Pickups for my partscaster jazzmaster: Kinman Surfmaster vs Seymour Duncan Antiquity?

[Enzo]

Hope everyone’s weekend has been nice so far. I’ve been spending a good chunk of mine planning a partscaster jazzmaster I’ll be assembling in a few weeks, and I’m having a hard time making up my mind on which pickups to go with.

I want to go with pickups that sound as much like a “classic” vintage jazzmaster as possible, but I also want my pickups to be as noise-free as possible while maintaining that great tone.

I’ve heard and read great things about Seymour Duncan’s Antoquity 1 pickups: that’s they’re as close to the classic and complex vintage jazzmaster sound as possible and as quiet as pickups with traditional single coil construction can possibly be. And then there’s the Kinman surfmaster pickups, which have a very non-traditional construction. I hear that these are absolutely quiet and sound great too, but they might compromise the tone a little bit.

The guitar itself is vintage-inspired but not vintage-spec. It’s a 3 pound 5 oz pine body finished in nitro by MJT. The neck is an all rosewood neck being made by Musikraft. So it isn’t really vintage-spec at all based on the woods, and that’s ok; I just want it to sound vintage-esque with the detailed and tonally complex nature that the best vintage jazzmasters are prized for, but I’m not looking for a clone of a 60’s jazzmaster either.


So what do you think the pickups for my partscaster jazzmaster should be: Kinman Surfmaster vs Seymour Duncan Antiquity 1? Thank you all so much for your input!

[Enzo]

Well, y’all done told me... I was dumb and went for the kinmans, for twice the money, and after installing them in my 1960 jazzmaster for a test run (the original pickups were pulled in favor of humbuckers in the early 80’s before I owned the guitar), I feel they sound a bit sterile, dull, and lifeless.

“Yup, I told you so”, say all my tone chasing acquaintances. I bought the 2018 model surfmasters, supposedly Kinman’s most detailed, “juicy” and tonally complex pickup, and don’t feel it’s quite up to the standards of complexity, openness, and richness of a real jazzmaster single coil. They’re far better than any humbuckers I’ve used, but it’s just not exactly the vintage tone I wanted. All the other electronics are vintage spec, and this is my favorite guitar ever to play unplugged, so I’m afraid the pickups are what I’m not liking as much as I hoped.

The good news, however, is that these pups are dead silent; actually they’re even quieter than my humbuckers when using a fuzz pedal. I think that, for the time being, I’m going to leave them in this guitar as they’re way better than the humbuckers they replaced.

[bacca51]

Sorry to hear that. I've watched demo videos with Kinmans and I don't think I was really wowed at that price tag either. The J Masics endorsement was really all that even had me looking. I love my Antiquity IIs, they can be a tag bright so I've always considered swapping for Anituquity I's. I also highly recommend Sunday Pickups, he'll wind a set of custom spec pickups for a third of the price of other boutique winders.

[brucer]

+1 for Antiquity II's

Sorry about the Kinman's

[andy_tchp]

Vintage style/construction Jazzmaster pickups are noisy, but nothing else sounds as good.

It's definitely a worthwhile trade-off IMHO. Anyone claiming one brand is notably quieter than others or 'as quiet as can possibly be' with all else being equal is full of it...

[Embenny]

Yeah, it is similarly my burden to bear that the best-sounding pickups to my ears are all single coils.

There are plenty of good-sounding humbucking pickups, but none of them sound like a vintage Jazzmaster. If you're J Mascis and you're running three fuzzes into each other most of the time, I totally get switching to Kinmans. There are practical advantages there.

[RIORIO]

Weird....I really enjoyed the Kinmans in my MJT build. I thought they sounded detailed and articulate..pretty sure they were Brightmasters?

[601210]

I think with any "noiseless" option (noiseless single coil pickups, noise gates, humbuckers, etc) you lose *something* from your tone and it's a matter of how much the reduced noise is worth it to you.

[Enzo]

Vintage style/construction Jazzmaster pickups are noisy, but nothing else sounds as good.

It's definitely a worthwhile trade-off IMHO. Anyone claiming one brand is notably quieter than others or 'as quiet as can possibly be' with all else being equal is full of it...

The first sentence you wrote pretty much sums up my impression of vintage-spec jazzmasters overall... quirky and often highly inconvenient and frustrating beasts they are, but nothing really sounds as good, at least for the music I play, which is modern rock with lots of rhythmic clean sounds.

So your assessment is that no model of traditional single coil is significantly quieter than any of the others? Last year, I played this other guy's 1958 Jazzmaster with the original pickups and electronics under stage lights, and boy did it hum! Even the middle position had lots of hum, albeit less. I used to be a Strat guy, and it seemed like Seymour Duncan's single coils for Strat were less noisy than the other Strat pickups I got to try.

[601210]

Vintage style/construction Jazzmaster pickups are noisy, but nothing else sounds as good.

It's definitely a worthwhile trade-off IMHO. Anyone claiming one brand is notably quieter than others or 'as quiet as can possibly be' with all else being equal is full of it...

The first sentence you wrote pretty much sums up my impression of vintage-spec jazzmasters overall... quirky and often highly inconvenient and frustrating beasts they are, but nothing really sounds as good, at least for the music I play, which is modern rock with lots of rhythmic clean sounds.

So your assessment is that no model of traditional single coil is significantly quieter than any of the others? Last year, I played this other guy's 1958 Jazzmaster with the original pickups and electronics under stage lights, and boy did it hum! Even the middle position had lots of hum, albeit less. I used to be a Strat guy, and it seemed like Seymour Duncan's single coils for Strat were less noisy than the other Strat pickups I got to try.

I think "with all else equal" is the operative phrase, which is to say you'll never get two pickups that are practically identical except one is significantly quieter -- something else has to go.

[mcatano]

I haven’t used the kinmans but I’ve had a set of Fralin hum-cancelling PUs in a JM build for about 6mos now. I have a few other JMs that are vintage (or at least vintage adjacent) and while the Fralins certainly sound different than the 59s or 63s, I think that for live use the benefits hugely outweigh the difference in tone. If you don’t play live very much, I’m not sure that you’d want to make the switch.

The biggest thing to sort out has been that the fralins react really differently to pedals (especially vintage fuzzes) than the single coils, so you’ll want to make some adjustments to accommodate.

[Enzo]

I would describe my Surfmasters as very similar sounding to the pickups in the Billy Corgan signature strat after spending more time with them. That’s not good or bad. Just not to my taste.