$550 USD

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Bonza Massa '55 set - Zero-Hum

Sold only in a set of 3 direct from this site, not by dealers.

If you believe your boutique scatter-wound vintage Stratocaster* pickups are the finest vintage pickups money can buy .... think again!

Introducing our Bonza Massa '55 true Master Strat pickups.  Ripper, bwedy, 'bonza', bottler, grouse ..... all aussie slang words used to describe the most excellent.  Joe loves the sound of his "Bonnie" 1955 Strat and we think it's pretty grouse too and you'll be happy to know ours have identical tone.  Those genuine 1955 pickups and even Seymour Duncan's copies sound great, that is apart from the Strat-itis frequency warbling and string crash, both caused by excessively strong magnets, the horrible ice-pick, the overbearing G string, the flabby bottom end of the neck pickup (TCS) and the cur-sed hum ..... the under-pinning sound points the way to 50's Stratocaster perfection.  The thing is, vintage pickups were never perfected.  They remain the simple and crude device that Leo Invented way way back circa 1950, and they have too many flaws and shortcomings. 

Given those inherent flaws affords us a clue to imagine how the genuine '55 pickups can be improved.  Joe's preference for 1955 Strat sound strikes a chord with us and we decided to release our new 'Magnum Opus' Bonza Massa '55 set that don't have those flaws, but do have THAT '55 Strat sound.  Now you can buy his sound, along with all the magnificent improvements including Zero-Hum and low string pull magnets, perfect string-over-magnet alignment regardless of vintage or modern bridge and whole bunch of other desirable stuff developed by Kinman over the past 30 odd years.  Yes, perfection doesn't just happen over night, it's achieved one notch at a time over many years of persistent innovating and solving one problem at at time.

Countless artists spanning 70 years have hoped, wished and prayed for THAT sound, minus the awful hum.  After 30+ years experience, Kinman delivers .... not only that ageless sound and not only Zero-Hum, but a whole raft of other desirable improvements such as low magnetic string pull that minimizes fret crash and string rattle/buzz and allows longer natural sustain.  There are more desirable improvements.

The Gen-3 Kinman Magnum Opus is the new Gold Standard for Strat pickups.

And here's the proof, Joe proclaimed he loves Hank Marvin's playing so take a listen to a selection of Hank's 50's and 60's tunes played on the Magnum Opus '59.  Waddya rekon Joe?

One thing about our Magnum Opus series is the neck pickup in particular, does not exhibit TCS on strong upstrokes of the low wound strings (Torn Cone Syndrome).  Listen to TCS at 4:40 and again at 8:28 on this YouTube, we don't believe Joe has a whole lotta love for this momentary awful racket that lingers on in memory, tarnishing the rest of the piece, which our Bonza Masa '55 pickup sounds identical to except the nasties. 

NOTE: There are several significant differences between these Gen-3 and the Gen-2 models but both, with their remarkable 3D presence, make ordinary Strat pickups sound dark and less lively, yup, these Kinman's really are that good.

Read and listen to the full Magnum Opus story.

• The Kinman name says it all.  Chris Kinman has single handedly done more to improve Strat pickups than all the others put together and has been awarded 7 Patents with more coming along soon.  Come out of the dark ages with these technical and sonic Masterpieces.
   
• Synergy baseplate. All Magnum Opus models have a Violet 'Synergy' Gen-3 baseplate that allows hum-cancelling to be switched off as well as switching to Synergy mode.  Synergy is a non-noiseless mode that enhances the sound of the pickup in a general way, thus it has "extra magic".  It is a very noticeable change, but so too is the hum level more noticeable than non-noiseless mode.  Good only for clean room-volume playing.  We feel that Violet implies the electric vibrancy of the Magnum Opus.

• Signal chain requirements:  Any old cable won't do.  As with any pickup it's a good practice to use a low capacitance cable to get the maximum incredible performance of these pickups.

Now, more than ever,
Kinman Strat pickups produce pure musical energy
and re-confirms us as .....

The King of Noiseless and the Prince of Tone and Feel.

Technical & Application info:

Patents  5,668,520   6,103,986   8,791,351    Patent Pending

To cancel hum we added a sonically transparent 600 Ohm Hum Sensor coil to the bottom of the pickup which is designed with a low profile coil so it doesn’t make the pickup too tall.  This Hum Sensor is very efficient and allows us to use big wire and low turns count to minimize parasitic coil capacitance so there is no impact on the string signal as it passes through.  The Hum Sensor is so transparent it can be disconnected without causing any difference to the sound of the pickup (except it will have hum of course).  Additionally, the low profile Hum Sensing bobbin allows us to make a taller string sensor which in turn and in combination with a Patented magnetic invention along with our low capacitance magnetic shields, both made of transformer grade grain-oriented Silicon Steel, and our special semi-isotropic rod magnets, allows the pickup to produce non-aged sound.  That is ….. bright and sparkly with low-mid scoop just like the best 1950's Strat pickups. 

Footnote:  Transformer grade Silicon Steel is extremely troublesome to make our magnetic components with, it comes with a thin glass-like insulating coating that is almost impossible to remove.  Way back in 2003 we designed and constructed in-house a very special continuous feed machine that strips the coating off both sides and leaves the strip shiny and ready for laser cutting and the subsequent black-zinc non-conductive coating process.  We have recently added another 1 ton of Silicon steel to our 10 ton stock of various grades.  Yup, we never want to run out of this stuff so we buy up big.  Out stocks will last for 120 years.

Kinman, like no other noiseless Strat pickup, has broken through the formidable technical barriers and now you can compare 'Apples that hum' to 'Apples that don't hum'.  We believe the Magnum Opus is the most remarkable vintage pickup among a plethora of ordinary vintage pickups and so we give it vintage cloth covered Push-Back hookup wires, the only Kinman that has them.

Height adjustment:

With the 12th fret closed the all three pickup gaps between top of magnet and bottom of E-6th and E-1st should be 1.6mm to 2.2mm.  This is our experience and a good starting point but might need to be tempered somewhat for different amps, strings and guitar responses.

Mixing and matching with other Strat pickups: Most players will love the Magnum Opus in all 3 positions (bridge, middle and neck) to get nicely balanced authentic '50s vintage sounds from all 5 positions and this is the purpose of the Alchemy Series sets.  This yields absolutely authentic Knopfler-esque sound from positions 2 & 4.  For players who want a more powerful and thicker sounding bridge pickup the Magnum Opus '56 and Magnum Opus MV are slightly more robust and significantly louder than the Magnum Opus '59.  Ask for either one in the Additional Notes box on the delivery options page when ordering (no additional cost).

*Stratocaster and Strat are a Trade Marks of Fender Musical Instrument Corp.  Kinman is not connected to Fender.

** Alnico-K is a unique proprietary rod magnet developed by Kinman in 1985.  It has 40% less string pull than Alnico-5 so sustain is longer and there is much less clatter from string crash and no Strat-itis string warble.