 |
 |
 |
|
Main Description
The Heretic - Girls for Schism!
The Heretic is a high output, high gain, heavy humbucker that’s ideally suited to Metal and Rock. Built around an oversized Ceramic magnet, 5mm hex poles and a pair of coils wound up to 14.5Kohm of 43 AWG Plain enamel wire – its an absolutely classic tone that’s lasted right up to the present day.
Characterised by that prominent, drum tight, bottom heavy, “chunk” that runs through heavier styles of music, this is the ideal choice of humbucker for everything from 80s Metal and Rock, right through to very modern Doom and Stoner metal or throw back Rock and Hefty Blues where you dont mind a little bit of grit! In short, anywhere you think “This is BIG!”, that’s where you want a Heretic!
A word of caution though – whilst this style of “high gain/high output/blow your socks off” humbucker certainly still has its place – in modern styles of rock and metal, and certainly, in the “classic” arena of 60s and 70s rock, they’re not all that common! (the “in vogue” style of humbucker now, for "Classic Rock", would be something much more vintage, something closer to our Bourbon City - something with a shade more "ping" in the highs), and Modern Metal has reverted back to a slightly more sensible wind with a lower inductance – something like your Model 24) They do still turn up, but don’t fall into the “bigger numbers are better!” mentality that plagued humbuckers for a long time in the 2000s! (More on that in “The Good & the Bad” if you’re interested in our musings)
The Heretic is a great pickup! It’ll do everything from hair metal to stadium rock without breaking a sweat… but its going to be far too much for 60s Blue rock, and its going to lack the definition you’ll be craving if your playing modern progressive metal!
All that said? Its still a fantastic tone – Muscular and gutsy, like a hard kick in the ribs.
If its worth anything too – this is a bridge pickup. I know there’s an option for neck, because someone, somewhere is going to want one, but that’s going to be the one in a million. If your pairing this with another humbucker – something like the Model 24 or the Ethereal would be great shouts. They’ll cover a lot more ground than a pair of Heretics.
The Good & The BadBetween you, me and the fence post, I'm more an engineer then i am a salesman, so to scratch that itch - I’m compelled to not only write up the unavoidable "hey, this pickup great! Play Rock or Blues?! This one’s for you!", but for the sake of balance, it’s only fair that i get to write up what they're not great too (and because this section isn't "up front" - i get to be a bit more technical about it too! Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to explain what all those lovely buzz words actually mean eh?)
Remember too - whilst I’m writing this stuff about Axesrus pickups, its true of every pickup ever made. Even if you’re not buying ours, this stuff is handy! It’s all true! all pickups have characteristics that make them good or bad... there are no perfect pickups!
So, here we go - The Heretic - a great big, brash, high output humbucker, aiming to rinse out as much inductance from the coils as it can in an effort to blow your windows out their frames! Sounds fun right? Maybe! But it’s a blessing and a curse - so let’s get into it.
High Gain
The Good - This pickup, is definitely what I’d call a high gain/output humbucker - its got a very high inductance (8 Henrys), and a nice wide Q factor with a high dBV at a relatively low resonant peak (26.5 dBV at 4.8kHz) - that great big lump in the frequency spectrum is going to hit the amp HARD, and its hitting it across a wide range - and that’s one of those key components for getting the amp to break up, even at low volumes, the amps seeing so much signal, at such strength , its going to really "go" - and you can hear that in the demo recordings, that blues tracks barely holding it together.
As a result, the pickup is very responsive, and translates very light attacks (hammer ones, pull offs, delicate picking etc) into a signal that still hits the amp pretty hard. It benefits a delicate player, who’s really going to approach a piece with a measured and accurate approach (seems completely at odds with the idea many of us have with rock and metal guitar, doesn't it? But trust me - the best players, especially with this style of pickup? They're ludicrously accurate with their playing!)
That’s one of the cool things about high output humbuckers - and one of the reasons they really became "the thing" in the 90s and 2000s - everything feels hotter. Everything instantly feels more aggressive and amps start breaking up - its, honestly, amazingly good fun if you can master them.
The Bad - All that is good about high gain humbuckers, is also, weirdly, what’s bad about them!
Amps are going to break up at low volumes, your clean channels not going to be all that clean any more. If your a dedicated sludge metal player? Chances are its never going to bother you one lick, but go in to high output pickups with your eyes open. You cant turn off the heat - you can tame it a little, but its never going away.
Attached to that - you can’t turn off the responsiveness either. I'm not here to brow beat anyone who plays guitar, but I promise you this - high output pickups will show up sloppy playing in seconds. (i say that from bitter experience! I'm no Hendrix!) - every bumped string or accidental touch, is going to ring out as loud as an intentional attack.
