GFS '64 Stagger review
Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 10:34 pm
well, holy fucking shit, I just got these GFS '64 Stagger Vintage Grey-Bottom pickups, and man they are awesome. I think this had to be one of the best guitar parts purchases I have ever made. I have tried these other Overwound Alnico Staggers before and was less than satisfied. These pickups however, absolutely blew me away. They have an amazing amount of shimmer and jangle. They sound almost modulated. the neck pickup is more midrangey growl.
I was playing these pickups on this pieced together strat that I have. the amp I'm using is this great little 1966 Kalamazoo Model One which is a gibson budget fender champ copy.
My line of thinking had always been that their more expensive pickups were the same as the their lower models just with more mojo features ("real fiber bobbins!" and whatnot). no way man, their more "expensive" models are truly better sounding and still really cheap. do yourself a favor and shell out the extra $18 or whatever.
I'm not sure you can rely too much on GFS quality control. maybe my experience with them previously was just a bad batch. They always seem to get the pole length wrong though. the ones I got before were all too long. these ones, the bridge one looks normal but middle and neck ones are too long. I will probably put something under the pickup cover to make it space correctly. also, the poles are supposed to be "hand beveled". they are barely beveled. just enough to take off the sharp edge. not like some pickups I've seen that have a real bevel so they are like almost rounded off. these are pretty much the kind of defects you would expect when paying this much for a set of pickups and obviously they don't affect the tone drastically in any way whatsoever.
lastly the middle pickup is not phase reversed so the 2 and 4 positions on the strat have kind of a thin sound I'm not a big fan of. I think I will wire it the other way.
I was playing these pickups on this pieced together strat that I have. the amp I'm using is this great little 1966 Kalamazoo Model One which is a gibson budget fender champ copy.
My line of thinking had always been that their more expensive pickups were the same as the their lower models just with more mojo features ("real fiber bobbins!" and whatnot). no way man, their more "expensive" models are truly better sounding and still really cheap. do yourself a favor and shell out the extra $18 or whatever.
I'm not sure you can rely too much on GFS quality control. maybe my experience with them previously was just a bad batch. They always seem to get the pole length wrong though. the ones I got before were all too long. these ones, the bridge one looks normal but middle and neck ones are too long. I will probably put something under the pickup cover to make it space correctly. also, the poles are supposed to be "hand beveled". they are barely beveled. just enough to take off the sharp edge. not like some pickups I've seen that have a real bevel so they are like almost rounded off. these are pretty much the kind of defects you would expect when paying this much for a set of pickups and obviously they don't affect the tone drastically in any way whatsoever.
lastly the middle pickup is not phase reversed so the 2 and 4 positions on the strat have kind of a thin sound I'm not a big fan of. I think I will wire it the other way.
heh, well anyway. I just had to update about this. correction: the middle pickups IS phase reversed. so I went ahead and wired it the other way to see if I could get some more usable sounds out of the 2 and 4 positions. and HLYSHT. total fucking sonic destruction the out of phase 2 and 4 positions give you so many more sound options, it's like unreal. position 4 is like total melt your face treble sound and with tone all the way it's a whole other sound entirely.
