Members stormin1155 Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 These look very interesting. Anyone try them? http://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Gold-Foil-Pickups_c_525.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 I have a couple of original gold foil pickups in my parts cab. I never thought they were that special. They are mainly low output single coil pickups horribly made with poor workmanship. People seem to rave about them but I wonder how much Nostalgia drives allot of these revivals. If you owned an old Teisco as a kid you may think Gold foil were great pickups. I always saw them a junk in comparison to Gibson Pickups and others. I'm not a huge fan of allot of the GFS stuff. Most of it is made by Artec and you can skip the middle man and price markup buying from other vendors. Here's one of their older catalogs. http://www.artecsound.com/pickups/2012_v-pickup_catalog.pdf They will make you anything and sell it to your at wholesale costs if you put in a bulk order. Allot of people do that ten sell them on EBay. That's what GFS, Dragonfire and others did to get going. You find at least 400~800 listed for chump change on EBay at any given time of day. http://www.ebay.com/sch/Guitars-/22670/i.html?_nkw=artec+pickup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ancient Mariner Posted November 20, 2014 Members Share Posted November 20, 2014 Some of the old crappy pickups sounded... different. Different can be what works for some people, and I've been amazed at how some rave about the most dreadful old plywood tiescos, with garbage hardware and hair-grip fretwire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GAS Man Posted November 21, 2014 Members Share Posted November 21, 2014 I know Lollar recently came out with a RI of those as well. Bit of a different price point though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted November 21, 2014 Members Share Posted November 21, 2014 They look just like a P-90 and a humbucker in a different case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Quarter Posted November 24, 2014 Members Share Posted November 24, 2014 They look just like a P-90 and a humbucker in a different case. It / they very well could be just a tweaked standard design. I doubt they spent the coin to tool up and make proper internal guts, at least at that price point. They may sound ok though, I'd love to get a peek under the cover. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members allthumz Posted November 30, 2014 Members Share Posted November 30, 2014 These are advertised as having ferrite magnets for a warm smooth sound with amp driving bite and glassy jangle. I believe ferrite means ceramic. Warm smooth jangly bite. Did GFS marketing miss anything? I don't know but I have had good luck and tone from their single coil pickups. I might try a couple in my Agile AD2300 after April 15. The stock P90s in my 2300 have ceramic magnets. I like 'em. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wankdeplank Posted November 30, 2014 Members Share Posted November 30, 2014 Don't know about the copies, but I thought the originals had a little magic in them. They were made by Rowe, but designed by Harry DeArmond from what I've been told. I've also read that Duane Eddy didn't make a name for himself playing filtertrons but was instead using DeArmond designed pickups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Elias Graves Posted December 1, 2014 Members Share Posted December 1, 2014 I used to own some originals but I thought they sucked. Not sure why I'd want a cut rate copy of an already cut rate pickup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Ratae Corieltauvorum Posted December 3, 2014 Moderators Share Posted December 3, 2014 EG:) How you doin man? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted December 3, 2014 Members Share Posted December 3, 2014 You found those gold foil pickups on toy guitars sold through mail order catalogs like Sears and Montgomery ward back in the day. Those catalogs were the precursor of the internet today. Many towns didn't have music stores so as a kid you'd go though the catalogs hoping your folks would spend $29 on one of those guitars. If they were into music they might buy you a $49 with 3 gold foil pickups. They sure sold allot of them that way because you'd find them in every flea market and garage sale you went to. Many times they were in such bad shape you couldn't make them playable. Then when the internet came around the ones that survived would up being sold on line. I'm amazed that many of those items survived. Problem is most of those guitars were junk to begin with and its not like wine that ferments and gets better. Mythology comes about when you get some old guys reminiscing about their childhood. They may have been given one as a kid and have find memories of their childhood when they see one. That does not make the instrument better. You see parts like the pickups and guitars being sold for high prices and all this false mythology built up in back of it like those pickups having some magic tone to them. You open one up and it truly is bargain basement junk. made on an assembly line. Laminated cores, plastic or even paper bobbin, huge air gaps and ceramic magnets. If you were lucky they might spray lacquer in there to reduce the microphonics. The gold foil just hides how poor the workmanship inside truly is. Its amazing they even produce sound in many cases. Many did fail and wound up in landfills. This ones just a coil and magnet rolled up in paper and stuck in the case. http://s575.photobucket.com/user/MasterDelayer/media/GoldFoil.jpg.html Plastic bobbin, cheapest metal and materials lacquered.http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MzkyWDUwMA==/z/NWIAAOxyVaBS3zR5/$_1.JPG?set_id=2 Cheap plastic bobbin and ceramic magnets. http://music-electronics-forum.com/attachments/5283d1241140825-p4300224.jpg They may give you a cheesy unique sound, but is that sound usable? If you played one of those toy guitars then switched to something decent you probably wouldn't be bragging about how cool that guitar was like people do today. The whole thing about cheap and cheesy being cool didn't exist then. You could respect as a player if you could rip the thing up playing well, but you'd be laughed at if you thought that guitar was anything more then entry level junk kids are given to see if they have any motivation to learn how to play. If they did learn you'd buy them a real instrument, if not it wound up in a garage sale or trash bin. The instruments were so poorly made and difficult to play few made it to that first upgrade. That's why there's millions of them out there being sold for chump change and wind up being wall hangers. I would think those Artec gold foils GFS is selling actually sound pretty decent. The gold foil simply gives then a retro look, nothing else. Maybe they are vintage wound with a low ohms to give it a super clean tone, but I doubt they are as poorly made as the originals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wankdeplank Posted December 3, 2014 Members Share Posted December 3, 2014 A distinction should be made between the Tesco variety and the ones made by Rowe for Harmony, Silvertone, Kay etc., although all have found glory in the hands of players and bands such as Ry Cooder, The Black Keys, Jr Watson, Rick Holmstrom and others. There is obviously something there otherwise builders like Lollar wouldn't bother to replicate them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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