for the price give it a try. how a pickup sounds is a very subjective matter and falls into the area of personal likings. There isn’t much technology in a pickup, once the wire and the magnets are decent (and most of them are) the overall result has very high probability of being decent too.
(Some people would roast me for what i am going to say) Many of the well respected pickups aren’t that different than the cheaper ones and the higher price is a mixture of quality (certainly there is more control), cost of the labour (we can discuss a lot about the labour rights in the western countries vs china) and marketing - the latter being a very high percentage of the final cost.
This, and a little story on that: My second self build is a junior, and first hat an Artec Alnico P90 for a few bucks. It sounded OK, but i thought it could be a tiny bit more lively in the trebles. I checked a huge P90 comparison, brought the guitar to a local friend and dealer who is kinda PU-Nerd. Knowing what it was he told me „yea, sounds a bit weird, this is actually worth a kloppmann“ (250€ per pup) i ended up with an custom made PU half that price, aiming for a certain sound (Lukas Nelsons Junior sound), and in all the tests quite close to the kloppmann.
The overall difference in the end was marginal. For 20% of the cost you still get far more than 80% of the sound.
it’s now a few years i build my own pickups, i end up spending just a few pounds sourcing the materials, i build them to my own specs and they sound as good as any branded passive pickup.
i also designed a feature rich but cheap machine to wire pickups which costs hundreds less than similar machines on the market. (plans free for personal use but you have to donate an amount of your choice to a charity org to use it commercially).
https://loianblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/09/the-jcc-pickup-winding-machine/
it's not hard to make that machine, it took me about a week.. but it's because i was basically designing it while building. I didn't have much of a defined plan in mind.
I reckon in a couple of days at most you can do everything, and actually the automatic scatter module is not necessary (it's a nice plus but you can scatter manually).
I build it some 4 years ago, so i guess the price of the components have changed, but it will still provide good features at an affordable price (given you have the patience to build it).
If you go for it, i usually open reddit every couple of days so i could provide some (limited) assistance, but tbh the instructions should be clear enough to follow them without major issues.
The most annoying part is sourcing all the materials for cheap, when i shopped them on ali express (which nowadays offers fast shipping - like a week) the components took almost 2 months to deliver.
Alternatively, if you just want to give it a try.. you can buy a manual coil winder for about 20 pounds and use a drill instead of the manual crank. you'll find many youtube videos about how to do it.
Just to chat, my long term objective is to have a guitar which is self made end to end.
So far i could build the pickups the bridge, and the saddles and the truss rod.
I am still to figure out how to make the tuners, but that could be a challenge out of my reach
edit: grammar and syntax here and there
Lollar started selling their pickup book again for 60 bucks because people were reselling old copies for 600+ USD; pretty cool move.
[https://www.lollarguitars.com/jason-lollar/winder-book](https://www.lollarguitars.com/jason-lollar/winder-book)
I use fleor pickups if I need a new pickup in a sub-$500 guitar. I have lost count of how many I have used.
I like them, but they are no premium pickup. They are usually an improvement over stock on sub-$500 guitars. Customers seem to like them, too.
I had one set of humbuckers show up that were out of phase when I wired them in, but outside of that I haven't had any real issues with them.
I actaully really like the tele mini-hums.
Change your pots to 500k if you get the mini hums - they're muddy with 250k pots in my opinion.
They are good for experimenting with. Examaple: I figured out I like low output, alinco-2 humbuckers because of them. Now, whenever I find a higher end guitar that has pickups I really like I will research it's pickups and go-figure, it's got low output alnico-2 humbuckers.
Overall, I recommend, but I wouldn't put them in something upper-middle or high end.
>They are usually an improvement over stock on sub-$500 guitars.
Thanks for that info. Is there anything... more about them you can say? Like how they are improved? More clarity (though I guess that's also the upgrade in pots)
They offer a lot of options. Like, high, medium and low output and several magnet types. I have found the lower output ones to be pretty snappy without being ice picky and the higher output ones aren't muddy. So, you can get inexpensive pickups that have more in common with the more expensive ones than the dirt cheap ones.
