Pickups for budget baritone

[Tempest]

Alright, so I have a build in progress...pics will come soon as I have some warmoth parts to show for it.

Short story, I'm building a budget baritone guitar with a MIM Fender Strat body, gonna get a warmoth neck for it, all I need to decide on is what pickups I'm gonna get.

The trick is that I need to keep this a budget build.  So the pickups are gonna have to be more affordable.  I'm only really familiar with more expensive brands like bareknuckle and lollar so I don't really know what the good options here are.

I've looked into GFS, and also at used Seymour Duncans, like the SSL6 and SSL2 pickups.  I've heard some great and not great things about GFS, I like that they're noiseless, but I've heard they lack output and sound a little dull....I have a standard Fender humbucker that's gonna go in the bridge position, so I need something that's gonna balance with it.

Any suggestions or thoughts about the duncans or GFS's?

Thanks guys!

 

[Tipperman]

The SSL6 makes a great bridge pickup, haven't tried it in the other positions, but I'd dare say you can't go wrong. Cagey really likes this particular set of GFS pickups that he has. He'll likely chime in and give you advice. The SSL6 is a great bridge pickup, though. Lots of balls. Again, I've not tried it in other positions but Seymour Duncan makes some great stuff. They just aren't my cup of tea. I prefer BKP/Lollar/Lindy Fralin when I need affordable. Another option, depending on the definition of budget, would  be Dave Allen pickups. I've not tried them, but my friend Bjorn (the guy who runs Gilmourish) loves his work.

http://www.dallenpickups.com/category_s/12.htm

http://www.gilmourish.com/?p=2916

Hopefully this helps some.

 

[Tempest]

The SSL6 makes a great bridge pickup, haven't tried it in the other positions, but I'd dare say you can't go wrong. Cagey really likes this particular set of GFS pickups that he has. He'll likely chime in and give you advice. The SSL6 is a great bridge pickup, though. Lots of balls. Again, I've not tried it in other positions but Seymour Duncan makes some great stuff. They just aren't my cup of tea. I prefer BKP/Lollar/Lindy Fralin when I need affordable. Another option, depending on the definition of budget, would  be Dave Allen pickups. I've not tried them, but my friend Bjorn (the guy who runs Gilmourish) loves his work.

http://www.dallenpickups.com/category_s/12.htm

http://www.gilmourish.com/?p=2916

Hopefully this helps some.

Well Fralin/BKP/Lollar are far beyond affordable to me.  I'd be game on anything Bjorn suggests, love his website.  But those are also pretty pricey for what I'm looking at.  Thanks for the input though! 

 

[Tipperman]

The SSL6 makes a great bridge pickup, haven't tried it in the other positions, but I'd dare say you can't go wrong. Cagey really likes this particular set of GFS pickups that he has. He'll likely chime in and give you advice. The SSL6 is a great bridge pickup, though. Lots of balls. Again, I've not tried it in other positions but Seymour Duncan makes some great stuff. They just aren't my cup of tea. I prefer BKP/Lollar/Lindy Fralin when I need affordable. Another option, depending on the definition of budget, would  be Dave Allen pickups. I've not tried them, but my friend Bjorn (the guy who runs Gilmourish) loves his work.

http://www.dallenpickups.com/category_s/12.htm

http://www.gilmourish.com/?p=2916

Hopefully this helps some.

Well Fralin/BKP/Lollar are far beyond affordable to me.  I'd be game on anything Bjorn suggests, love his website.  But those are also pretty pricey for what I'm looking at.  Thanks for the input though!

For sure! I think the GFS Cagey likes are the GFS true coil. Ask him about it if he doesn't drop in. He seems to dig them.

 

[Cagey]

Yes, the True-Coils are really nice. For single coil tones, I prefer them over anything else I've used from all the usual suspects. They actually sound like real single coils, only noiseless. I don't know why anyone would say they sound dull or lack output - that's simply not the case at all. Plus, they're high-quality parts, not some cheap knock-off stuff like you'd find in a Wal-Mart blister-pak guitar.

I'd recommend trying some. You can get a whole set of 3 for what a single DiMarzio costs, so it's not a huge risk.

 

[Tempest]

Yes, the True-Coils are really nice. For single coil tones, I prefer them over anything else I've used from all the usual suspects. They actually sound like real single coils, only noiseless. I don't know why anyone would say they sound dull or lack output - that's simply not the case at all. Plus, they're high-quality parts, not some cheap knock-off stuff like you'd find in a Wal-Mart blister-pak guitar.

I'd recommend trying some. You can get a whole set of 3 for what a single DiMarzio costs, so it's not a huge risk.

That's encouraging to hear, I feel like they'll be the best bargain I'm gonna get.

 

[Cagey]

That's encouraging to hear, I feel like they'll be the best bargain I'm gonna get.

I don't know if I'd base pickup selection on pricing. In the grand scheme of things, they're probably only 10% of the cost of the instrument but are responsible for >80% of its character, so that's no place to compromise. Still, no sense spending more money than you have to.

The GFS Tru-Coils are different in that they don't stack a balanced pair of coils into a reconfigured "humbucker" like everybody else does. Under the actual pickup coil they put a much smaller coil that's used purely for noise cancellation. As a result of its diminished size and impedance/inductance, it doesn't have nearly the same influence on the character of the main pickup coil as a twinned out-of-phase coil would and you end up with something that sounds very much like a typical vintage single coil, just without the noise. The secret is that they don't make them literally "noiseless". It seems they've found that the old 80/20 rule works well with noise reduction in that you can get rid of 80% of the noise with only 20% of the cancellation heroics. You'll still get some hum out of them in bad environments, but it's so dramatically reduced that for all intents and purposes it's a "noiseless" pickup.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I have a GFS NEOVINT7 in my bari-twanger, and it's really sweet.

Forget what the cork-sniffers say about GFS, a good pickup is a good pickup regardless of the price.

 

[thebutcher85]

I've used a bunch of different GFS pickups (humbuckers, mini humbuckers, strat pickups, P90's, etc.) and I highly recommend them, excellent pickups period, (not just for the money)

 

[musitron]

You said "budget," right?  :sign13:

On my baritone I've got Dimarzio Breeds and I can't say enough good things about them.  (Hell, half my posts in my short life here have been about them!)

However, I've heard a Strat-style guitar from these guys at GuitarFetish, and for the money they're pretty darn good.  GuitarFetish pretty much does their own thing and sells their own stuff.  I have NO idea if/how they contract it out, whose factory its made in, etc, but on a budget, you probably can't do much better:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Professional-Series-OUR-BEST_c_347.html

 

[Tempest]

I've since decided to go with True Coils from GFS.  Bargain was too good to pass up

 

[Cagey]

I've since decided to go with True Coils from GFS.  Bargain was too good to pass up

Forget about the money. You're going to love 'em, if you like single coil tonal/performance characteristics. Very true to that, and probably the best I've heard.