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!
It's argued that Ray Butts created the Filtertron humbucker for Gretsch before Seth Lover created the PAF humbucker for Gibson, making the Filtertron technically the first guitar humbucker in existence. Gibson managed to get their design in the patent office first though.
Despite the Filtertron being electronically similar to a Gibson PAF humbucker, they aren't constructed, or sound, remotely similar. The main differences are the double sets of screw poles, a huge 1/4 inch thick alnico 5 magnet, tall and narrow coils, and a very low wind count.
Filtertrons are usually made in different dimensions to normal humbucker. They are narrower, making fitting a Filtertron to a guitar that takes normal humbuckers impossible.
These humbucker sized Filtertron pickups are designed to bring the Gretsch Filtertron sound to any typical humbucker equipped guitar. Utilising the narrow coils, thick alnico 5 magnet, low wind counts and double screw coils, these pickups have the famously iconic rockability sound in a different size.
A Filtertron has a bright, cutting and jangly characteristic. This makes them a perfect partner for a naturally dark amp. Filtertrons are commonly used into a clean amp for Jazz, or into a naturally breaking up amp for low gain rock. Their superior articulation and openness to a typical humbucker gives them a distinctive voice that cannot be replicated by any other pickup.