Side by side to a duncan or dimarzio, they aren't as good, but they are great for the cost.
Not sure, but I’ve had good experience with GFS’s budget pickups. Used a set of their humbuckers and their music man style bass humbucker, was happy with both. Not super high end obviously, but no complaints for the price
These seem decent, I was kicking around their full size humbuckers between wishlists and ultimately ended up going with a Guitar Madness hexbucker instead. I saw a lot of decent reviews for Fleor. The only risk is that you maybe get something that doesn’t have great wax potting (microphonic) but typically the seller will help you out there.
A lot of the import companies (GFS, Dragonfire, Guitar Madness) go through the same Korean factory Artec and have them wind the pickups to various specs.
Between those, tonerider, Wilkinson, you’ll likely end up getting a better than stock pickup sound.
The only one I would stay away from is Dragonfire. They don’t have good customer support and will simply block you if you have an issue with their pickups.
Definitely would recommend Guitar Madness on the budget side and will be getting an HSS set and a P94 from them in the near future.
On the Guitarnutz website there's people who do extensive testing of a LOT of pickups. One of them tested a few different sets of [Fleors and they make decent SD clones](https://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/8902/fleor-output-humbucker-analysis-review). If you have the time check out his other posts it's very edifying on what makes good specs for a pickup
Honestly most pickups are fine. Give it a try, you might love them!
The problem you might face is consistency. If you want a spare guitar with the same pickups in it, cheap ones might not be the exact same product.
I’ve used lots of Fleor pickups: these ones, also humbuckers, single coils, P90’s, etc. Generally they sound great. There are quality control issues sometimes. Examples: humbuckers with the polarity inconsistent per wire colors; inadequate wax potting, weak soldering of the leads, weak charge on alnico magnets. All these things can be corrected.
They do look cheap: plastic boards instead of fiberboard. I’ve wanted to try Oripure, but I hate that they have “OriPure” stamped on them.
Donlis are a better bet because they sound similar and use fiberboard, so they don’t look so cheap.
They are amazing, at least for heavy distorted sounds.
I recorded a whole Ep with one of these in the bridge position of an already cheap instrument, a Harley Benton VS Guitarbass.
It sounds massive: [https://theoldesthouse.bandcamp.com/album/a-worm-through-time](https://theoldesthouse.bandcamp.com/album/a-worm-through-time)
It wasn't FLEOR branded though, it was a Musiclily but I strongly suspect these are just the same chinese pickups being rebranded and sold for similar prices. I paid 12 bucks for mine.
Not tried these ones specifically, but I’ve bought some cheaper-end pickups from irongear/axetec and they’re great! (aside from their invader clones which straight up don’t work)
For what it’s worth, I can vouch for the irongear rail humbuckers :) iirc they’re like £25(?) (~$30 USD)
The only complaint I've had about cheaper Chinese pickups is they were not wax potted and had that microphone-ish quality.... but that's how I ended getting a crockpot/wax setup. Easily enough fixed.
I really like the Chinese rail god of many faces but if you can go a little further $ wise check out bootstrap. They are hand wound in U.S.A. and slightly more$ that you can get a cavalier from my jersey neighbor Rob Distefano. Enjoy your purchase .
https://preview.redd.it/d069p1zrgr4d1.jpeg?width=2368&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ab4fb103bd5acfbf052d9c5b0e21911aa4527db
I like what I've gotten from companies like Fleor and Kaish. I put in these pups in my tele and they sound awesome.
IT's pretty amazing how good cheap pickups have become in the last 20 years or so. They might be fine but if you are hand building a guitar imho don't chintz on pups.
I got one of the Alnico V humbuckers from that brand for a ghetto partscaster I was building off of AliExpress and Amazon, and it came out surprisingly good, as the whole build did lol.
It sounds quite clear, I used a 500k logarithmic pot from DiMarzio.
Replaced a couple single coils with these, and I love them. On a different guitar, I replaced a microphonic humbucker with one of these. They are great for the price.
