The solderless connector setup includes a circuit board loaded with all the favourite USA grade electronics (Switchcraft jack, Switchcraft switch, CTS potentiometers, Orange drop capacitor). This circuit board simply drops into your Gibson style control layout, then you plug in the connectors we've added to the end of the pickup leads into the circuit board. The humbucker setup comes with default 500k potentiometers, 3 way toggle switch and 0.022uf capacitors.
These are available in both import (long shaft pots, short frame switch), USA (long shaft pots, long frame switch), or right angle (short shaft pots, right angle toggle switch) formats. (ONLY) Gibson Les Pauls will use USA. Epiphones and other import models will use the import format. SGs and similar will use the right angle format. Import models Les Pauls typically use short shaft potentiometers, but we've found through experimentation that due to the nature of the way that the pots are seated at different heights in the cavity, short shaft pots will not work effectively. Long shaft pots are used by shimming the shaft to the correct length with the second nut inside the cavity.
No soldering is required at all, making the installation job take about 10 minutes in total!
An entirely new humbucker design. By utilising the best attributes of single coils and combining them with the thick mid range and hum cancelling properties of a humbucker, these bring an entirely new tonal palette to any guitarist's arsenal.
The Bentbuckers are the humbucker construction, bent onto it's side. Inspired by single coils, which inherently have a very small string spacing window, the Bentbuckers have a smaller string sensing window to simulate a similar effect. The small string spacing window results in the pickups picking up a smaller spectrum of harmonic information, therefore they are much more articulate than any standard humbucker design. By turning the bobbins on their sides, the string sensing window is now 25mm instead of the typical 35mm.
The low output bentbuckers incorporate a trio of alnico 2 magnets in the bridge, and alnico 5 in the neck. Similar to how the magnetic field in a Jaguar single coil pickup works, the magnets are placed one on each outer side of the bobbins, and one in the middle (of opposite polarity facing upwards). This creates a strong, focused magnetic field, as the magnetism is directed from the top of the two outer magnets directly to the top of the inner magnet - similar to a Jaguar claw. This strong, focused magnetic field brightens the pickups and adds a snappiness to the tone not before found from humbuckers.
This new design happens to have a lot of things in similar with a Firebird pickup - a string spacing window between that of a single coil and a humbucker and alnico magnets are used to magnetise the strings. These things inherently give the Bentbuckers a beautiful clean tone.
The bridge is wound with 42 AWG wire, to a PAF-like wind. This results in a basic PAF style blueprint, upon which the bentbucker magic lays. In comparison to a normal PAF, the bridge is glassier, brighter and cleaner. It's sublime in clean applications - it simultaneously has a silky-smooth treble response with an articulate bass response. The neck is wound with a hybrid of 42 and 41 AWG; opening up the mids and bass up and making the pickup sound a lot less saturated than a typical 42 AWG wind. The expanded frequency response results in the pickup sounding huge and three dimensional, with cutting treble, present mids and thick bass.
Please note all of these wire types in the neck position give the pickup a lower resistance than would typically be found on a pickup of this output level.