Why pay 265 Dollars?

telefan100

I've recently bought a Tonerider Generator set from their online store in Cape Town and was so impressed that I ordered a set of Hot Classic Tele pickups from them last Thursday. Received them yesterday afternoon, ripped out the noisy S.D. Antiquitys, installed them in 30 minutes, no problems! They sound fantastic. The neck has more tone, highs and clear bottom and the bridge is much improved from before, with more power and fuller and also cuts real nice. And their also not as noisy! The whole exercise took 3 days and cost me a total of R1090.00.

So can anyone give me a realistic answer as to why anyone should pay 210 Dollars for a S.D. Antiquity set and then another 55 Dollars on top of that for shipping AND wait 3 weeks for it to arrive? Add another R199.00 at the post office and the total cost came to around R2280.00. Am I missing something?

Heath

yes i think you are missing something , about R2280 ........ ?

telefan100

?
What I mean is what makes the SD's so expensive? Is there something I'm unaware of?

MikeM

What antiquities? They're awful. Sell em to me for R500 ?

telefan100

MikeM wrote: What antiquities? They're awful. Sell em to me for R500 ?

? Right! Not before I know what makes the so expensive? They sound like old flat pickups to my ears. :-\

MikeM

"vintage" winding techniques, less machine work, different wire, "aged" magnets, and slightly relic'd...

How much you want for em?

telefan100

MikeM wrote: "vintage" winding techniques, less machine work, different wire, "aged" magnets, and slightly relic'd...

How much you want for em?

? Sorry Mike, I'll hold on to them then at least for the mean time. I might put them into another Frankenstein I'm working on.

MikeM

On a serious note now.

That's the catch with antiquities. You get duds. It happens every so often and maybe you were just unlucky, but usually they're pretty darn good!

AlanRatcliffe

MikeM wrote: "vintage" winding techniques, less machine work, different wire, "aged" magnets, and slightly relic'd...

All of the above. Plus advertising and a bigger company with more overhead to support.

I wouldn't write off Seymour Duncan just because you've found a set of Toneriders you like. Compare oranges to oranges. The Generators are a very different set of pickups from Antiquities and a lot hotter. Maybe you're just not a vintage pickup kind of guy. There's "good" and then there is "good for you".

Toneriders are fairly mass produced and made in China, and they keep the produt range small, all of which helps keep the price down. They are excellent pickups for the price and far outstrip most stock pickups. Of the inexpensive pickups, they are counted among some of the best. On the other hand, there is nothing to touch a good handwind, wound by a human who has a good knowledge of pickup winding - but you pay for that knowledge and the labour intensity of the handwinding process.

I do think the mass pickup makers like Tonerider are narrowing the gap between the "big boys" like Duncan and DiMarzio when you compare them to the bigger companies' more "production line" stuff (and I've been seeing a bit of a quality drop in those products lately), but IMO, they cannot touch the better models from those manufacturers or have such wide ranges with pickups for absolutely every occasion. Then the bigger manufacturers are nothing compared to the small boutique handwinders who can make a specific pickup for a specific guitar - and trust me, when you look at a Lollar, Fralin or Kinman pickup, they ooze a certain quality and show attention to detail that is impossible to get in any kind of production environment.

So it's horses for courses (as usual).

telefan100

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
MikeM wrote: "vintage" winding techniques, less machine work, different wire, "aged" magnets, and slightly relic'd...
I wouldn't write off Seymour Duncan just because you've found a set of Toneriders you like. Compare oranges to oranges. The Generators are a very different set of pickups from Antiquities and a lot hotter. Maybe you're just not a vintage pickup kind of guy. There's "good" and then there is "good for you".

Hi Alan, I'm actually talking about the Hot Classics set I got from Tonerider, not the Generator set. Just read my post. ?

You've pointed out some interesting facts Alan however I'm still not convinced though and I reckon most of it is just hype! ? After all it's the sound that ultimately matters! ?