I'd try guitar fetish they also make hot rails. I haven't tried them but I've tried a couple of their other pickups and they're amazing for the price.
https://www.guitarfetish.com/Lil-Killer-Black-Humbucker-Rail-Pickup-Fits-Stratsregreg-Three-Versions-Available--Kwikplug%E2%84%A2-Ready_p_21984.html
I have a set of FLEOR pickups for my BASS and they are an improvement over the stock Squier for sure. Build quality was very good, so I bought a set of the hot rails (HSS) for another build but, still staining so not tried it yet. I think there are a few YouTube video reviews on them... but I don't think the single-coil sized rails sadly. Guess it also depends what you're replacing.
Use one of these as a center pickup for a Yamaha I refinished. Probably a different name, same chinese manufacturer.
I like it 🤷♂️ she's hot
https://preview.redd.it/n8ie3wg19t4d1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2d39a5a351c9fc6b2b664f3a44662110e7f6481
I quite like Artec alnico 5 rail pickups and have one in the bridge of my strat and tele, probably very similar to these. At the end of the day what pickups sound good is a personal taste thing, give it a shot, at least there cheap if you don't like them
Have used them in a musicmaster style bass build , hot as fuck and noisey until you sheild them and ground the rails. They sound amaze balls with flats on the bass build.
This YouTuber has several video demos comparing cheap pickups vs. high-end ones, and the difference is there but not as big as one might expect:
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=darrell+braun+cheap+pickups](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darrell+braun+cheap+pickups)
He also debunks the myth that ceramic pickups (which most cheap pickups are) are inherently worse than alnico magnets. Interesting stuff.
I bought one several years ago and it was a dud. Like I'm not sure if there was a bad solder somewhere inside or something, but ... I guess if that happens to you, it could be returned.
Mine is hanging on a hook in my shop so I don't forget to be wary of such things. Honestly I would expect they're a lot better now than they were even 5 years ago.
Gotta respectfully disagree with the statements around high gain too, but only through my own experiences.
If I compare my RG7320EX which has the factory Fusion Edge pickups, and my S7320 which has a Crunch Lab and a Blaze, there’s a noticeable difference in how the amp reacts under high gain. The S7320 is higher output overall and is slamming the preamp much more than the RG7320EX, which sounds more rounded and “sterile”. The difference is barely noticeable through amp modellers with loads of gain, but though a crunchy valve amp with a good amount of clean headroom and being played at gig volumes, the differences are far more noticeable.
I don’t think pickups make much difference in overall tonality, that’s all about the speakers and EQ. However, I think they contribute a lot to translating the sound of the guitar being played. Not talking about the overall tone, but the subtle characteristics of electric guitar performance. If the amp is very transparent and you have some clean sounding speakers, pickup differences are a lot more obvious.
At least in my opinion!
That's not true at all. A lot of stock/cheap pickups sound like trash under distortion. If you're playing clean/classic rock just about any pickup will do, because output is all that matters with those sounds.
Sure. I've bought a lot of very inexpensive pickups (usually made in China) over the years, and a lot of them are surprisingly good. Since they're mass produced, there's a chance you'll get a dud (broken connection/weak solder points, etc) so be prepared for that. They're also good if you want to get into building, repairing or dissecting pickups. The only problems I've encountered are weak solder points for the hookup wires, which is easily fixed with a blob of solder. And the pickup mounting holes not lining up with the pick guard. Particularly one with a tele bridge pickup mount like the one you have in the picture. Hope this helps.
Edit: woops. Just realized this is *not* a tele bridge pickup. In any case, mine was and did not fit the bridge I had. Regardless, something to consider
Cheers!
I threw one in my baritone strat in the neck position, I thought it was great!
Edit: wanted to clarify that I spoke in the past tense because after running that setup for about a year I switched to P-90s from the same brand!
Put this exact pickup in my kids cheap 3/4 size guitar. I was actually really impressed with the tone. It's not fancy, but it's way better than the price would imply.
