. The first is known as "distributed capacitance" where the perfect, parallel lines of coil act as a capacitor, reducing higher frequency tones, in the same way your tone cap works. The second is that the wires of the coil detect the disturbance in the field generated by the pickups magnets created by the vibrating string, but only detect (or are effected by) disturbances that are perpendicular to the wires. So, when all of the wires line up perfectly, the pickup is only detecting a small window of the disturbance, whereas a hand wound pickup detects a much larger window, dramatically increasing the tonal character and richness.
Why don't you use Lollars or Fralins? Aren't they Hand Wound?
No, neither of those manufacturers utilizes hand winding ... because they are just that, manufacturers, not (in our opinion) true craftsmen who spend time and care with each individual set. We prefer to give our customers the very best and most authentic vintage sound available: true hand wound pickups, not pickups manufactured on an automated machine.
How can you sell your guitars for about half the price of similar builders?
We grew up appreciating value for the dollar, and we feel that is what we provide. Why other builders such as Bill Nash, or K-Line, or King Bee or Rock'n'Roll Relics charge you so much of your hard-earned money for a guitar wich is, and we invite you to compare for yourself, is in no way whatsoever superior to ours, much less worth hundreds more, is beyond us. We aren't out to rip anyone off, just build the kind of high-quality guitars that every hard-working vintage guitar lover deserves, at a price that only makes sense. Our price is in no way a reflection of quality, but more, we feel, a matter of ethics in the consideration for the hard-earned money of our fellow musicians and guitar enthusiasts.
|