I just won a Kinman Thickmaster.

[Larry Mal]

All right, I ordered it. Fucking $200 for a pickup.

But, I've been wanting to check out Kinman. I keep reading over and over that there's nothing quite like them.

I'm a Thickmaster man now.

[seawalker]

Subscribed!

[Larry Mal]

They certainly are a very chatty company, you can probably imagine if you go to their website. It's kind of fun, actually- that website is pretty antiquated and weird but I guess it adds to the charm for me. I ordered one pickup and I got a half dozen emails so far and had to fill out of bunch of stuff about my guitar and bridge and such.

Regardless, there is a pretty lengthy process when ordering and you have to answer a lot of questions about your guitar. They seem to very much want the pickup to be specific to your guitar, they want to know if I use a wound G or not, that sort of thing.

When it comes to the radius, though, I am in the zone of 7"-14", and then there is a model that handles everything above that. Which is cool, but to me at least there's a big difference between 7.25" and 14", but what do I know. I'm sure it's fine.

Overall a pleasant process, you do get the idea that they care very much about what they are doing, you get the idea that you are dealing with a small company focused on their products. I hope I like the pickups.

I'm going to copy and paste the text from one of the emails here, I think it's on their website but regardless I find it interesting. Firstly, it's interesting because this is the sum of an entire email to me, it wasn't part of anything else and didn't want me to respond, they are just telling me why the product I already researched and bought it good.

Secondly, it talks a little bit about how their product is different from other noiseless single coils in their opinion. Now, I haven't ever owned any of these, but I spend a lot of time being obnoxious on guitar forums and I have noticed that there seems to be a very clear consensus that Kinman pickups genuinely do have the single coil sound whereas other noiseless single coil makers don't.

Clearly I can't agree with that or not yet, but here is the text:

Have you read that hum-cancelling pickups have something missing, and don't sound the same as regular pickups? Well it's true, they don't, but now that we have your attention please continue reading.

The most common complaint about noiseless pickups is lack of snap (attack) and pristine crystalline highs. The muddy sound is because hum-cancelling designs always have two coils and they both must fit into the existing cavity provided for the original noisy pickups. To do this manufacturers reduce the height of the main coil to half that of a regular single coil. Even blind Freddy can understand that a half sized coil can't sound the same as a full sized coil. In fact the sound is dramatically compromised by the small size of the main coil.

Clearly a lot of work had to be spent on research to find ways to get around this major problem. Chris Kinman has devoted a good part of his working life to discovering these solutions and has racked up 7 Patents for technology that does just that. Kinman has also developed secret propriety technologies that are essential for great sound.

Three of the most important things he did was to increase the height of the main coil and squash the height of the second coil without increasing the height of the whole pickup. But that alone is not enough because the two coils are still magnetically coupled and that destroys all the good things about the sound of the original noisy pickup. That's the reason for the magnetic shield surrounding the main coil. But even that is not enough.

The final piece of the puzzle is another of Kinman's inventions which focuses and concentrates the magnetic field into the coil space. Doing this instantly restores the snappy th-wack attack and the brilliant pristine highs which characterizes great sounding pickups. It has taken Chris Kinman nearly 50 years to unlock the mysteries and arrive at this point and we alone arrived there several years ago when we introduced the ground breaking Gen-2 Impersonator series Strat pickups and more recently our Gen-2 Telecaster pickups.

Kinman Gen-2 pickups must be experienced to be believed.

Chris Kinman is the only one who took the challenge seriously, in fact we are so serious about it that noiseless pickups is all we have done since 1995. We don't make noisy single coils like all the other pickup makers and that makes Kinman the outstanding leader in Zero-Hum technology and that means Kinman is the King of Noiseless. Kinman pickups are simply the best because of our amazing technology.

[tdbajus]

I'm probably way more excited about this than I should be, but this might be the single most gripping cliffhanger I have going on.

I really need a new TV show to watch, but Westworld only comes once a week.

[Larry Mal]

We just started "The Man in the High Castle" last night. Seems good so far.

And I'm a little excited about this project also, considering it started off with me making a low bid on eBay and winning it's become more to me.

Problem is, though, that this isn't my big problem. I usually tend to prefer the middle positions on Jazzmasters anyway, so they were already more or less noise free for all I cared. It'll be nice to be able to solo the neck pickup, which I tend to prefer, but that's about it. I wonder if I should take this opportunity to have a blend knob put in or something.

My main problem is that I have a really nice Gibson ES-330 and I need some kind of solution there. It's a hollowbodied guitar with P90s, and it's virtually unusable for recording in my noisy environment. It's also an amazing instrument that plays better than anything I've ever had in electric guitars and I find it inspirational in every way. But I rarely use it.

