Magnaflux pickups

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170497073019&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

Hello Roger,

Can you enlighten me about these Magnaflux Pickups? That is to say, do they have any greater claim to fame than any other good brand pickup?

Martin.

Hiya Martin; have a read of this...

http://www.westone.info/ubc.html

... and they're really not that much different to any other pickup except that they have their own sound; i.e. they do not sound like a Fender, or a Gibson or a Seymour Duncan/EMG/your particular flavour of the moment p'up and that is a difference I for one value!!

Hmm, interesting. So do you reckon that the ones on sale are genuine Magnaflux pickups seeing as the look like they have a plastic back? But they don't have one bar magnet like the one in the diagram?

The explanation on how they work explains a set of pickups I have. The Gordon Smith Custom that you see in my title photo have the same qualities. That is to say, that when you knock out one of the coils, there is no perceivable volume loss. I did quiz John Smith of Gordon Smith's about this and he just said its a trade off, without any further explanation (trade secret-ism). UBC design would explain the reason for this perfectly. I don't have those pickups installed in the Guitar now as I fancied a change, which was not to say that they weren't good pickups. The equal volume single coil effect is something that I do miss about them, but the problem was that each of the pickups were identical. This has the tendency for the bridge pickup to sound too trebley when the middle and neck pickup were the correct tone balance, or if the tone balance was set to make the bridge pickup sound right, the middle and neck pickup had too much bass. I put a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge position and the neck and bridge pickup from a PRS in the other two slots. Works fine now but I do miss the even coil tap effect. The only other pickups that I have ever experienced that also had the even coil tap effect, was a pair of Bartolini humbuckers that a guy had on a Les Paul. These too were impressive.

Martin.

Looking at that diagram you posted John, do you think that these maybe UBC pickups in this Marlin Loner that I picked up?

Jeez, I'll tell you what, Martin - the bridge on that Marlin looks to be identical to one that I picked up in music shop here in Jersey off a Hohner super strat, which I was given by the owner and have since despatched one of the saddles to a chap in the US for his Electra X199 Phoenix!! Dead ringer...

Whip the pups out and see if there's any writing on their bums; I suspect that they are just a normal h/b, though; Uncle Matt did a line in half blades which you see on a lot of later APIIs, and some of the Westones, as MMK45s...

My ST has the same sort of look as those pups on eBay; it's an 87 and has the UBCs, so to me, they look like the real McCoy... however, I've been wrong before!!