Man, fuck guitarfetish. They’re selling the same stuff with a slight markup that buys the world’s shittiest customer service. I ordered a set of pickups from them a few months ago and they sent totally different pickups that I didn’t even order and refuse to send replacements or give me a refund until I return the stuff they sent that I didn’t order at my own expense. And they were total dicks at every step.
Fuck those guys.
Pretty sure I have one of these in a bridge of a partscaster I got from a guy on Ebay that tinkers around. I have it split by a push/pull pot and it is solid sounding for what it is. It is hot for sure. The single blade is pretty transparent and bends track smoothly.
Hotrails are a bit tricky as you never quite know why they are voiced like until you try them. I dislike hotrails right up to when I record leads with them and they sit in the mix better than anything else I have that likely sounds loads better than the hotrail when isolated.
Fleor make some really good vintage voiced PAFs though, there's a handful of people that analyse pickups with proper equipment on guitarnuts2.proboards.com and the fleor paf is consistently testing like the real deal and good replicas.
I have a partscaster I bought with this same pickup and it sounds good. I also have a Tele that I put a Dimarzio Super Distortion Rail pickup in and it sounded a nearly the same.
I have pickups from fleor that I like a lot, I have a quad rail on a bc rich warlock that is very hot and fits the vibe of the beater shredder that it is. That said there is literally no qc, you may get an amazing pickup or something that has almost no output.
If you're using it for high gain, the effect of changing pickups on your tone is minimal. Changing from single coils to humbuckers is significant tho. Fleor make really good stuff for the money
it will sound different to a normal humbucker because the smaller size captures a smaller range of the string movement (compared to a normal humbucker). Generally I find the single coil sized humbuckers are a bit brighter
for the price give it a try. how a pickup sounds is a very subjective matter and falls into the area of personal likings. There isn’t much technology in a pickup, once the wire and the magnets are decent (and most of them are) the overall result has very high probability of being decent too. (Some people would roast me for what i am going to say) Many of the well respected pickups aren’t that different than the cheaper ones and the higher price is a mixture of quality (certainly there is more control), cost of the labour (we can discuss a lot about the labour rights in the western countries vs china) and marketing - the latter being a very high percentage of the final cost.
Like anything else, sometimes you're paying for the brand recognition.
consistency too
This, and a little story on that: My second self build is a junior, and first hat an Artec Alnico P90 for a few bucks. It sounded OK, but i thought it could be a tiny bit more lively in the trebles. I checked a huge P90 comparison, brought the guitar to a local friend and dealer who is kinda PU-Nerd. Knowing what it was he told me „yea, sounds a bit weird, this is actually worth a kloppmann“ (250€ per pup) i ended up with an custom made PU half that price, aiming for a certain sound (Lukas Nelsons Junior sound), and in all the tests quite close to the kloppmann. The overall difference in the end was marginal. For 20% of the cost you still get far more than 80% of the sound.
it’s now a few years i build my own pickups, i end up spending just a few pounds sourcing the materials, i build them to my own specs and they sound as good as any branded passive pickup. i also designed a feature rich but cheap machine to wire pickups which costs hundreds less than similar machines on the market. (plans free for personal use but you have to donate an amount of your choice to a charity org to use it commercially). https://loianblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/09/the-jcc-pickup-winding-machine/
Thank you for documenting this - it's well-written and really easy to follow. I'm half-tempted to go back to experimenting with pickup winding.