Seems a waste. So, I really need some kind of noiseless solution there, and this Kinman project is kind of a dry run for that. I've been debating other things like the Fralin noiseless but I would have to lose any of the qualities that the P90s in the ES-330 have.

I even debated sending it to Ilitch to have their system installed in there, which I might do. That kind of depends on the Kinmans in this Jazzmaster, honestly.

[Embenny]

For what it's worth, I've heard that the Kinman P90s are true to the original pickups, if that specific tone is your goal. Even Kinman admits that they Jazzmaster pickups don't try to emulate vintage Jazzmaster pickups, so, if you happen to dislike the thickmasters (I still cringe every time I read that word), I'm not sure you'd be able to discount the P90s.

Of course, if you loves you some thickmaster action, then by all accounts the P90s should make you even happier.

Looking forward to your impressions, especially since you'll be able to compare them to the Wilde pickups.

[Larry Mal]

I've been meaning to give you a little write up of the Wilde pickups, actually. I wanted to wait until I got to spend a little more time with them, but it's on the way.

[Scout]

He seems like a man with a mission. I tried to read through the history page of his website but my mind kept wandering, I’m curious about his results also. Not to totally derail this but does anyone recognize these, I posted them in one of my first posts but never got much response. Thanks in advance

[Larry Mal]

I guess that the Kinmans will go on my AVRI, then, keeping the black color scheme:





Although I pulled out my old MIJ and remembered how much I love that one. Maybe that will go to a black on red color scheme.

The AVRI above has an aluminum pickguard on it, so with the Kinmans it should be dead silent.

[Deed_Poll]

I usually tend to prefer the middle positions on Jazzmasters anyway, so they were already more or less noise free for all I cared. It'll be nice to be able to solo the neck pickup, which I tend to prefer, but that's about it. I wonder if I should take this opportunity to have a blend knob put in or something.

My main problem is that I have a really nice Gibson ES-330 and I need some kind of solution there. It's a hollowbodied guitar with P90s, and it's virtually unusable for recording in my noisy environment. It's also an amazing instrument that plays better than anything I've ever had in electric guitars and I find it inspirational in every way. But I rarely use it...

...I even debated sending it to Ilitch to have their system installed in there, which I might do. That kind of depends on the Kinmans in this Jazzmaster, honestly.

I'm also very interested to hear your impressions on these, Larry. Do you think maybe part of the reason you always dug the middle position on Jazzmasters was partially because it was noise-cancelling, or are you a fan of the combined positions on humbucking guitars as well? It seems like the sort of thing that might have started you off down a certain path, in the way that when I started playing my bridge pickup was ice-pick bright (and ignorance of how to work the amplifier) and I feel like that has set me on the journey as much more of a neck pickup guy. Likewise, my humbucker guitars always sounded muddy and undefined so my preference for years has been single coils - however, when I 'discovered' unpotted lower or medium-wound humbuckers and started using more naturally midrangy amplifiers, it could achieve that vocal and full sound on a bridge pickup.

I've been away for a while so it might be common knowledge around these parts these days (or I might have otherwise missed it), but I never realised you were a 330 guy! I love mine more as an individual guitar than any other I have owned, but the noise has always been an issue. I'm curious as to how Ilitch packages the system, lacking as the 330 is with a rear route cover. I wouldn't want to be making any irreversible changes to mine as it's an old 'Mickey Mouse Ears' model and is in very clean shape.

All the best to you man, and like I said, looking forward to your assessment of the Kinmans.

Dan

[Larry Mal]

Hi Dan! To be honest, I probably did learn to love the middle position the most because I always had a Jazzmaster. Now I am kind of thinking that I like neck pickups a little more. On my Marauder, the guitar I have a choice on, I put the neck pickup at like 70% and the bridge at 30%. I feel I would like to have a blend knob on all my guitars, actually.

So, when my grandmother passed away she left me a small inheritance, and I wanted to buy one last thing for myself from here as it were, something that would last me the rest of my life. But, the money came in a few packages, so I ended up buying myself three guitars, that Jazzmaster above, a Gibson Firebird with P90s that I also have some noise cancelling pickups coming for, and the big thing, the ES-330.

My thought was that I would have all the guitars I needed at that point, I already had a few, and frankly I went nuts buying other ones anyway but at the time I thought that those three would be all I would really need and maybe a couple more. Like you, I never was into humbuckers that much but the 80s and 90's were an era of super hot humbuckers that I never could connect with. It took me a really long time to learn that humbuckers could have a good clean sound to them.

The problem is, though, that the P90s are really noisy pickups. So it sucks having this ES-330 sitting there in the case under a bed and not getting used. And like you say, they are incredible. I have a lot of great guitars but when I pick that one up I become a better guitar player immediately.

So I'm gearing up to make that one be noiseless in some way also.

