# Home, Home On The Range (Wide Range Pickups)



## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

During the summer of 1977 I earned enough money to buy a used Telecaster Deluxe. I loved those WR pickups, and I gigged that guitar for 4 years. 1981 sucked, I was marginally employed, cold, hungry, tired, sofa surfing and sleeping in my car. Selling gear was a temporary but necessary way of getting out of my predicament. Bye bye Tele Deluxe. Since then, no guitar like it. I'd like to go home to those pickups now.

Before I experiment and order a set of GFS knock-off wide range pickups, Vintage Split Humbucker- Classic Fender Style does anyone have any experience with them? I'm considering them for an Ibanez semi-hollow, and maybe for the neck position of a Tele Thinline.

I've heard good things about some other hand made replicas, but I have to consider the wallet right now.

What say ye?

Peace, Mooh.


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...if you read the reviews, they often include the caveat "great for the price". i'd be more inclined to experiment with inexpensive pickups like this is if i had money to burn.

i did try a set of gfs dual rail pickups on a telecaster. they were supposed to be the equivalent of danny gatton's pickups. they weren't, and i quickly got rid of them.

i don't think you need to go into debt to buy boutique pickups, but definitely go with a good name brand.

seymour duncan rarely fails to satisfy. same for john suhr. and you really need to take a look at bare knuckle pickups.

fender also makes some pretty good pickups...


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

This problem with these is that the construction of the original wide range HB differs so greatly from regular HBs and the magnets were CuNiFe not AlNiCo. There are very few that make them to original spec and they cost a lot. I wanted to get one of the Thinline Tele Deluxes when they came out and source some original WR HB or get a repros, but the pickups looked like they would cost almost as much as the guitar, so I shelfed the idea.

Here's where I found the best WR HB repros:
Lollar Pickups Blog » wide range humbucker - but from what I hear not CuNiFe, so not 100% accurate

Telenator Musical Electronics LLC threaded magnet pickup technology - this guy from TDPRI seems to be making the best CuNiFe pickups there are, but it will cost you. $450 each!


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Thanks folks!

Actually, one of the reasons I ask, besides simply tapping into the knowledge here, is that generally I really like Duncans and Godins and rarely am otherwise tempted.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

Novak have is version too! Not sure wich on is best. I would like to try some too. An old guy at my job told me they were the best pickup he heard in is entire life. He sold this guitar to get married! Happy ending...he's still with this girl! 

CurtisNovak.com - Pickups and Guitars | Humbucker Pickup


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Ti-Ron said:


> Novak have is version too! Not sure wich on is best. I would like to try some too. An old guy at my job told me they were the best pickup he heard in is entire life. He sold this guitar to get married! Happy ending...he's still with this girl!
> 
> CurtisNovak.com - Pickups and Guitars | Humbucker Pickup


Hmmm, 2 problems with that one. 1 for sure and 1 maybe. It's not standard WR HB size, so if you're trying to put it in a Deluxe, you'll have to get a new pickguard made. 2nd, and this isn't clear in the post, but he mentions rod magnets, but doesn't specify the magnet type. I'm pretty sure it's not CuNiFe for that price. 

Another thing to keep in mind with these guitars that contributes to their tone is the interaction between the pickups and the 1Meg pots.


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## Tarbender (Apr 7, 2006)

I put a set of Rio Grande WR's in a Deluxe project I built a little while ago. They were great to my ears but not having heard or played original WR's I have no bench mark for comparisson. But compared to regular humbuckers they were extremely articulate with no darkness or muddy characteristics that I've heard in the new version that Fender is using in their thinlines.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Tarbender said:


> I put a set of Rio Grande WR's in a Deluxe project I built a little while ago. They were great to my ears but not having heard or played original WR's I have no bench mark for comparisson. But compared to regular humbuckers they were extremely articulate with *no darkness or muddy characteristics that I've heard in the new version that Fender is using in their thinlines.*


This is because the new Fender WR pickups are regular bar-magnet pickups like any traditional HB and have nothing in common with the WR HB from the 70's which used milled rod magnets.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

hollowbody said:


> This is because the new Fender WR pickups are regular bar-magnet pickups like any traditional HB and have nothing in common with the WR HB from the 70's which used milled rod magnets.


