$460 USD

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Perfect Vintage set means just that

Impersonator E56 Report Card  -  Impersonator MV Report Card

Genuine Vintage Strat pickups sound and feel great ... except for the bridge being too sharp and spikey and impossible to balance volume-wise with the neck and middle .  Ohhh and then of course there is the dreaded hum .... aaand that horrible string warble .... accompanied by the clutter of strings crashing into frets.  Fender pickups were never perfected, Leo found something that worked OK for the 1950's and it was cheap and easy to manufacture, so, he and his successors stuck with it until 1996 when Fender got serious about ridding their pickups of 60Hz mains hum.  The difficulty Fender face is that Chris Kinman owns the most, and the best high-value patents for hum cancelling and tone enhancing technology.

Our Impersonator E56 (enhanced 56) pickup is crisp, snappy, pristine, the real deal if authentic 50's Strat sound with it's brilliant highs is what you want ... minus the mains HUM .... as well as the nasty string warble and also the clutter of buzzing strings-into-fret crash thanks to our special lo strength Alnico magnets. The sounds are airy and with the top end glassiness that vintage enthusiasts crave and has a great instrumental twang all the way down to the open E-6th string.

Our unique Impersonator MV is the perfect vintage bridge pickup because it's softer attack eliminates the razor sharp trebles that vintage pickups are well known for and the midrange is rich in piano-mid-tones for a fantastic twang.  As well as producing higher output so it balances with the other two, it's trebles are outstanding and airy, the perfectly focused twang is like nothing you ever heard before, and the lows .... there's no other word for it, just PERFECT.

All 3 pickups also sustain extremely well and all 5 positions have Zero-Hum (no crude RWRP middle pickup needed here).  And of course positions 2 and 4 are absolute Knopfler-esque.

This Perfect Vintage set is living testimony to our claim that Kinman Gen-2 and Gen-3 Strat pickups are the new Gold Standard for Stratocaster pickups and it is also available in our Magnum Opus format.

Kinman is the King of Noiseless and the King of perfect 50's Stratocaster sound.

Signal chain benefits:  Any old cable won't do.  As with any passive pickup it's a good idea to use a low capacitance cable to get the maximum incredible performance of these pickups because excessive capacitance kills the highs and also the attack and the dynamic feel.

Some people will call these noiseless Stratocaster pickups but Kinman prefers to describe them correctly as Zero-Hum Stratocaster pickups.  That's because there are 2 types of noise, Hum which is cancelled in the pickup and Buzz which can only be minimized by shielding the wiring cavities (refer to >Technical >Perfect Guitar >Shielding for newer guitars
 

*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.
 

Technical & Application info:

Covers

• Standard Kinman Strat cover (without height extender bushings included). 
• Available in De-glossed '62 Relic, White, Black, Parchment, Ivory, Aged White.
• With or without Kinman logo.
• White covers can be tinted with food stains such as Coffee and Tea.  How to age Kinman Strat covers
• Generic covers will not fit Kinman Strat pickups. 

Connection means available

• Bare wires for soldering.
• Kinman connectors for plugging into any Kinman Goodbye-Soldering Harness.

Dimensions

• click for dimensions page

Cavity depth requirements

• 21mm prefered but 16mm is acceptable

Pot & Capacitor values

• Best with 250k Ohm (measured minimum) volume pot.  Less punch and more bright with 500k.
• Tone pot is usually the same value as the volume but for a little more top end brightness can be 500k, 1meg or preferably a No-Load.
• Stock pots can actually measure as low as 175k.  Pots in our Goodbye-Soldering Harness are guaranteed to measure no less that 250k.
• Normal tone cap value of 0.022uF, 63 ~ 100 volt Polyester (same as Orange Drop).  Smaller uF value lessen the severity of Treble cut, higher values increase it.
• The voltage rating of Caps is not important but 63 ~ 100 volt have thicker lead wires that result in a neater finish.

Magnet spreads we normally ship (ensures magnets align with the strings in each position)

• Narrow 49.5mm
• Intermediate 51mm
• Standard 52.5mm
• Option to specify your optimized magnet spreads of sets and singles in our 'After-Order Supplementary Questions' email we send you.

Magnet Staggers

• Normal improved Stagger to suit 7" ~ 14 inch uniform radius fretboards including USA Custom Guitar Compound 7-1/4" ~ 9-1/2
• Flat Stagger 14" ~ 20" for specific compound radius fretboards (Warmoth 10 ~ 16 inch and Post 2010 Fender Deluxe 9 ~ 14")
• Option to choose your magnet stagger for sets and singles in our 'After-Payment Supplementary Questions' email we send you.

Hook-up cable

• 2 conductor shielded is standard.
• Middle pickups, when supplied with a K9, TK4 or TK9 harness have 3 conductor shielded.
• 3 conductor option in Order.
• Custom lengths by request with Order.

Output Polarity: 

• in-phase with all other Kinman pickups
• in-phase with Gibson and Copy humbuckers
• opposite phase to Fender Strat
• Phase reversible (see Install Guide)

Mounting hardware included

• 2 Pan head mounting screws.
• 2 Silicon Rubber tube springs.

We highly recommend consulting the Install Guide in the Technical section even if you think you know it all.  Kinmans' require some specialized knowledge and sometimes there is updated info.  There is also a handy wiring diagram available.

We also highly recommend consulting the Adjust & Set-up page in the Technical section so you get the best out of your Kinman pickups.