To use a clumsy metaphor - pickups are like cars, and playing guitar is like driving. High output pickups are the Formula 1 car! they're going full tilt, all the time, and they'll tear your head off if you make a mistake.
Don’t "fall for the numbers" - big inductance, big resistance, big poles, big numbers? it looks great on paper, but its tonally, quite specialist, and they can be difficult to live with day to day.
Strong Bass/Mid Rich
The Good - This one harks back to the high gain thing. To make a pickup that we perceive as "Hot" (as in, it causes the amp to break up at low volume) - it must do 2 things - it needs to be high inductance, and have a wide Q factor - essentially, where the pickup is creating its busiest frequencies, it needs to be loud, and wide - and to get THAT, we need to wind a pickup using 43 AWG wire (or 47 SWG if your going cheap and cheerful) and that causes the resonant peak to be LOW. Generally speaking, a 43 AWG coil will have a resonant peak between 3kHz and 6kHz (unloaded) and be between 17 and 10Kohm- once you fit that to your pots, we're pushing the resonant peak down into what we'll perceive as "mid-range" - what I’d call "The Honk Zone" - but you generally perceive that as low end "thump"
One of the weird "things" we see in pickups, is this idea of the "scooped mid" - that a high output, high gain, big, angry pickup, somehow, as if by magic, defies the laws of physics, and scoops out its mid-range. To date, I’ve never seen one (and i've seen a lot of pickups!) its a myth - there are no high output pickups with scooped mids (there are no pickups at all with scooped mids!... it’s a mid-range instrument after all!)
Either way, Initially, almost everyone will latch onto this boosted mid-range, and meaty bass as an enormous positive aspect, and, in certain applications? Its great! When we say "great for Rock, Great for Metal" - that’s generally what we're looking for. That big tone where one guitar, played right, is filling so much space, that you don’t need a 2nd guitar!
The Bad - Whilst that increase in bass/mids is great in certain situations, remember, a lot of guitar music is based around the idea of "definition" - and to address the elephant in the room - for a pickup to be strong in mid-range (and strong in bass as a result), it cannot, by the laws of physics, be strong in treble too - and a lot of music, really does demand more treble then you'd think.
If we look back at the 80s/90s/2000s (and we can hear it in music from the time too!) - everyone latched onto the cool thing with high output pickups, and were lapping up the sheer power of them, but a lot of rock guitar became really "dark" - they were hitting like steam trains, but there isn't an awful lot of "snap" in there! (I don’t really like drawing parallels with "real" bands, but, if we look back at Nirvana or Linkin Park or early Foo Fighters - its that!)
Nowadays (as of 2023 when i type this) - Rock music has started to come away from that, we've become a bit savvier with the idea of guitars and where they sit in the mix, and the fashion is for definition again... but it does depend where you find yourself as to whether its applicable to you or not. Basically, modern rock and metal, the bass guitars are now much higher in the mix, they're much more musical, and with extended range guitars becoming more common - the need for guitars to be these big, bottom-heavy space fillers, has diminished in the last 10 years or so. We're more inclined to "let the bass do the bass" and the guitar sits slightly higher up, and as such, lower output pickups (which are capable of producing more treble, at the cost of less bass/mids) have come back into fashion in a big way.
So, if your right at the cutting edge of music? Pushing the boundaries and working with a very modern idea of live mixing? That hefty low end and lack and snap is going to wear thing pretty quickly.
If you’re playing in a Pop Rock 6 piece or a Tech metal band - that lack of top end is going to drive you mad.
HOWEVER - if you’re in a Power blues 3 piece? Or you’re in a 5-piece Attrition metal band? It’s great - you'll fill so much space, you'll wonder how you ever managed without high gain stuff.
Matched Set
I alluded to this in the main description, but, just to really hammer it home.
Whilst this pickup is available in a Bridge or Neck version -
just like all of our humbuckers, they're the same specification - the same resistance/inductance etc - neck and bridge only reffers to the way the pickup is assembled and where the wire comes out of the base in relation to the bobbins.
And with that in mind - YOU DO NOT NEED A HERETIC IN NECK!
No one does! All the things that make the Heretic an absolutely fantastic bridge pickup? That big, punchy, aggressive, monsterously lively snorting bronco that your barely hanging on to? Its going to behave like an overweight, belligerent lump in the neck slot.
Its too much. (and thats the same for nearly every "high output" humbucker ever made!)
There is, especially in rock and metal, a certain arguement
that bigger, heavier neck humbucker have their uses - whilst they're generally useless as neck rythmn pickups, and your likely never going to use them for chords, they're wonderful for big, creamy, fluidic lead tones. Stuff like our Ethereal? A great "neck lead"! The Heretic isn't that! Just dont do it.