MIKA-the-better-one

Tailon. wrote: yes i think you are missing something , about R2280 ........ ?

hahahahahahahaah ? ? ?

tonerider

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: Toneriders are fairly mass produced and made in China, and they keep the product range small, all of which helps keep the price down. They are excellent pickups for the price and far outstrip most stock pickups.

Actually, Tonerider pickups are NOT mass produced at all and only manufactured to dealer/distributor order. Designed by Andrew Cunningham (a respected designer from Great Britain), the company produce far fewer pickups than the big boys and even fewer than most boutique manufacturers like Kinman et al. The workshop in Shenzhen only has around 8 workers and the precision laser coil winders are controlled by those people - hands on! All coils are scatterwound by human control through the use of those precision laser winders to ensure that wire tension across the entire coil remains even and that scatterwinding is precise across the entire wind and that the number of turns around the bobbin is exact. (unlike actual vintage pickups where coils were wound by hand and inconsistencies invariably crept into all these aspects).

As for the various components, the bobbins are injection molded in Great Britain, the flat-work comes from Germany, external wires (pickup leads) come from the US, coil wiring comes from Shanghai, the magnets come from Hangzhou Permanent Magnet Group Co. LTD (who also supplies major US pickup manufacturers) and the pickups are wound & assembled in Shenzhen, from where it is transported to Hong Kong for final quality inspection and packaging and then shipped to the dealers directly.

AlanRatcliffe

André Meyer wrote:The workshop in Shenzhen only has around 8 workers and the precision laser coil winders are controlled by those people - hands on! All coils are scatterwound by human control through the use of those precision laser winders to ensure that wire tension across the entire coil remains even and that scatterwinding is precise across the entire wind and that the number of turns around the bobbin is exact. (unlike actual vintage pickups where coils were wound by hand and inconsistencies invariably crept into all these aspects).

From the Tonerider.com site:

Winding great sounding, clean, reliable coils is at the heart of our pickup production. We do this using a dual headstock winder that has been programmed and set-up to mimic the prototype hand-wound pickups that we used to wind by hand “back in the day” – before we had any serious machinery. If you look closely you can see the “nozzle” that feeds the magnet wire onto the coil – and you can see how far it is from the pickup bobbin. This distance, the wire tension, and using random traverse rates are what make the wire “scatter” onto the bobbin. Too close and its “machine-wound” with predictable layers of wire building up on the coil. Too far and you get a jumbled mess that might bring new meaning to “scatterwound”, but certainly doesn’t belong on a pro guitar. This process is key to making great sounding pickup with a great variety of tonal flavours.

Sorry, but to my mind if it's programmed and machine wound it isn't "hands on".

AlanRatcliffe

telefan100 wrote: Hi Alan, I'm actually talking about the Hot Classics set I got from Tonerider, not the Generator set. Just read my post. ?

I stand corrected. Still, the Hot Classics are far hotter and fatter sounding than a vintage style set like the Antiquities.

After all it's the sound that ultimately matters! ?

Ain't that the truth? And if they are the sound for you, then they are the best pickups. Don't get me wrong, I've been through many pickups and often the perfect pickup for my needs is not a boutique model and sometimes come from surprising places, but there are reasons why certain pickups are more expensive than others.

[deleted]

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: Sorry, but to my mind if it's programmed and machine wound it isn't "hands on".

tonerider

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: Sorry, but to my mind if it's programmed and machine wound it isn't "hands on".

Thats a fair observation Alan - I'll give you that!

I think what I want to say is that precision wound coils make for consistancy and accuracy and ultimately a human has to set a machine up to do the precision task that results in a uniform product.

From a technical standpoint if I were to order a pickup that was hand wound I could end up with a pickup that could be inferior to the next one, even if it was made by the same hand winder. Any difference in wire tension and the scatter winding process will ultimately allow for inconsistant gaps (air pockets) between windings which in turn will alter the total inductance (in henry) of the wound coil.

This could be the very reason why telefan100 experienced the disappointment of his "hand wound" antiquity pickups that sound "flat" - inconsistancy!

