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Main Description
Hot Iron
With most of the Axesrus® humbuckers being made in the UK now, we're absolutely ecstatic to be working with the Hot Irons again! It’s like meeting up with an old friend for us.
They’re a set of pickup that have been on the books for as long as most of us have worked here, and a bit an oddity that made it across from the "old" Axesrus® – they never really fitted into the company ethos of days gone by, and honestly, I don’t think many of the old guard played them!
But with the company moving in a new direction, and a bit of you blood coursing through the veins, they proved themselves time and time again for that more modern humbuckers tone, and we're all in agreement that they’re well over due a bit of an update
Essentially, your Hot Iron is an overwound bridge humbucker - an absolute monster that just doesn't compromise in its pursuit of distortion, it’s a fantastic setup, allowing you to switch from big, face blistering riffs and solos to sweet and soulful chord progressions or flowing sweep picked arpeggios with no real drop in output.
Because of the innovative design, whist technically, you’re getting a high output pickup here, and you’re still getting alot of that definition, response and natural breakup you’d expect when playing such an aggressive pickup. You get great note separation, fantastic bite and growl in the lower end, and that all important mid-range that’s essential when you’re playing under a lot of gain.
Gibson®, Epiphone®, Stratocaster® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and Gibson Musical Instruments Corporation. Axesrus® has no affiliation with FMIC
Sound Clips
Should be just below!
The Good & The Bad
Between 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 at 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!
43 AWG Coils
The Good – 43 AWG wire is thinner than the wire you’d find on a vintage style pickup. That in itself, is pretty meaningless, because a Telecaster® neck pickup, is also wound with 43 AWG, and no ones going to say they’re “big and meaty”, however, the advantage of 43 AWG, is that, whilst it doesn’t induce as highly as 42 AWG, being thinner, allows you to fit more wire onto the bobbin, allowing for a pickup that DOES induce higher!
And with higher inductance, comes more “internal compression”, a lower resonant peak, and an boosted bass frequency range (which is the boring way of saying “Hot”), which give “high output” humbuckers like the Hot Iron a very distinctive tone – that huge, aggressive, early break up, massive volume character that is pretty much essential for modern metal and heavier rock.
The Bad – high output pickups are VERY specialist (and that’s purely down to the coils inducing so highly)
Whilst I will (with a straight face!) sit here and say “guitars are guitars, you can use them to do whatever you want! A Hot Iron will do blues, and a 50s Strat will do Djent” (and its true!) – we’ve got to remember that we, really, like guitars to sound like something we’ve heard before.
So, whilst there’s nothing stopping you playing the “St. Jame Infirmary” on a Hot Iron or “Candyman” on a Wraith, its probably going to be a bit “grumpy”, and if your really into (out of copyright) blues music? The novelty is going to wear thin VERY quickly.
So, high output pickups really do fall into a funny place with guitars – they’re so “hot”, they’re so rich in mid-range, so lacking in high end “ping” and so strong in the bass, that, really? Your only going to enjoy them if your using them if your entirely dedicated to the heavier side of things. Whilst high output pickups will give you the best heavy distorted tones you’ll ever hear, with clear and present mids, controlled highs and lashings of power, don’t fall into the “trap” of thinking the music you love, is always at the extreme end of “heavy” (it’s a weirdly common thing to do, I’ve done it myself – I love mid 2000s punk! In my mind, “The shape of punk to come” by Refused, is the heaviest thing I’ve ever heard… but upon showing it to our tame guitarist, he laughed and showed me Meshuggah)
Frankly? 90% of music, just doesn’t need high output pickups. If you love Led Zep, or ACDC, or Sabbath? Your probably going to be happier with something that retains a lot more headroom.
12 Hex Pole
The Good
What I would, once upon a time, called “DiMarzio” style pickups, those 12 hex head screws, both bobbins looking exactly the same – it looks really modern and cool right?
Now, the thing about that “look” is that its not entirely a cosmetic thing – back when DiMarzio came up with the idea (and this is quickly going to become rambling, so I’ll try and keep this brief) they figured out that the amount of iron within the coils had an impact on the pickups tone. The more iron (in this instance, in the form of steel, but, equally, its true of Alnico) the higher the pickups inductance, and the darker/hotter the pickup becomes.
So, with something like a Super distortion? DiMarzio wanted “more”, so they used 10-32 UNC (just under 5mm) grub screws (which fit perfectly into the slug side bobbins) – the inductance is through the roof!
With the Hot Iron, frankly, its hot enough without trying to eek out a few extra Henrys, so we’ve stuck with M3 filister head bolts with hex heads. Just keeps them a little crisper in the high end, and helps keep things a little more defined and biting.
The Bad
Whilst its important for shaping the pickups tone as I intended it (and at the risk of repeating myself, the skill in making pickups, is knowing exactly what they do, and being able to get them in the hands of players who want *that*) – I appreciate that you might not actually like how it looks.
I think it looks cool, I know it’s a bit part of the sound, but, I know too, that if you’ve got a sleeper Les Paul®, maybe you want to keep it looking quite traditional.
Now, I’m not going to try and brow beat anyone into adopting a look they don’t want, and, we actually make a “traditional” Hot Iron if you’d rather – but, in its purest form? 12 hex poles! Love it or hate it.
High output
I hate the way we think of pickups as “high output” (or medium output, or Vintage output” ) because, frankly, its nonsense, and its confusing, and everyone ends up thinking that the pickups resistance is the output, and output somehow relates to volume and tonal character.
That’s not true, at least, not entirely.
Its often said that “resistance is meaningless” (usually by the 50% of the population who DON’T think of resistance as output!) when it comes to pickups, and, really, that’s not entirely true – there is a very rough and ready rule that, essentially, the bigger the number, the “hotter” the pickup will be. So, I know, at a glance, that an 8K pickup is going to be hotter then a 7k pickup, and I know a 16K pickup is going to be hotter then a 12K pickup!
The “problem” with that rule, however, is that it is only true, when all things are equal, and the only variable that changes, is the length of the coil wire (which is, really, all resistance is!) and the Hot Irons are a perfect example of the golden rule in action – but it only tells half the story.
What we really want to keep an eye on with any high output pickup, is the inductance – and the Hot Irons are roaring along at 8 Henrys… and that’s high! (blame the 43 AWG)
The reason its important, is because, realistically? You can only mix and match pickups to within 2 Henrys of the bridge pickup, so the Hot Irons, don’t really play well with others. Which is somewhat limiting. A matched pair? Neck and bridge? Great! Hot Iron Bridge and an Ethereal in the neck? Lovely! They actually work really well with P90s (blighted by a similar problem!) but, really? You’re going to struggle to get them to work along side a single coil (our Heavy Hearts will do it!)
I suppose this comes under the same thinking that, high output pickups are really specialist, but its such a big thing, its probably worth mentioning again.
So, I wouldn’t be considering the Hot Irons for any other guitar that wasn’t HH (or HSH, using the middle pickup for coil splitting).
Bode Plots
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Swap Graphs?
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Setup
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 - you can try a 300k tone pot if you like, but i've never felt it made much of a difference myself.
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).
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