Yes the new ones don't sound at all like the old ones. Hard to imagine that Fender intended them to. The old ones are *SO* good for rhythm stuff, articulate and complex, almost acoustic guitar like in individual string definition. Through a Roland Jazz Chorus amp, or a good clean bass amp even, they were almost jazz box like.

I know it's personal taste, but for the life of me I don't get why Fender would discontinue these.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Telenator II (Jul 20, 2009)

Hi guys, I'm a little late to the party here but I'd be glad to answer any questions concerning WRHBs.

Although my name here is Telenator II, I'm the guy from Telenator Musical Electronics. I've been Telenator since 2003 but someone, I think a member here, also has the screen name Telenator as of 2006.

Anyway, lets talk shop!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I used to have one of the WR pickups that I installed on a DIY guitar back in 1974 or so. I wasn't as impressed with it as other people seem to be, but maybe I didn't know what to look for at the time. What I did do is look "under the hood".

Because most people will only know what could be seen from above, their impression is that the most distinctive aspect of the WR is the placement of the adjustable aspects in a staggered fashion, such that a sort of angled pickup could be achieved within a HB platform. While that may be true (and I had heard rumours that Jeff Beck had lowered the nonvisible polepieces on one of his to do just that - mimic an angled Tele Bridge), that's not the only difference.

As has been mentioned earlier, the polepieces are different material and construction. In a conventional HB, what we see poking out the tops of the coils are "slugs", which are coupled underneath the coil via a bar magnet. The slugs conduct the magnetic field, but aren't magnets themselves, and that has an impact on the resulting tone, partly by being made of material which, when placed inside the coil changes the inductance of the coil.

The WR pickups have no coupling bar underneath. If you looked at the chassis underneath, you'd see a dozen holes, that did not let the polepiece come into contact with anything else. It is essentially a pair of Fender single-coils, with actual magnetic polepieces running through them. All 12 polepieces are threaded, and can be adjusted to have different amounts of them poking up or down through the plastic bobbin. For three of the polepieces in each coil, the slot head for adjusting is facing the top, and for three it is facing downward and adjustable only from underneath.

Because Alnico does not machine easily, or well from what I'm told (and remember that creating a thread on a rod IS "machining"), Fender used a different alloy called Cunife. I have no idea with the coercivity of Cunife is, but I remember them as not being particularly weak.

So, the WR pickups were different because of:
a) the use of actual polepieces, rather than slugs, 
b) the use of a threaded plastic bobbin that kept the inner windings a little farther away from the polepeces than they would be on a "normal" Fender pickup
c) use of different kinds of magnets
d) a different sensing area through non-use of a coupling magnet or slug underneath, and a different approach to adjustability

Some of the pickups one sees that are cosmetically similar may well adopt the same coil properties (easy enough to mimic) and adjustability, but do not employ all of the other things that were unique about the WRs.

I can confirm that Jason Lollar's reproduction of them is accurate, but can't imagine he is the only boutique maker that has taken steps to recapture all the elements of the original. After all, whoever makes those Cunfe mags is not going to rely on Jason alone to justify production.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Telenator...Thanks. Since starting this thread I've read a lot of your offerings on the Tele Forum. You're a big help.

mhammer...Thanks for the guided tour.

In the end, I might grab a vintage Deluxe or Thinline with WR pickups if something else doesn't land in my lap.

Peace, Mooh.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I've been gassing for a Tele Custom for a while now to pair up my BG1400 bridge pickup with a WR HB. The plan is to find a vintage Tele with an original neck pickup, or get a reissue and send the HB to Telenator for "correcting."


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## Big_Daddy (Apr 2, 2009)

I recently sold a '73 Tele Deluxe. The Seth Lovers in that thing were the hottest pickups I'd ever owned and sounded fantastic through my BFVR. I just couldn't stand the way the guitar hung on my body and traded it plus some cash for a '81 ES-335. Occasionally I see original Seth Lover WRHB's on eBay and TDPRI but, sadly, the price is sky-rocketing. Good luck, Mooh.


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## Telenator II (Jul 20, 2009)

mhammer said:


> *I can confirm that Jason Lollar's reproduction of them is accurate*, but can't imagine he is the only boutique maker that has taken steps to recapture all the elements of the original. After all, whoever makes those Cunfe mags is not going to rely on Jason alone to justify production.


Very informative post! 

Hmmmm, with all due respect I think you need to define "accurate."

Telenator is the sole manufacturer in the world producing WRHBs with CuNiFe magnets. 