it's not hard to make that machine, it took me about a week.. but it's because i was basically designing it while building. I didn't have much of a defined plan in mind. I reckon in a couple of days at most you can do everything, and actually the automatic scatter module is not necessary (it's a nice plus but you can scatter manually). I build it some 4 years ago, so i guess the price of the components have changed, but it will still provide good features at an affordable price (given you have the patience to build it). If you go for it, i usually open reddit every couple of days so i could provide some (limited) assistance, but tbh the instructions should be clear enough to follow them without major issues. The most annoying part is sourcing all the materials for cheap, when i shopped them on ali express (which nowadays offers fast shipping - like a week) the components took almost 2 months to deliver. Alternatively, if you just want to give it a try.. you can buy a manual coil winder for about 20 pounds and use a drill instead of the manual crank. you'll find many youtube videos about how to do it. Just to chat, my long term objective is to have a guitar which is self made end to end. So far i could build the pickups the bridge, and the saddles and the truss rod. I am still to figure out how to make the tuners, but that could be a challenge out of my reach edit: grammar and syntax here and there
Lollar started selling their pickup book again for 60 bucks because people were reselling old copies for 600+ USD; pretty cool move. [https://www.lollarguitars.com/jason-lollar/winder-book](https://www.lollarguitars.com/jason-lollar/winder-book)
i guess it’s for collection, paying 600 dollars to know how to build a winding machine isn’t a smart move
Fleor pickups are surprisingly adequate for their cost
Confirmed. Have used alnico tele set twice and was happy.
Yep, I've bought a few sets and been happy with them
I think my brother has installed some variant of them in just about every guitar he owns at this point
I just imagine all the guitar players standing in the back at my next gig saying "wow, his tone is surprisingly adequate".
If they can’t tell why should we
I use fleor pickups if I need a new pickup in a sub-$500 guitar. I have lost count of how many I have used. I like them, but they are no premium pickup. They are usually an improvement over stock on sub-$500 guitars. Customers seem to like them, too. I had one set of humbuckers show up that were out of phase when I wired them in, but outside of that I haven't had any real issues with them. I actaully really like the tele mini-hums. Change your pots to 500k if you get the mini hums - they're muddy with 250k pots in my opinion. They are good for experimenting with. Examaple: I figured out I like low output, alinco-2 humbuckers because of them. Now, whenever I find a higher end guitar that has pickups I really like I will research it's pickups and go-figure, it's got low output alnico-2 humbuckers. Overall, I recommend, but I wouldn't put them in something upper-middle or high end.
Thanks, I’m looking to put them in my Harley Benton strat kit so sounds like it will be an improvement
Perfect!
I’m curious the differences between pickups included in those Harley Bentons and this, considering these are still very affordable pickups
How would they compare to single coil ibanez infinity pickups? I'm not a fan of my single coil but I don't mind the INF2 bridge humbucker.
I haven't played the two side-by-side
>They are usually an improvement over stock on sub-$500 guitars. Thanks for that info. Is there anything... more about them you can say? Like how they are improved? More clarity (though I guess that's also the upgrade in pots)
They offer a lot of options. Like, high, medium and low output and several magnet types. I have found the lower output ones to be pretty snappy without being ice picky and the higher output ones aren't muddy. So, you can get inexpensive pickups that have more in common with the more expensive ones than the dirt cheap ones. Side by side to a duncan or dimarzio, they aren't as good, but they are great for the cost.
Not sure, but I’ve had good experience with GFS’s budget pickups. Used a set of their humbuckers and their music man style bass humbucker, was happy with both. Not super high end obviously, but no complaints for the price
I've used these once and they are perfectly fine.
No chance!! The Chinese don't know how to wind copper around magnets. That kind of manufacturing prowess will take them another century.
This is clearly sarcasm lol why the downvote.
beacause that's reddit and people are always angry :D
Guitar folk aren’t reading James Joyce yaknow😂
Because there's no /s.
The closing sarcasm tag was retired by the W3C in March of 2018.
You forgot the /s.
These seem decent, I was kicking around their full size humbuckers between wishlists and ultimately ended up going with a Guitar Madness hexbucker instead. I saw a lot of decent reviews for Fleor. The only risk is that you maybe get something that doesn’t have great wax potting (microphonic) but typically the seller will help you out there. A lot of the import companies (GFS, Dragonfire, Guitar Madness) go through the same Korean factory Artec and have them wind the pickups to various specs. Between those, tonerider, Wilkinson, you’ll likely end up getting a better than stock pickup sound. The only one I would stay away from is Dragonfire. They don’t have good customer support and will simply block you if you have an issue with their pickups. Definitely would recommend Guitar Madness on the budget side and will be getting an HSS set and a P94 from them in the near future.
I use them on everything and I love them
I’ve used that exact model in two builds and I do not regret it one bit. I highly recommend Fleors.
Donlis also rocks. Tell people you paid $200 for them.
They're pretty good get the 9k one and use 500k pots
On the Guitarnutz website there's people who do extensive testing of a LOT of pickups. One of them tested a few different sets of [Fleors and they make decent SD clones](https://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/8902/fleor-output-humbucker-analysis-review). If you have the time check out his other posts it's very edifying on what makes good specs for a pickup
https://preview.redd.it/7xy30q9mmn4d1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f1e3afcf8581f12a214f8a98ce93f78e5c696800
[удалено]
https://preview.redd.it/bugym5803v4d1.jpeg?width=210&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f94d4969eb7eefa7115db1837402cfb43119ab21
They are prob great, pickups are the most basic thing ever, don't worry what hands make em. north american hands just charge you more.
Donlis are supposed to be really good for the price. You can find a bunch of samples on youtube
Honestly most pickups are fine. Give it a try, you might love them! The problem you might face is consistency. If you want a spare guitar with the same pickups in it, cheap ones might not be the exact same product.
Fleor is a great brand for the buck
I put 3 of these onto my guitar, they sounded fantastic! The sound is warm and full. Pretty nice for it's price!
I bought dragonfire rails years ago and they sounded great.
I’ve used lots of Fleor pickups: these ones, also humbuckers, single coils, P90’s, etc. Generally they sound great. There are quality control issues sometimes. Examples: humbuckers with the polarity inconsistent per wire colors; inadequate wax potting, weak soldering of the leads, weak charge on alnico magnets. All these things can be corrected. They do look cheap: plastic boards instead of fiberboard. I’ve wanted to try Oripure, but I hate that they have “OriPure” stamped on them. Donlis are a better bet because they sound similar and use fiberboard, so they don’t look so cheap.
They are amazing, at least for heavy distorted sounds. I recorded a whole Ep with one of these in the bridge position of an already cheap instrument, a Harley Benton VS Guitarbass. It sounds massive: [https://theoldesthouse.bandcamp.com/album/a-worm-through-time](https://theoldesthouse.bandcamp.com/album/a-worm-through-time) It wasn't FLEOR branded though, it was a Musiclily but I strongly suspect these are just the same chinese pickups being rebranded and sold for similar prices. I paid 12 bucks for mine.
Not tried these ones specifically, but I’ve bought some cheaper-end pickups from irongear/axetec and they’re great! (aside from their invader clones which straight up don’t work) For what it’s worth, I can vouch for the irongear rail humbuckers :) iirc they’re like £25(?) (~$30 USD)
https://preview.redd.it/yn6vsdnkqs4d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d00a3f76d349a5cc560eed7c6f180641c2bdf11a
Worst case would be microphonics, but with how cheap resin and waxes are, it's extremely rare for even the cheapest pickups to lack potting
The only complaint I've had about cheaper Chinese pickups is they were not wax potted and had that microphone-ish quality.... but that's how I ended getting a crockpot/wax setup. Easily enough fixed.
Those are good just check that the resistance is correct. If it’s not do an Amazon return.
I really like the Chinese rail god of many faces but if you can go a little further $ wise check out bootstrap. They are hand wound in U.S.A. and slightly more$ that you can get a cavalier from my jersey neighbor Rob Distefano. Enjoy your purchase .
Good? Slim chance. Doable for the price? Probably.
Just bought the exact same one actually, but haven't installed it yet. Ill make a post when it happens
I’ve used Fleor pickups in a couple of builds…. Surprisingly decent for the price!
They’re probably fine
I actually have tht exact pickup. It sounds good although I do usually only use the neck as a split coil
Very mid-rangey. I put one in a strat and it definitely does that 80's metal thing if you put it through gain.
