Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

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Larry Mal
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Larry Mal » Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:38 am

What makes them noiseless, though? I've looked into Fralin stuff and feel that the noise cancelling P90s are just stacked humbuckers or something.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Embenny » Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:58 am

Well, yeah. Every noiseless "single coil" is either fundamentally a stacked humbucker or has an internal (a la Bill Lawrence) or external (a la Alembic Series basses or Ilitch) air coil.

The Kinmans are no different, but that's not to say that all stacked designs are equivalent. The size and position of the secondary coil, whether or not it's coupled to the magnet in a meaningful way, whether it's connected in series or parallel, and how you wind the "main" coil to compensate for these effects all dramatically affect the end result.

Kinman just goes about creating an air coil/noise circuit in a more mechanically complicated way than Bill's original "air gap" design, and the pickups are more expensive as a result. I haven't seen a gut-shot of Lindy's designs, but they sound great, and P90s usually have shallow coils in deep covers, so I imagine it'd be pretty easy to create a Lawrence-style air gap in there.

Edit to add:
Kinman uses terms like "DCT" (Dissimilar Coil Technology) and "magnetic shield design."

All this means is that his air coil isn't wound the same as the main coil (nobody's is), and that his design keeps the magnets from interacting with the air coil and turning it into an inductor (much like Bill's air gap does).

Whether Lindy's air coil is effectively kept from acting as an inductor, I can't say, but the pickups do sound good IMO.
Last edited by Embenny on Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Larry Mal » Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:11 am

I should have probably said "old school stacked humbuckers" like a P-100 or something.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Embenny » Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:13 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:11 am
I should have probably said "old school stacked humbuckers" like a P-100 or something.
Yeah, I just edited my last post to say that I'm not sure what Lindy does to keep his air coil from interacting with the magnet, but you could always ask.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by robinbowes » Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:25 am

Personally, I love Kinman pickups, and have them in all my single coil guitars - a Strat, a Strat XII, a Tele, a Yamaha T-type, and most recently a Jazzmaster that I'm in the process of building.

I got my sister to buy an AVN Blues set when she was in Australia in the early 2000s, and if I'm honest, they're lacking top end but they sound great I my Fender XII. I replaced them with an Impersonator 54 set, which are superb.

I have a 60s set in both my Tele and my Yamaha 311MS - they are also fantastic- sounding pickups, with loads of bite from the bridge pickup as you would expect from a Telecaster.

I can't comment on the Jazzmaster pickups as they're still in the box!

R.

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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Larry Mal » Sun Jul 14, 2019 10:30 am

Is it just the Blues set that was lacking in high end? Not Kinman in general?
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by alexpigment » Tue Jul 16, 2019 6:55 pm

Most noiseless pickups suffer from loss of high end when replacing a true single coil and changing nothing else about the guitar. It's the nature of hum cancelling. Usually you just compensate for this by using higher pot values (e.g. 500k instead of 250k). Fender's latest Deluxe series uses 1meg pots in the guitars with noiseless pickups. It's bit overkill, but hey, you've got a tone knob.

Tangent:
Another thing that you can do - and I do this to all my guitars - is to change the wire that goes from the volume to the tone pot; just move it from the left lug on the volume pot to the middle lug; the wire's position is unchanged on the tone pot. In 'normal' wiring, you lose high end when you turn the volume down. This mod prevents that from happening, and also makes the guitar slightly brighter overall when everything is on 10. The only real drawback is that you lose a small amount of volume when turning the tone knob down. I find this preferable overall. People in the Gibson world call this "50s wiring" and Fender people often call this the "Fezz Parka" mod.

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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by stevejamsecono » Wed Jul 17, 2019 3:57 am

mbene085 wrote:
Fri Feb 01, 2019 11:10 am
They're good pickups but not worth the money if you ask me. He moved his operation to Asia and still has among the most expensive noiseless pickups you can find.

Honestly, Larry, take the $130 gamble and try yourself some Wilde pickups.

His noiseless designs are superb, but if you mean what you say about wanting to see meaningful advances in guitar technology, you owe it to yourself to check out his microcoils. They are true single coils, and the strat sets are available in alnico for $128 or neodymium with adjustable polepieces for $150.

They were his final design. The have the high end response you can only get from a true single coil, but have such little copper wire in them that they are extremely low (not unlike how Lace Sensors aren't "noiseless" but approach humbucker levels of quiet).

The neodymium design is really fascinating and totally adjustable but has a wider frequency response than most people are used to in a strat pickup. The alnico model sounds more familiar to strat users.

Made in the USA by his daughter and wife and are literally half the price of Kinmans.
I'd be interested to hear more about these myself. One of the many suggestions made for my current Fender Lead project was a set of his Noiseless Strat Pickups (the L290s specifically) because I wanted something fat and overwound not unlike the original X1s that came in there, and also allowing it to compete with my P90-equipped LP Special.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Jul 17, 2019 4:29 am

What did you end up doing on your Lead? I love the X1 pickups a lot, and with the reverse wound/reverse polarity they can be pretty quiet in the middle position, anyway.

The reason I'm so focused on the Kinman pickups, by the way, is because I want to think that there is some way to get real single coil sound without just making them sound like humbuckers. And without question, that's what Kinman is advertising himself as having.

Now, I know that such a thing is possible since I have my Ilitch stuff, which to my ears takes none of the single coil sound away from the guitar, and I guess that I'm hoping that such a thing might be possible with Kinman's stuff (I know the technologies are not at all the same). I don't have similar belief with the Fralin stuff, I'm sure they are great pickups, but since he doesn't advertise them in any way I just assume that they are stacked humbuckers.

Now, I could be wrong about the Kinman pickups, especially since I'm not all that clear on exactly what his technology is supposed to be. But the Strat type pickups of his that I've heard on Youtube videos has been pretty convincing to my ears, anyway.

But I do have choices, though- I could put some Kinmans in my ES-330 pretty easily, or I could also ship the guitar to Ilitch for one of his products in there. That last idea is probably very expensive, then again, you can imagine that the ES-330 is a very noisy guitar without a lick of shielding and two P90s to boot, it's not the most fun for recording with. If money was no object, though, I would absolutely take that choice no problem (and I might, one day).

That being said, though, I would probably try the Kinmans in a Firebird I have first, or less likely the Fralins. That would be the guitar I would experiment with new pickups on first.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by stevejamsecono » Wed Jul 17, 2019 5:59 am

So this is my third Lead technically. My first one got sold awhile ago due to financial need. I bought a Red 1980 body awhile ago that I wanted to do as a project but never got around to it and again was forced to sell. I just picked up a 1981 Lead body the other day and am looking at options right now for what I want to do with it. My original plan was "Make a Fender that rocks" because I missed playing one in my trio but need something with a bit more low end grunt than my Tele, so I was looking at humbuckers. At the same time, I do love how most Fenders seem usable in every pickup position, so I've been contemplating just trying some more overwound single coils to see if that works for my needs.

I get a lot of option paralysis when it comes to pickups, so it's been a bit of a mess so far, but I'll keep you posted. :ph34r:
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by alexpigment » Wed Jul 17, 2019 7:47 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Jul 17, 2019 4:29 am
What did you end up doing on your Lead? I love the X1 pickups a lot, and with the reverse wound/reverse polarity they can be pretty quiet in the middle position, anyway.

The reason I'm so focused on the Kinman pickups, by the way, is because I want to think that there is some way to get real single coil sound without just making them sound like humbuckers. And without question, that's what Kinman is advertising himself as having.

Now, I know that such a thing is possible since I have my Ilitch stuff, which to my ears takes none of the single coil sound away from the guitar, and I guess that I'm hoping that such a thing might be possible with Kinman's stuff (I know the technologies are not at all the same). I don't have similar belief with the Fralin stuff, I'm sure they are great pickups, but since he doesn't advertise them in any way I just assume that they are stacked humbuckers.

Now, I could be wrong about the Kinman pickups, especially since I'm not all that clear on exactly what his technology is supposed to be. But the Strat type pickups of his that I've heard on Youtube videos has been pretty convincing to my ears, anyway.

But I do have choices, though- I could put some Kinmans in my ES-330 pretty easily, or I could also ship the guitar to Ilitch for one of his products in there. That last idea is probably very expensive, then again, you can imagine that the ES-330 is a very noisy guitar without a lick of shielding and two P90s to boot, it's not the most fun for recording with. If money was no object, though, I would absolutely take that choice no problem (and I might, one day).

That being said, though, I would probably try the Kinmans in a Firebird I have first, or less likely the Fralins. That would be the guitar I would experiment with new pickups on first.
I believe I read that at least some of the Kinman's are side-by-side coils (i.e. coils are oriented sideways and the single set of magnets point upward) rather than stacked. Certainly not an exclusive design, but most noiseless pickups out there are stacked. As for the Ilitch, it's nothing more than a dummy coil, and you can do this on your own quite easily with no routing on a lot of guitars, and probably less than $100 on parts. Essentially, if the second coil of a hum cancelling pickup is moved to somewhere that's not under the strings, you don't fundamentally change the sound of the pickup compared to a single coil. You do lose a small amount of highs (e.g. 10% or less), but you can compensate with higher pot values.

That being said, I have seen the demos of the Kinmans for Jazzmaster and they sound great. I just always found the price tag a bit too much to gamble on them.

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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Jul 17, 2019 8:33 am

alexpigment wrote:
Wed Jul 17, 2019 7:47 am


As for the Ilitch, it's nothing more than a dummy coil, and you can do this on your own quite easily with no routing on a lot of guitars, and probably less than $100 on parts.
People tell me that, but I feel that there's no way I have the time or even workspace to learn that technique. I'll be paying for the time being.
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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by alexpigment » Wed Jul 17, 2019 8:56 am

"Technique" makes it sound a lot more complicated than it is :) It's literally soldering the hot wire of one pickup to the ground wire of another, then soldering the hot wire of that second pickup to the pickup selector switch. I'd say it should take 10 minutes and most of that is just unscrewing the pickguard and screwing it back on. Anyway, I just figured I'd mention the option.

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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by maxoche » Wed Jul 31, 2019 4:47 am

from what I have seen, the jazzmaster noiseless pickups from fralin are a special design. not stacked. 2 coils side by side with only 6 pole pieces shared by both coils.

look at this picture:
https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/ ... sy5xk6.jpg

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Re: Can we revisit Kinman pickups?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Jul 31, 2019 5:41 am

Interesting.
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