So, if your going for a "set" - be sensible.
The Heretic is 8H, so its loud - so if your pairing it with another pickup, bare that in mind.
Personally, i'd be looking at the following.
Model 24 - My go to "high output" thats not really a high output at all - a nice, natural compression that really lends itself to neck based lead stuff, and no slouch when it comes to chords, purely because of the great note seperation. A wonderful neck choice in a hotter set up.
The Ethereal - Creamy lead in the neck slot, from start to finish. No use what so ever for chord work, but your solos will bring a tear to even the hardest eye.
The Purist - A bit of a work horse of a pickup - treads the fine line between Traditional and High output, so is capable of doing some beautifully rich and fluidic lead stuff, but without completely sacrificing chords.
Bourbon City - A spicier traditional pickup, its going have enough guts too keep up, and its a sensible choice for neck to retain some of that "this is a rhythm pickup" mentality and keep your chords
If we're looking at single coils, options become a little more limited
TB754S - I'd be fitting the bridge model in middle and neck myself, because its a hotter pickup- thats got the making of a Power blues dream though
And on the oddball end of things
Late 50s P90 - If you find yourself in a HB/P90 situation - P90s REALLY like pairing with high output humbuckers. Again, Power Blues Heaven!
Bode Plots
|
|
Swap Graphs?
|
Pickup #1
|
Pickup #2
|
Setup
Thankfully, whilst The Heretic might seem a bit of a monster tonally, its pretty well behaved, and, believe it or not, in the game of "lets make a really hot humbucker" - its not really all that boomy in the low end compared to some, so theres no real special considerations to make when installing it.
500k pots work perfectly (thats what was used on the recordings for reference) and a 0.022 or a 0.047 cap on the tone will see you absolutely fine.
Covers, as always, mute what top end "snap" there is ever so slightly, so, for me, i'd go without personally, but i will conceed, a covered 12 hex pole humbucker does look the business, and eventually, pickups do always become a case of form over function, so, please, dont let that dissuabe you from getting the covered version. (you've got this far though me telling you "hey, this isn't particullarly toppy!" after all)
Warranty & Returns
In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have to write this section up, and, I really wish I didn’t have to, but, if I’m being honest and transparent about how pickups work, for better or worse, it’s probably worth being honest and open your rights as a consumer too, and maybe give a little insight into how we actually build pickups.
How we do it
Pickups, at our end of things – are “Custom made” – I cannot stress this enough. When you click the “Add To Cart” button, there is no pickup on the shelf, no bucket of pre-terminated bobbins or half complete pickups. It is made, entirely, from scratch using the parts we have available.
This means, if you order a Bourbon city, or a Hot Iron, or a Texas Blue, it is wound FOR YOU. It is being built to the specifications you have stipulated in the drop-down menus, even the most “normal” design, is still, essentially, built to order.
That entails our pickers collecting the parts from stores, delivering them to the winders, who then get the copper on there, and then the wound coils going to the techs to solder, terminate, test, polish, wax pot, clean, retest… you get the idea.
This is all done “in house” and, obviously, there is a queue, which is first in first out, so pickups will NEVER be shipped same day. Realistically, it takes about 2 weeks, but we do get busier at the beginning/end and middle of the month, so that can have a knock on effect.
And this is all being done, by hand, on a VERY small scale. At maximum, we can produce about 6 pickups a day.
It works wonderfully frankly, because we can make, pretty much, anything you can dream up, and keeping it small scale, means we have an exceptionally high attention to detail with each pickup sold.
Returns
So we have an item, when all is said and done, that didn’t exist until you purchased it, that has cost a lot of man hours to actually manufacture, and has been manufactured to your exact specifications.
As such, pickups come under the remit of “custom work” as laid out under the our terms and conditions, and as outlined in the UK governments distance selling regulations.
This means, in short, pickups are none returnable, and none refundable.
I understand, in this day and age, that may seem quite the hard-nosed approach, but, sadly, there’s no wiggle room in this. Once a pickup is wound, there’s no going back. It belongs to you. There is no “I’ll test it to see if I like it” or “I’ll return it if I don’t like the colour!”.
Warranty
All Axesrus pickups come with a “relaxed lifetime” warranty as far as I’m concerned. I’m never going to ask you to register the purchase, stop offering support 12 months after purchase or limit support to the initial customer in the case of second-hand stuff. We are incredibly proud of the pickups we produce, and I’ll help out wherever I can.
However, its worth laying out what I’d consider “realistic” expectations as to what we will cover as part of a warranty.