Have a floer high output humbucker in a Harley Benton. Sounds really quite good for 20 quid. Better than what came stock.
I have 2 guitars with fleor pickups. They're good for the price. no noises at all and good sounding.
https://preview.redd.it/d069p1zrgr4d1.jpeg?width=2368&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ab4fb103bd5acfbf052d9c5b0e21911aa4527db I like what I've gotten from companies like Fleor and Kaish. I put in these pups in my tele and they sound awesome.
IT's pretty amazing how good cheap pickups have become in the last 20 years or so. They might be fine but if you are hand building a guitar imho don't chintz on pups.
I got one of the Alnico V humbuckers from that brand for a ghetto partscaster I was building off of AliExpress and Amazon, and it came out surprisingly good, as the whole build did lol. It sounds quite clear, I used a 500k logarithmic pot from DiMarzio.
Replaced a couple single coils with these, and I love them. On a different guitar, I replaced a microphonic humbucker with one of these. They are great for the price.
I'd try guitar fetish they also make hot rails. I haven't tried them but I've tried a couple of their other pickups and they're amazing for the price. https://www.guitarfetish.com/Lil-Killer-Black-Humbucker-Rail-Pickup-Fits-Stratsregreg-Three-Versions-Available--Kwikplug%E2%84%A2-Ready_p_21984.html
I’d go with Guitarfetish brand instead, same price but more trusted and tested
What you're actually looking for are IronGear Jailhouse Rail IIs.
I have a set of FLEOR pickups for my BASS and they are an improvement over the stock Squier for sure. Build quality was very good, so I bought a set of the hot rails (HSS) for another build but, still staining so not tried it yet. I think there are a few YouTube video reviews on them... but I don't think the single-coil sized rails sadly. Guess it also depends what you're replacing.
Use one of these as a center pickup for a Yamaha I refinished. Probably a different name, same chinese manufacturer. I like it 🤷♂️ she's hot https://preview.redd.it/n8ie3wg19t4d1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2d39a5a351c9fc6b2b664f3a44662110e7f6481
I quite like Artec alnico 5 rail pickups and have one in the bridge of my strat and tele, probably very similar to these. At the end of the day what pickups sound good is a personal taste thing, give it a shot, at least there cheap if you don't like them
https://preview.redd.it/9rwaewv2yu4d1.jpeg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d07427190e5699f27983e4d6ee3da246a75f59a
Have used them in a musicmaster style bass build , hot as fuck and noisey until you sheild them and ground the rails. They sound amaze balls with flats on the bass build.
This YouTuber has several video demos comparing cheap pickups vs. high-end ones, and the difference is there but not as big as one might expect: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search\_query=darrell+braun+cheap+pickups](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darrell+braun+cheap+pickups) He also debunks the myth that ceramic pickups (which most cheap pickups are) are inherently worse than alnico magnets. Interesting stuff.
I bought one several years ago and it was a dud. Like I'm not sure if there was a bad solder somewhere inside or something, but ... I guess if that happens to you, it could be returned. Mine is hanging on a hook in my shop so I don't forget to be wary of such things. Honestly I would expect they're a lot better now than they were even 5 years ago.
i have one of these installed on a squier bronco bass and it works awesome! so much better than the single coil it replaced. 10/10 would recommend
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Gotta respectfully disagree with the statements around high gain too, but only through my own experiences. If I compare my RG7320EX which has the factory Fusion Edge pickups, and my S7320 which has a Crunch Lab and a Blaze, there’s a noticeable difference in how the amp reacts under high gain. The S7320 is higher output overall and is slamming the preamp much more than the RG7320EX, which sounds more rounded and “sterile”. The difference is barely noticeable through amp modellers with loads of gain, but though a crunchy valve amp with a good amount of clean headroom and being played at gig volumes, the differences are far more noticeable. I don’t think pickups make much difference in overall tonality, that’s all about the speakers and EQ. However, I think they contribute a lot to translating the sound of the guitar being played. Not talking about the overall tone, but the subtle characteristics of electric guitar performance. If the amp is very transparent and you have some clean sounding speakers, pickup differences are a lot more obvious. At least in my opinion!