Here's a few photos for your viewing pleasure!


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

Telenator II said:


> Very informative post!
> 
> Hmmmm, with all due respect I think you need to define "accurate."
> 
> Telenator is the sole manufacturer in the world producing WRHBs with CuNiFe magnets.


Telenator, are you saying that Jason's pickup doesn't used CuNiFe magnets?

I'm particularly interested because I'm picking up a Telecaster Custom this weekend and was trying to justify the price of buying one of your CuNiFe pickups vs. sending the hum to you to get the Mod 2 done to it, but I was also looking at the Lollar as an option.


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## Were We Brave? (Oct 29, 2009)

Not CuNiFe, but FeCrCo, as far as I know.

I _LOVE_ mine. World of difference with the Fender WRHB RI that come stock with the '72 Deluxe/Custom.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

"Accurate" is a troublesome term in the world of pickups. So, one maker goes to great lengths to make the bobbins on the HBs from the exact same plastic as late 50's Gibsons, while someone like Jon Gundry from Throbak, goes out and tracks down and buys, one of the winding machines used by Gibson during that period to replicate the "scatter". Other guys make a huge deal of the alloy used in the cover, while still others insist on using only _this_ brand of surgical tubing. So how much of the tone is in the wire, the baseplate, the magnets, the bobbin material, the tension, etc. etc.? Then you have other guys like Kent Armstrong and Joe Barden who are pretty much ceramic magnets all the way, and adopt the attitude that you can set yourself a tonal goal and adapt your materials any way you want to reach that tonal goal.

My sense from interacting with Jason is that he is somewhere in the middle. That is, he uses the obvious elements to reproduce a pickup, and might adapt something that achieves the same end without compromising quality or tonal objectives. Ultimately, a magnet is a magnet is a magnet, as long as it provides the same gauss, retentivity, field, etc. In this case, the "special" qualities of cunife are that it is more readily machinable than alnico. Another material/alloy of similar machinability and magnetic properties will fill in nicely. One might argue that cunife mags that are 1mm wider or narrower in diameter are not "accurate". I'm not going to debate who or what is more accurate.

Like I say, the key elements in a WR, apart from the coils themselves, are that it uses threaded magnets within each coil that are not coupled underneath. To my mind, slight variations in mag composition pale in comparison to the difference between coupling the mags vs not coupling, and using mags rather than slugs.

And, like I said earlier, if I was a mag supplier, I wouldn't make those little threaded cunifes an inventory item unless I knew I had a big enough market to justify, so I'll assume that plenty of boutique makers have ready access to them.


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## prodigal_son (Apr 23, 2009)

The brand new Fender Pawn Shop series "Fender 72" has a Wide Range neck pick up. Hmm..


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

I don't think the magnets are CuNiFe though.




prodigal_son said:


> The brand new Fender Pawn Shop series "Fender 72" has a Wide Range neck pick up. Hmm..


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## Telenator II (Jul 20, 2009)

We have threaded alnico and threaded CuNiFe and they do sound different.
Jason always does an excellent job on whatever he makes so anyone considering one of his pickups is getting a quality piece.

In my experience, the magnets do indeed matter very much.

If anyone would like to try some threaded FeCrCo, send me an e-mail. I'll give you a free set to experiement with. We have a bunch on hand but don't use it.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Oh, I agree that magnets can "sound different"....if one changes nothing else BUT the magnets. Same way I could change nothing else about a pickup other than the gauge of the wire used, or even the tension on the wire, and it would sound different.

If you listen to guys like Barden and Armstrong, though, their contention is that there is no reason why one couldn't change _other_ parameters such that different magnets *could* sound the same. So its not that magnets don't make a difference. Rather, if one understands the pickup well, they don't have to make a difference.

I have a bunch of things to wind and rewind this summer, and a good friend who bought himself a single pickup Squier recently has indicated that he'd like to experiment with winding and oddball designs this summer, so yeah, I'd be curious as hell to try out some of those FeCrCo polepieces if you can spare some (PM on its way). I have some A3 and A5 polepieces sitting around, wires from 38 through 44, and experimenting with "mixed mags" intrigues me. Thanks for your good will.


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## Telenator II (Jul 20, 2009)

Sure thing. We bought a bunch and were told they were alnico. After a lot of experimentation we're sticking with AlNiCo and CuNiFe. 

You're welcome to a set to try. Just let us know how you made out!


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