It is widely known in the manufacturing world that consistancy is only achieved by automating key manufacturing processes to guarantee consistancy in quality. It is therefor debatable whether the so called hand-winds are really any better.

Don't hang me - It's just some additional info to concider! ?

AndyD

HI All.
I Have just put in a set of tonerider Rocksongs into my epi les paul.Brilliant.I didnt realise that the stock pickups were as bad as they really were.Mine is an early 90's made in korea.The surgery has transformed a good guitar into a brillaint tone machine.I am mainly a strat player , but after putting the toneriders in and setting the guitar up properly I am finding it extremely hard to put the les paul down.It looks as though the Strat is going to take a back seat for A while.I tried to attach a picture and so here goes!
Cheers
Andy

AndyD

Trying again.Guitar with the installed tone riders.Dig the birdseye!

telefan100

I agree with Andre. Consistant high quality can often only be achieved by automating certain manufacturing processes. Quality control and testing plays a big part too.

I own a lot of pickups that I've accumulated over the years, DiMarzio, Seymour Duncan, EMG, Kinman, and I have never found any of them to be faulty or low quality but when I look back I think I paid far to much for them, largely because of the hype or who the latest guitar god was who played them. My favorite pickup maker is definitely Seymour Duncan however their hand wound antiquity Tele set is just rubbish, both pickups. :'( Imagine what a process it will be to return them to the seller for a refund ???

I am still not convinced and I still believe that a lot of the US stuff is more hype than anything. I bought a set of Kinman Tele 60's Custom set online in 2009 for a total cost of R2391.80 and I'll tell you there is NOTHING special about them that makes them any better than the Toneriders. ?

AlanRatcliffe

telefan100 wrote: I bought a set of Kinman Tele 60's Custom set online in 2009 for a total cost of R2391.80 and I'll tell you there is NOTHING special about them that makes them any better than the Toneriders. ?

Aside from being noiseless you mean? ? It's quite an achievement to get a noiseless pickup to sound like a decent single coil.

I had the Kinman Broadcaster bridge pickup and found it a little flat and am now getting better results with a DiMarzio AreaT. Similar results with Kinman's Traditional MKIIs, but on the other hand, I love his Blues and Woodstock sets and Andrew Bryson is very impressed with the Traditionals. Every manufacturer has pickups I love and pickups I dislike. Often it's a case of finding the right pickup for the specific guitar and your own tastes.

Oddly enough, the one big pickup manufacturer I've never really gotten into is Seymour. I've tried lots of different models and installed hundreds for other people, but they never stuck long in my own guitars.

André Meyer wrote: I think what I want to say is that precision wound coils make for consistancy and accuracy and ultimately a human has to set a machine up to do the precision task that results in a uniform product.

Granted. But isn't it interesting that they hand wind the prototypes and then when they get a good hand wind, they program the machines to copy the inconsistencies? It's the inconsistencies that give the pickups character and life IMO. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, but a good winder minimises that. Sure, you can get cavities in the wind, but a good winder will stop and correct such things as they happen.

The consistency isn't only in the winding process - even the best wire and magnets come in batches and each batch will have a tolerance which affects the end product. Minute variations in something as simple as the insulation make a big difference in the pickup by the time there are 6 000 - 10 000 turns on the coil - these are things a good winder can take into account that a machine cannot. This is why Jason Lollar refuses to take the "next logical step" into higher production numbers - he can't get the same consistency doing so.

A major benefit of a hand wind is it can be tailored specifically for every pickup if needed. I can't go to Tonerider/Duncan/DiMarzio and ask them for a set of Rebel pickups wound to 8,000 and 9,200 neck and bridge, with slug alnico5 magnets instead of steel poles and non ferrous baseplates. Lollar I can and have. A few years ago Pete Biltoft of Vintage Vibe made me a set of guitar-sized humbuckers for bass that I couldn't get anywhere else - and did an excellent job at getting me exactly the tone I was looking for from a very unusual instrument.

Don't hang me - It's just some additional info to concider!

No worries there - it's all friendly discussion. ?