Repairs and replacements
Whilst we will not accept pickups as return for refund under any circumstances, we reserve the right to repair or replace any pickup that develops a manufacturing fault within a reasonable time frame.
I won’t put a scale on that time frame, but I will say, its at our discretion. If you’re lucky enough to have some of the VERY early hand wound stuff we made, and we (stupidly) thought we could do it at £20 a pickup, and the coil wires snapped after 10 years? I’m probably not in a position to repair or replace it free of charge, you know? You’ve had your fun; you’ve got your money’s worth!
On the flip side of that – if you’ve bought a £200 humbucker 2 years ago, and it’s developed a fault? You’d better believe Axes is bending over backwards to get it repaired and get you up and running again.
I’ll say this too, we won’t hang you out to dry – if that £20 pickup can be repaired, even if we’re not doing it as part of the warranty, we will offer to repair it at a reasonable price.
Damage vs. Fault
Pickups are delicate creatures I’m afraid. Nature of the beast I suppose, they were never designed, all those years ago, to be “presented” outside of a guitar, so go in knowing this, pickups can be damaged. Either in transit, whilst in storage, or during install.
It is VERY difficult to know how a pickup has developed a fault, so most of the time, we will go into all warranty claims with the mindset that “it’s a manufacturing fault”, frankly, because it keeps everyone happy, avoids any awkward conversations as to “who’s done what” and, normally, repairing damage done during install is the same work as repairing a manufacturing fault either way. Worst case, we might have a delicate email exchange about who’s covering the postage, but that’s about as bad as it gets.
However, we will take this approach only when a pickup, which is showing damage, is only showing minimal damage. I appreciate everyone makes mistakes.
Pickups that have been heavily damaged, have seen heavy wear and tear, or have been intentionally broken in an effort to raise a warranty claim, will see not be repaired, or replaced. Neither free of charge or “for a fee”
Lead times and cancellations
We do publish the lead times on all of our custom build work, and there is very little we can do to decrease the time it takes to actually manufacture this stuff I’m afraid, short of jumping you to the front of the queue (which is never fair, and we won’t do it)
Be aware that once an order is placed, work beings on your build, and as such, you’ve entered into the contract, and there is no backing out. Coils can often be wound within the hour or the order being placed, but they will sit in the work queue due to a back log at terminating/testing/cleaning.
Modifications
There are, occasionally, situations where someone buys a pickup, installs it, plays it for a while, and then might want something a little different down the line. Maybe a different magnet, or a cover fitting, or a new hookup wire fitting.
I am happy to carry out this work, and, normally, regardless of the “time since purchase”, this will be done simply for the cost of parts and postage.
However, the “depth” of these modifications, and if we’re willing/capable of carrying them out, is at the discretion of Axesrus. We’re happy to discuss this on a case-to-case basis, but go in eyes open, that its unlikely to be part of the warranty.
“Warranty with initial purchase”
I’m not a stickler when it comes to this stuff, but I will say, we do have to draw the line somewhere, so, strictly speaking, this “relaxed warranty” is, officially, limited to the original purchaser of the product.
That said, I’m not a robot, nor am I a fool. I’m aware that sometimes, a pickup is moved on relatively quickly, or is bought by a 3rd party for someone else, so, in these cases, lets just be sensible about it. I’ll carry forward a “true” warranty on a pickup for 12 months after the initial purchase, regardless of who is contacting me in regards to any issue.
However, I will need to know who the initial customer was. Even if it’s just their name and a rough date of purchase.
This goes for technical support too – I’ve no problems offering support on Axesrus products, regardless of “time since purchase”, but I will ask for some proof that they are in fact, Axesrus products.
Modifications to second hand parts, will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis too.
Changes in specification/tolerances
Over the years, we’ve had a few “interesting” conversations regarding pickup specifications, especially when it comes to returns and warranty.
The published specs of our pickups, are published with a “within tolerance” subtext, based off of the readings from our testing equipment.
There will, always, be variation between one pickup and the next, and whilst we endeavor to keep those readings within the tolerances stated, they do occasionally wander outside of the 10% we stipulate as “acceptable” – this is usually due to temperature fluctuation, or specification changes outside of our control (wire diameter, alloy composition etc.) – any resulting change in readings based on these factors, will result in an updated technical spec on the website, but, as you can imagine, the first we know about an unforeseen spec change, is when the pickups come off the winder.
We do not consider these “out of spec” accidents to be cause for a warranty claim I’m afraid, and we endeavor to keep on top of them so the information we’re giving you at point of purchase, is as accurate as possible.
Warranty postage
Repairs or replacement postage cost, outside of an initial 14 day period, is at your cost. I appreciate, in some situations, that this is prohibitive (especially when shipping outside of the UK).
| | |
