Wide range Humbucking Pickup Reissue

[do not be afraid]

I agree...of course they have their own sound !  like every humbuckers available on the market. Seymour Duncan wouldn't bother to produce 20+ different kind of humbuckers if they sounded all the same.. just listen to the samples and tell me if you think the Super Distortion sounds like the Jazz.

then what, exactly, is your "average" humbucker? i'm not trying to be sarcastic at all — i'd really like to know! everyone complains that these pickups are just like every other humbucker, except for the Fender Wide Range reissue, and, well, they're not! but, then again, neither is any other humbucker, really…

Why ?
Is the ability to adjust pole pieces more important than the sound ?

to me? no! but to the average guy on the street, whose musical hero plays an original, and doesn't know a damn thing about CuNife, AlNiCo, whatever? yes! can't you just imagine it? “hey, the ones on (insert famous Telecaster Deluxe players name here)'s Telecaster have screws, and these don't! what a rip off!” i mean, Fender isn't a small boutique company marketing to dedicated guitarists with niche interests (like, say, us), they're a mass producer of musical instruments which have to appeal to as many people as humanly possible! that's my point: Fender physically could have made the reissues sound more like the originals, but how many “average” people would buy them?

You obviously been lucky enough to try out all these pickups and a FWR original in real...

of course not — but, i do know how they're all built, and have been able to try out some of them, and have heard plenty of recordings of others, etc, just like you, probably.

Re-read what I wrote again...
It's just that we have a lot of members here that have built guitars with FWR Ri paired with 1 meg pots and the combination of the two has proved to be a lot more satisfying in terms of clarity, treble and dynamics response than when the pups are used with 250k or 500k.
So what I said is even (<-- read) with the FWR Ri as we know it, Fender could have made the guitar sounding closer to the original with that simple change in pot values.

i have: “they just had to put 1 meg pots in their guitar to have people beleive these pickups are exact copies of originals.” you didn't say “more” like, you said “exactly” like! switching from 250k pots to 1 meg pots won't make your guitar sound like it has original Wide Range humbuckers, but it will make your guitar sounds like it has 1 meg pots, and, yes, that might be closer to how you think it should sound, but,  again, those pickups were almost certainly designed for 250k pots, and that's why Fender uses them — not stupidity, or laziness, or anything else!

So when you make that kind of sarcastic pointless remarks...

that remark was not, in any way, sarcastic! i know everyone hears things differently, but usually that means they hear the same thing, and have a different opinion on it — not that they literally hear something completely different! i mean, somebody might say a Les Paul has a “rich” sound, and a Stratocaster has a “cheap” sound, while somebody else might say a Stratocaster has a “clear” sound and a Les Paul has a “muddy” sound, but, really, both people are saying the exact same thing, but in their own words, based on their own perspective — that's not what's happened here; we both heard the same instrument, and actually think it sounds completely different (as in exactly opposite!) don't you think that's weird? no? okay, then… maybe i'm just weird?

That said, I had much fun "talking" with you but I feel like I have better things to do than responding to you on this.
You obviously don't want to discuss things in order to advice for the best choice or to make informations more accurate, what you want is to argue on things just for the sake of being the one who is right, just like a 6 years old little boy.
The point of this topic (and this forum generally speaking) is someone asked for people's opinions and feelings about a piece of guitar gears, so people answered and gave him their feelings told him what they know about this piece of gear and some advice... we all have different experiences about things and I'm sure fullerplast is aware of that and have since made his own mix of what have been said to him and made his own opinion about it.. and it's just about that: opinions and personnal tastes. The aim is not to find the ultimate truth about guitar gears, it just does not exist ! The aim is not find what is best suited for you.

for whatever it's worth, i wasn't trying to argue with opinions, but, rather, things which were presented as facts, and the general way some people here seem to dismiss these pickups out of hand, without even considering their own merits! i felt that would be helpful to the original poster, but, maybe i was wrong? i don't know... i certainly wasn't just arguing for the sake of being “right!”

[GUITARmole]

i think Seymour is right about AlNiCo 3 and CuNiFe, but there's one thing you have to understand: the original Wide Range pickups didn't use CuNiFe bar magnets! if Fender made the Wide Range reissues exactly like the original, right down to the CuNiFe even, but still used a "soft" magnetic core (the iron screws in this case), they wouldn't sound the same at all! to get the same amount of power and attack as a “hard” magnetic core pickup from a “soft” magnetic core pickup, all else being equal, you'll need to use a much stronger magnet, and, even then, it can never really sound exactly the same.

You understand that with the original WR the screws that you refer to as being iron ARE THE CuNiFe magnets, right?

I understand there are differences...bottom line, the only accurate repro would be a new WR humbucker wound to original specs with CuNiFe polepieces.

Still, FWIW I think the new pickups sound pretty damned good (and I have an original to compare them with).  My preference was for the neck pickup in the guitar I tried but I fully understand if your opinion differs or your observations aren't the same.

For the record...I'm a sarcastic asshole myself so I can deal with 'do not be afraid's' style of posting...still...no need to be so defensive!  We're all entitled to our own opinions and there's no need to defend them, right or wrong 

[do not be afraid]

You understand that with the original WR the screws that you refer to as being iron ARE THE CuNiFe magnets, right?

that was my point: if Fender were to make the reissues with CuNiFe bar magnets and iron screws, they still wouldn't sound the same! i was responding to the idea that the neck Wide Range Reissue, with an AlNiCo 3  bar magnet (magnetically similar to CuNiFe), sounds more like an original Wide Range Humbucker than the bridge Wide Range Reissue, with an AlNiCO 5 (about twice as strong as AlNiCo 3 and CuNiFe), that's all. i probably didn't word it clearly (and maybe i'm not wording it clearly now, too — i don't know!), but, yeah… it was, like, 3:00 in the morning, or something!

[Stereordinary]

I could be totally wrong about this but I think that if you had equal amounts of AlNiCo V and CuNiFe that the CuNiFe would be the stronger magnet.

[do not be afraid]

I could be totally wrong about this but I think that if you had equal amounts of AlNiCo V and CuNiFe that the CuNiFe would be the stronger magnet.

really? i wouldn't know — i haven't been able to find the "specs" on CuNiFe anywhere, i just trust Seymour Duncan who said AlNiCo 3 and CuNiFe were a very close match.

[Stereordinary]

Yeah I know, I read the same thing.  But I think (and again, I could be wrong about this) Duncan said that AlNiCoIII sounds the most like CuNiFe.  Which wouldn't necessarily mean it has the most similar magnetic properties.

[GUITARmole]

CuNiFe magnets are relatively weak.  (look at page 7 of this article for a comparison https://www.arnoldmagnetics.com/v2/sale ... n27702.pdf) and I've also read elsewhere (not just on the SD website) that the magnetic strength of CuNiFe is like A3.

[Stereordinary]

I stand corrected by a fellow Portlander! 

[RumorsOFsurF]

I stand corrected by a fellow Portlander!   :D

Oregonians FTW! 

[GUITARmole]

Seriously...what is it w/ Oregonians and this forum lately?  Is P-land becoming offset capital of the world or what?    Hopefully, huh?

[djetz]

At the moment, the closest things you can buy to the originals are Fralin Twangmasters, which don't have Cunife magnets but (as far as I can tell) are structurally similar to the originals.

i'm 99% certain that a Fralin Twangmaster is about as far as you can get from an original Fender Wide Range humbucker! they're actually Fender single-coils, like a Stratocaster, which have been “split”, like an Electric XII/Precision Bass/whatever, and stuck under a humbucker cover. the idea is to get the Fender single-coil sound into a guitar with humbuckers, but without the hum, not replicate the Fender Wide Range pickup!

That 1% is the killer for you, then. The Fralin Twangmaster does indeed have two full rows of polepieces, 12 in total, just like the original WRHP, and unlike the P-bass pickup, or the G&L Z-coil, which are of the design you're describing. That makes you 100% wrong. Aren't percentages fun?

[berlinbetty]

  Man!  It's getting deadly in here!!

[guitardude]

yeah i just played a tele deluxe at gc. actually sounded like my gibson (played through a fender deluxe amp). so i'm guessing they aren't vintage correct, but they don't sound bad. good guitar for fender feel and gibson sound, at least from my experiance

[Superfuzz]

yeah i just played a tele deluxe at gc. actually sounded like my gibson (played through a fender deluxe amp). so i'm guessing they aren't vintage correct, but they don't sound bad. good guitar for fender feel and gibson sound, at least from my experiance

That's what I feel when I played a Tele Custom before to buy my JM, it was very close to my bro's Les Paul, a bit brighter, but very very close..
i personally think at fenders are just trying to make a guitar with a correct vintage look but with a more gibsonesque sound, just to catch some gibson afecionados wich just hate to play an horrible HH Tele..

[do not be afraid]

That 1% is the killer for you, then. The Fralin Twangmaster does indeed have two full rows of polepieces, 12 in total, just like the original WRHP, and unlike the P-bass pickup, or the G&L Z-coil, which are of the design you're describing. That makes you 100% wrong. Aren't percentages fun?

and you're getting your informaiton from where, exactly? the “Twangmaster” is just a P-92 with AlNiCo rod magnets, and if the P-92 had 2 full rows of polepeices then, well, it'd just be an “average” humbucker, not a “noiseless”, humbucker-sized, “P-90”, or, in other words, a P-92! Fralin himself calls both pickups “split singles” on his website!