In for a penny in for a pound, I think you should wind your own!telentubes wrote:I don't know what PUs to use, and am up for suggestions. The J.M. Rolph humbuckers have caught my attention. Not much info on his website.
I'm sort of kidding, I know an ace luthier in NYC and also a friend both who've been immersed in this stuff for decades who do/did wind and the results were never less than terrific. I'm not sure how much the luthier has invested in it but he seems to only wind for his own custom projects so it's likely not too much and I'm betting his set up is pretty basic if not raw. The other guy was winding pickups for kicks in the early '80s before StewMac made it all easy. Just hacking it, reusing dead or cheap jap pickups with the bobbin somehow stuck in the chuck of a craftsman hand drill in one hand and the wire spool on a stick in the other. Really winging it, but still checking on a meter for resistance. Honestly they all sounded great often amazing, full of energy, bright and alive. I'm sure there were a lot of abortions along the way that they never showed off, still. Seems too easy, obviously you've got the manual chops, I assume you have the ears. That's what these guys had, they knew where to go so they got there.
Otherwise I'd go tried and true. Nothing worse than pickup rolling (and buying) except speaker rolling. Some pickups just achieve symbiosis w/ a guitar, that's not always easy, some guitars are difficult. I think that's an other reason you see so much rolling these days, too many generic mega factory guitars with mediocre wood (the other is too many people who can't really play). Hopefully your guitar will come out full of vim and pretty much any pickup will sound good.
Thankfully I always avoid the rolling thing as I've always had vintage/semi vintage guitars, but I had Duncan antiquity PAFS, in a 90s Hamer Standard that were terrific, and in all the years he's been making them I've never heard anyone, anywhere disappointed in Fralins. The times I've noted a good sound and checked what they were using it was often Bardens and Bill Lawrence. The Antiquities and Fralins were the consistent recommendations of the two guys I mentioned above who've installed probably thousand of picks btwn them in the last 30 years and seen a lot of tail chasing and rolling. BTW both of those guys dislike Lollars FWIW.
Anyway, ask people here to gift you their dead pickups and then get a spool of wire, a stick and hand drill
