Six years ago, two ex-schoolteachers with a mutual love for great guitar tone went into business building pickups with a few twists that are uniquely their own…
This issue, we’re off to Caerphilly in Wales to meet Paul Dunn and Paul Best, the two-man team behind Radioshop Pickups, purveyors of toneful single coil and humbucker upgrades that are brimming with vintage chic. In honour of our visit, the pair constructed a Telecaster pickup from the ground up, beginning with loading the magnet slugs into a bobbin, winding the age-appropriate wire and finishing with a wax dip, affixing the metal bottom plate and soldering the wires into place. Some day soon that very pickup is going to be dropped into a Telecaster and hopefully transform the instrument and thus delight its owner with a newborn vintage snarl and twang so reminiscent of yesteryear’s perceived golden age.
Fielding any confusion surrounding the pair both having the same forename, we elected to resort to already established nicknames: Paul Best is hereby dubbed ‘Besty’ and Paul Dunn ‘Dunny’. Formerly schoolteachers – Besty languages and Dunny chemistry – we wondered how they were drawn into the world of winding pickups in the first place.
“We’ve been guitarists for a very long time, since our teens,” Besty begins, “and my route into pickup making – for me, personally – was that I became aware, in the early 2000s, that this was the way to really improve a guitar. I was a pickup customer; I was buying a lot of them. Slowly that became, ‘Could I make my own pickups?’ Six years ago we started trading, but we’ve been experimenting with pickups for a lot longer.”
Denne historien er fra April 2019-utgaven av Guitarist.
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Denne historien er fra April 2019-utgaven av Guitarist.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Sonic Shaper
Electro-Harmonix revisits the effect that launched the company with the LPB-3 Linear Power Booster and EQ
Platinum Blonde
PRS has updated its Texas-voiced David Grissom signature amp with more features, lower wattage and a more approachable price tag
TAN LINES
Many of us regard straps as a bit of an afterthought, but to find one that matches the quality of a custom or vintage guitar, Rod Boyes of Pinegrove Leather can help
ELECTRIC STRINGS
Your tone starts with your strings - strike a balance between sound, tuning and durability with six of our favourites
DIFFERENT WINDS
While there's no end to repros of all the classic pickup styles, more and more pickup makers are mixing things up to move forward - Cream T is a good example
Long termers
A few months' gigging, recording and everything that goes with it - welcome to Guitarist's longterm test report
Top Guns
Chapman's new factory move coincides with a bit of a rethink. We track down the key players all around the world
the Wishlist
Dream gear to beg, borrow and steal for...
Reach For The Star
Earlier this year Guild reorganised its 70s-era Polara range. We spent some time with this mid-range 2024 model: a modern pawn-shop prize or a copy too far?
HIGH FLYER
Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX remembers the flight path - and turbulence behind Chris Buck's Electric Lightning overdrive/boost, named after a fighter jet and packing a bona fide valve