I don't know how Ilitch would install his stuff, you have to send the guitar to him and he does it. I would assume it would not disfigure the guitar any but whether it would be really "reversible", I don't know. He'd have to get that coil in there someone and make it stick.

I went looking on his site the other day to see what he said about it, I couldn't find it, though. Maybe he took it down.

You could call him- he's a wonderful guy and he'll call you back a lot and talk your ear off. You'll enjoy it.

Good to hear from you!

[Embenny]

I've been meaning to give you a little write up of the Wilde pickups, actually. I wanted to wait until I got to spend a little more time with them, but it's on the way.

Firstly, thanks! That's pretty exciting. My aspirations of finishing my pickup-related projects in the near future evaporated with this pandemic business, so I will live vicariously through OSG on that front. Very interested to hear how you've been getting on with them.

Secondly, I dont believe I'd ever seen your AVRI. Had no idea it was a Sherwood green. It's absolutely gorgeous. The Sherwood AVRI JMs were the very first offsets that I saw in a magazine and lusted after in the late 90's when they were hopelessly out of reach for me. They've always had a particular allure to me. I've heard you speak highly of your AVRI and now it all makes sense. That is one real keeper of a guitar you have there.

[Larry Mal]

It's Ocean Turquoise, actually! It's not a good picture of it.

[Deed_Poll]

Oh man I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother, but I also think that there's no better way to spend an inheritance than on an instrument you will love, and which will always remind you of her.

It was this way when my grandfather died when I was a young teenager - he left some money to my parents to buy something for me and my older brother. My bro was approaching driving age, and bought his first car with the money. I had never had a real piano in the house (nobody in my family has ever been musical besides me) and up until thenI had a hard job explaining to my highly analytically-minded physicist father what a real piano could do that a non-weighted but velocity sensitive Casio keyboard couldn't!

I must have played every piano (besides private sales) in a 50 mile radius, eventually choosing a beautiful large black Kawai upright from 1984. It's still my most prized possession, long after my brother's first car has rusted away (though I don't doubt it gave him many treasured memories).

It's funny how our tastes as players change over the years eh! I personally never much cared for the in-between sounds, but I'd had a Strat for many of the years I was a beginner and the 2 & 4 positions are really a special case. I was just warming to the combined sounds on my Jazzmaster when I developed my right-hand technique towards a pinched-harmonics type thing (but not in the heavy metal sense) and that dented my enthusiasm for a lot of combined sounds which seemed to 'average out' the dynamics too much - though I still really enjoy the sound of the combined positions when other people play them, it just never feels quite right to me.

I'd always loved Queen, and I stumbled across a Brian May video from back in the day where he was talking about the same kinds of things I was thinking about, and remembered being very surprised that his go-to solo sound (as in the Bohemian Rhapsody solo) was a combination of the neck and middle pickups. This didn't make sense to me from my experience of the Stratocaster, but when I thought about it more carefully I realised it was quite ingenious on Brian's part to combine them in series and out of phase; so they were actually removing the warmer harmonics they had in common and doubling up (rather than averaging) the higher order harmonics.*

I didn't have a Strat anymore to try it out on, but around that time I was listening to a lot of early Fleetwood Mac, so when I picked up a Gibson Flying V that came equipped with some of those hot humbuckers you mentioned, I thought I'd bite the bullet and get an out-of-phase, formvar wire Greeny replica set in there from OX-4 pickups. It totally smashed all my preconceptions about how humbuckers could sound, and now I don't know whether I could even call myself a single-coil purist anymore! I just know I don't get along with ceramic Gibson HBs I guess!

Ilitch sounds like a really stand-up guy, I might send him an email. It would probably not be an option to send him the 330 from the UK, but I was lucky enough to snatch a '60 LP Special DC when I was in Toronto a few years back, and that could take a retrofit rear route cover - though I don't play it quite as often or love it like the 330.

*Recently I've been playing with the idea of wiring the 3-pickup Juniorbird so it goes

N
N+M(Series, out of phase)
N+B(Parallel, in phase)
M+B(Series, in phase)
B

and I'm very curious how wiring two humbuckers in series / out of phase might compare to that Peter Green tone, since the main drawback of Parallel / out of phase it to me is that the signal is so weak that it requires at least a dedicated boost pedal to interface with the other positions when sharing the same amp and settings.

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, well, the second of April would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday, she lived until 90. She had a good life.

I forbade myself from using any money she bequeathed to me to buy anything like a computer or a car, something that would depreciate. Only guitars.

Today my older son was asking me about my J-45, which is clearly labelled as being for him. It was made the year he was born, I have another guitar made in the year my younger son was born. So they'll get those when they are older and it'll be something that they have from me their whole lives, something that started its journey the same day they did.

I don't think I'll ever meet any grandchildren, too old, but it'll make me happy to think that maybe they would get it.