It is currently Mon Mar 16, 2020 9:03 pm

All times are UTC - 7 hours



Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 2 posts ] 
Author Message
Post subject: GFS pickups
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 3:56 pm
Offline
Hobbyist
Hobbyist

Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2010 2:08 pm
Posts: 37
Has anyone tried the GFS pickups?? If so, how are they?


Top
Profile
Fender Play Winter Sale 2020
Post subject: Re: GFS pickups
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:41 am
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:12 pm
Posts: 6355
Location: Albemarle, NC
If you have a broken pickup, or one you want rewound to your specs, another alternative would be to contact brandonwoundpickups.com who will repair or rewind a pickup to your specs for $25 per coil. This is far less than any other shop I know of in the US. They will also build brand new bass pickups to your specs from scratch by quote for less than any other custom pickup maker in the USA. Their prices are low because they are a newer shop out to make a name.

GFS is the "house" brand name for guitarfetish.com pickups. Guitar Fetish sells extremely inexpensive guitar and bass parts (P bodies and necks go for under $50 each) and their pickups are priced at about half of a Duncan. They also sell finished 6 string guitars but no finished basses, which should make one wonder how serious they are about bass in the first place. You can buy a guitarfetish.com P-Bass KIT including everything to assemble a P-Bass copy for about $100.

Their pickups, as all their other house brand parts, are made in Asia by the low bidder. I read that at one time GFS guitar pickups were being made in Korea at the same plant where the Kent Armstrong pickups were made for many years, but I'm not sure whether or not they are actually made in Korea. Guitar Fetish doesn't state the origin of any of their parts. I would think any stock Fender pickup, even the CIJ's, would have better quality materials and workmanship. The GFS pups will be on par with other Asia made pickups.

GFS offers a severely "overwound" P-Bass pickup which is wound to 16K. I am not a proponent of overwound bass pickups. Overwinding makes pickups louder at the expense of upper mids which are simply gone and no amount of EQ tweaking will restore them. Therefore an overwound pickup is far less versatile tonewise. A standard P-Bass wind to between 10 & 11K is far more versatile. This GFS overwound one is 50 to 60% overwound! Your amp has a volume control, so use it if you want to be louder instead of restricting your tonal options by overwinding a bass pickup so severely. If you just have to try overwinding remember the more overwound the less versatile it will be. If you want more tonal options underwind by 3% to 5%.

If all you need is a cheap replacement pickup for a cheap project bass then the GFS pups are fairly cheap and it would be logical to try one in that case. As to how good they are, they can not possibly be up to the quality of Seymour Duncan or original Fender in materials or workmanship. If you want really cheap, then GuitarPartsResource.com has economy pickups for one-third less than the GFS and they are likely very similar if not the exact same pickups.

Good luck with your project.


Top
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 2 posts ] 

All times are UTC - 7 hours

Fender Play Winter Sale 2020

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: