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Main Description
Madcap - Its Big, its Daft...and its Fun!
I'm reliving my youth with this one to a certain extent, because this is a style of pickup that was seemingly ever present in my days playing in punk and hardcore bands - always shoehorned into pastel coloured Strat® style guitars, and usually being made to do something they were never all that comfortable doing as we all grew up too quickly and tried playing tech metal and acoustic ballads on stupidly lively punk rock guitars, so when the oppertunity arose to have a crack at making one for Axesrus®, it only seemed fitting to right some of those wrongs, and put the big, daft mushroom head poled humbucker in a place where it should always have been.
So - what we're looking at here, is a 16K humbucker, wound with 44 AWG Plain enamel wire, piled ontop of 3 ceramic magnets in an effort to rince out every last ounce of inductance from the circuit, and as such, every last scrap of power!
And thats what were, really, looking at here, and is the main, major pitfall when it comes to this kind of humbucker. THEY ARE POWER! Literal power incarnate. Everything coming from them sounds huge! Its no suprise that these things became synonymous with 3 piece pop punk bands, because they're capable of filling so much space with relatively little effort.
As a result, and without wanting to over simplify the whole mythos of humbuckers... they just really fun! Simple chords, simple lead lines? Everything is presented up front, with a certain amount of natural breakup, a huge amount of volume, and a "steal you beer, spit in your eye" attitude.
However, power and natural, grungy, punky, cheeky breakup comes at a cost. Whilst its fun, its fun akin to being strapped to a rocket. Its not a well behaved, delicately poised pickup thats going to clean up beautifully, its not a pickup thats producing a glut of top end sparkle and nuanced
hidden charm, and, frankly, i dont think it even pretends to be.So cleans aren't all that clean, and anywhere you'd maybe be expecting a glassy transparency, is probably going to be coloured a little warmer then you'd expect.
I'm writing this, as i often try to do, to present our pickups in a balanced way, but, honestly? For what this pickup is, and what is, obviously, wants to be doing? I dont, really, think thats all a bad thing frankly. Sure, your cleans are going to be a bit gritty, they're going to be a bit warm and borderline aggressive... but surely thats the point! Your looking at a triple ceramic 16K humbucker remember - its never going to be your best mate when it comes to the delicate stuff, but if your chasing big, brash, bold and ballsy, if your playing pedal to the metal, foot buried so deep in the upholstry you can feel tarmac, straight out rock and punk, these are hard to beat.
They'll put a smile on your face, they'll make the front row take a few steps back (that was fairly common at punk gigs if i remember correctly!), and you'll feel like you've got a hand in the end of the world. Whats not to love about that.
Gibson®, Epiphone®, Stratocaster® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and Gibson Musical Instruments Corporation. Axesrus® has no affiliation with FMIC
N.B - making "my punk pickup" might have given me a slight regression back to 21 year old Craig... if thats not a glowing endorsement, i dont know what is!
Sound Clips
Just down below - have a play!
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, it’s 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 Madcap -Insanely hot, badly behaved, no delicacy, ultimately limited to a very niche corner of music, but so much fun that you'll forget you ever wanted to be more than a 3 chord kid with dyed green hair. Now, a lot of this is going to come down to the style of the pickup I’m afraid.
3/16" Mushroom head poles
The Good – I’m maybe not in the “mental space” to be able to talk up steel poles to be honest , and, it’s a little difficult to say something as important to the tone of the pickup, is, inherently “good or bad”, so, rather then “their good because”, lets treat this as “what they do”.
The idea behind having such huge poles, sat proud of the bobbins tops, is that they broaden out the eddy currents coming out of the top of the pickup, and, essentially, increase “sensitivity”, because the pickup is passing through the poles magnetic field directly above “the pole” more often.
Now, I don’t actually believe this makes a blind bit of difference to the sound of the pickup – but there is some logic to using larger poles that’s maybe a little more straight forward. Because the threads are 3/16”, inside of the bobbin, and the heads are so large, and in such close proximity to the coil, we see the pickup generating a much higher inductance then a comparable coil wound with 3mm threads. (7.2H @ 1kHz with the larger threads vs. 5.75h @ 1Khz) And that’s quite important, because we know that the higher a pickups inductance, the darker, and, usually, the more aggressive a pickup becomes.
So, as well as looking VERY cool, the huge poles are important to the sound of the pickup.
The Bad – This is a little easier to pigeon hole! The poles are very distinctive. You might love the look… you might absolutely hate them. They’ve certainly got a bit of an industrial look to them, which I’ll concede, might not be to everyones tastes. They’re kind of important to pushing the inductance up/the resonant peak down/generating the aggression we’d expect, so they’re a little unavoidable too.
Further to that, the poles are only available in Nickel or Black (I’d give good money for a gold mushroom pole!) and because they’re so large, and sat above the bobbins (or covers!), they make cleaning the pickup a bit of a pain.
Matched Set?
This is, really, just a bridge pickup - and i know i've said this a few times before with hotter humbucker (Heretic, Hot Iron, Wraith... ) but i REALLY mean it this time - your not having a neck version. It'll sound garbage. I'm not putting my name to it. Its inducing too high, its not something you'll ever want. Just dont do it.
That said, there are pickups that will pair with the Madcap pretty well, but we're never really going to get a "Matched set" in the traditional sense. Nothings really going to "sound like" a madcap (and work in a neck slot) - theres always going to be that "2 different styles" thing going on, so, for me? Lean into it! If you want a bridge humbucker that'll slap you round the chops and have your jean legs flapping at every palm muted power chord, brilliant... maybe you'd like something a bit more delicate in the neck slot?! Sure there'll be a volume mismatch! Live with it. use it to your advantage,
Neck Pickups (Madcap in Bridge)
Coming Soon
Bode Plots
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Swap Graphs?
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Pickup #1
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Pickup #2
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Setup
Again, traditional is the name of the game here.
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.
Covers, interestingly, dont actually have much of an effect on the way the Madcap works (because the poles are, essentially, sat "on top" of the cover - the cover has very little effect on how they're working!) - so, do as you please! Theres something really cool about those big mushroom poles on a cover!
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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