Magnum Opus '59

A few months ago I bought a Fender American Pro II in Roasted Pine.  Great guitar, plays well, and extremely well made. But there were a couple of things I thought could be better. I swapped the tuners out for Fender Locking Tuners, mainly because all my Strats have Locking Tuners and I prefer them. And I swapped out the V-Mod II pickups for a set of Kinman Gen 3 Magnum Opus '59.  The V-Mods were ok, but as my Luthier said, they don't compare to the pickups on my other Strats. OMG ... They do now. 

How do you compare pickups when one set is incomparable? 

The detail of the Kinman Magnum Opus 59 pickups is something else .. and when they say noiseless ... they mean noiseless (absolute Zero-Hum, I've heard noiseless before but this is eiry). 

Also, Kinman is also the only company that makes narrow and intermediate spaced magnets in Strat pickups that align with Fender's modern narrow-spaced bridge.  It's so good to see the strings properly aligning with the pickup magnets now, and I've got my top E string back.  To make it work properly Kinman invented CSCTechnology (coil spread compensation technology) that prevents the losses of dynamic and sonic performance when magnets are spaced closer together.  I am so so happy with the result.

The intention was to bring the Pro II up to the level of my other four Strats. Now it is by far the best sounding Strat I have !!

With a lower capacitance lead on the '59 (200pf) the top end attack was identical to the Fender CS54. But then the CS54’s overall sounded just a bit thin compared to the '59, the latter having a slightly more solid upper mid-range, with a nice chime particularly noticeable on the middle pickup (but still obvious on all 3).  Bloody nice actually!  By contrast, with the low cap cable, the CS54’s sounded quite harsh and brittle. I certainly won’t be putting the Fenders back in. PR

 

ED: FYI Paul Rossiter is one of Hank Marvins inner circle.  He is the brain and genius behind the amazing TVS Echo Units and he is a very fine guitar player too.  He played lead on the Play List of 10 vintage Shadows Tunes on the Magnum Opus '59 page. 

I am hugely impressed with the Magnum opus for the Hank Marvin sound.  These are really super pickups for the Hank sound and much more.