What's wrong with regular single coils?

The Secret of my AVn Pickups. (AVn = Authentic Vintage noiseless)

What's wrong with regular single coils? Apart from the obvious 60Hz hum there is a lot of scope for improvement. Most Fender genre pickups use regular Alnico-5 rod magnets which have too much magnetism that pulls on the strings causing pitch warble, loss of sustain and string crash (fret rattle / string buzzing). They also have a scooped midrange that detracts from definition, it's nice on recordings BUT in most modern loud live bands the sound of the guitar gets lost in the clatter of the cymbals and snare, quite simply the audience can't distinguish the lead guitar sound even when it's ear shatteringly loud. Another annoyance is they invariably use tall G pole magnets designed for wound G strings used prior to the late 1960's, causing modern non-wound G strings to sound out too loud and overpowering (dominating) the other strings. Now try to imagine your sound without these annoying problems.


I've been a pickup designer/maker for many years and after 16 years of exhausting research and development (ongoing) I invented pickups for Stratocaster*, Telecaster* and similar guitars (using 6 Alnico rod magnets) that sound and look like the 1950's originals but have No Hum, and they work with your original 250K pots.

Personally I love regular single-coils but if 60Hz hum and Strat-itis are drivng you nuts I reckon you'll never go back to regular single-coils again after trying my Hx-Series.

Strat* and Tele guitars* respond so incredibly well to picking, plucking, scraping, pinching, biting and tapping the strings because of a thing we pickup engineers call sensitivity or dynamic range which is another way of saying expansion, attack or air....the notes just explode effortlessly when picked. Unfortunately, single coils also produce hum and when you try to kill the hum by conventional means (regular Stacks) you get compression. Compression is the opposite of expansion and is the arch enemy of single-coil sound because it kills the very sound and feel and other qualities we love most about Strat* and Tele* pickups. Compression is when you feel you have to push the notes out and the pickup doesn't track properly when picking fast, it feels like it's slowing you down and makes you stumble over the fretboard.

Most noiseless single-pole pickups suffer badly from compression and that's why so many players refuse to use them. They refuse to compromise the feel and sound of their pickups, even for the benefits of hum free operation. If my pickups didn't have this problem under control I'd recommend using a higher value volume control pot such as 500K or 1Meg to try to reduce compression, but that would just create new problems, and the pickups just wouldn't sound and feel the way we expect Strat* and Tele* pickups to.

I chose to design my AVn pickups with Alnico magnets for one very good reason. Alnico magnets add what I term *tonal complexity* . These are noticeable nuances (generated by the Alnico material itself) that contribute a distinctive flavour and harmonic richness to the tone and help deliver the sound to the listener with high definition and clarity through the clatter of cymbals and whatever else is going on in the band. Ceramic or Samarium Cobalt magnets coupled with steel pole pieces sound almost Hi-Fi and lack the unique sonic complexity of Alnico.

AVn = A uthentic V intage noiseless.

My AVn guitar pickups have the tracking ability, expansion, expression and air (wide dynamic range, rapid attack, presence, bite, sensitivity and resonance) as well as the genuine Alnico tone of the genuine single-coil originals, BUT they have no 60Hz hum. A lot of folks have been saying that there is only ONE brand of guitar pickup in this class that has proven itself to have beaten the compression problem........ Kinman AVn.

I've found ways of achieving all this using the much revered Alnico-5 rod magnets and without using batteries and active electronics. It took years of dedicated research to duplicate the electrical specifications, appearance and sacred vintage tone of the great old Fender pickups while eliminating that terrible hum, buzz and frequency warbling (Strat-itis) that have cursed these otherwise wonderful pickups from the beginning. This is the breakthrough that has eluded pickup designers since the 1950's! There's no two ways about it, these pickups sound great. The sweet vintage tone is stunning and the silence is deafening. You can hear all this for yourself in just the few minutes it takes to change pickups. If you believe your current pickups sound good then you are in for a delightful surprise when you hear mine.

*Stratocaster, *Strat, *Telecaster and *Tele are trade marks of Fender Musical Instrument Corp. Kinman Guitar Electrix is not associated with Fender but they kindly consent to me referring to their marks. Fender have asked me to tell you that they do not endorse Kinman products (understandably :)