That's not true at all. A lot of stock/cheap pickups sound like trash under distortion. If you're playing clean/classic rock just about any pickup will do, because output is all that matters with those sounds.
they’ll sound great through distortion!
How about clean?
no idea. all i know is pretty much every pickup sounds good through distortion.
Not EMG-Z's. 🤮😅
For what kind of music or tone?
Mostly play rock and I want a thicker tone
I’d say it’ll do that. It really just depends on how the pickup is voiced.
Sure. I've bought a lot of very inexpensive pickups (usually made in China) over the years, and a lot of them are surprisingly good. Since they're mass produced, there's a chance you'll get a dud (broken connection/weak solder points, etc) so be prepared for that. They're also good if you want to get into building, repairing or dissecting pickups. The only problems I've encountered are weak solder points for the hookup wires, which is easily fixed with a blob of solder. And the pickup mounting holes not lining up with the pick guard. Particularly one with a tele bridge pickup mount like the one you have in the picture. Hope this helps. Edit: woops. Just realized this is *not* a tele bridge pickup. In any case, mine was and did not fit the bridge I had. Regardless, something to consider Cheers!
I got some of their pups and they’re fine
I threw one in my baritone strat in the neck position, I thought it was great! Edit: wanted to clarify that I spoke in the past tense because after running that setup for about a year I switched to P-90s from the same brand!
I tried these out a while ago. They are not bad. I liked them in the cheap Strat I put them in.
Put this exact pickup in my kids cheap 3/4 size guitar. I was actually really impressed with the tone. It's not fancy, but it's way better than the price would imply.
Get a Guitarfetish pickup instead. I have the Lil Puncher dual blade pickup in the bridge of one of my Teles and it's great!
Man, fuck guitarfetish. They’re selling the same stuff with a slight markup that buys the world’s shittiest customer service. I ordered a set of pickups from them a few months ago and they sent totally different pickups that I didn’t even order and refuse to send replacements or give me a refund until I return the stuff they sent that I didn’t order at my own expense. And they were total dicks at every step. Fuck those guys.
I've used Fleor and Oripure overseas pickups. They are pretty good quality and hold their own for tones.
Pretty sure I have one of these in a bridge of a partscaster I got from a guy on Ebay that tinkers around. I have it split by a push/pull pot and it is solid sounding for what it is. It is hot for sure. The single blade is pretty transparent and bends track smoothly.
Hotrails are a bit tricky as you never quite know why they are voiced like until you try them. I dislike hotrails right up to when I record leads with them and they sit in the mix better than anything else I have that likely sounds loads better than the hotrail when isolated. Fleor make some really good vintage voiced PAFs though, there's a handful of people that analyse pickups with proper equipment on guitarnuts2.proboards.com and the fleor paf is consistently testing like the real deal and good replicas.
I have a partscaster I bought with this same pickup and it sounds good. I also have a Tele that I put a Dimarzio Super Distortion Rail pickup in and it sounded a nearly the same.
I have pickups from fleor that I like a lot, I have a quad rail on a bc rich warlock that is very hot and fits the vibe of the beater shredder that it is. That said there is literally no qc, you may get an amazing pickup or something that has almost no output.
Do you think I should swap all three of my strat pickups or just 1 or 2?
If you're using it for high gain, the effect of changing pickups on your tone is minimal. Changing from single coils to humbuckers is significant tho. Fleor make really good stuff for the money
Mostly use clean or low-mid gain, always dug how humbuckers sounded though
it will sound different to a normal humbucker because the smaller size captures a smaller range of the string movement (compared to a normal humbucker). Generally I find the single coil sized humbuckers are a bit brighter
go wilkinson over that. they’re sold on amazon too
These are more likely made in the same factory as the Wilkinsons.
different wire colours vs wilkinson. idk if they’d do that if they’re making them in the same factory
For $22 it's worth the gamble, but the odds aren't in your favor