Main Description

Fender®, Squier®, Stratocaster® and Strat® are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and Axesrus® has no affiliation with FMIC

Bode Plots

	Swap Graphs?
	Pickup #1 Single Coil Humbucker Telecaster P90 Offets Bass Other Strings Ransoms	Pickup #2 Humbucker Single Coil Classic 50s Bourbon CityXDevestatorEtherealHereticHot IronModel 24True 50s

Bode plots are one of my “things” when it comes to pickups – I’m a huge believer that “guitars sound like guitar”, and that there is FAR too much expectation placed on pickups “to be different”, with a real belief that these things are very “black and white/good and bad/one thing or the other” and, honestly? Its not true!

Really, there isn’t a massive amount of tonal difference between, say, an Axesrus late 60s and an Axesrus Mid 50s single coil. Sure, if we were to compare a very high output humbucker like the Hot Iron and a very traditional single coil, the differences start increase, but at no point does the guitar start sounding like anything other then a guitar! Think of them as shades of grey, and you wont go far wrong.

So, when shopping pickups? And being confronted with a wall of numbers, hugely flowery write ups, sound clips that don’t tell you a great deal – Bode plots are a fantastic way to say “these 2 are similar, this ones a bit more of this, that ones a little more that” – it might not come through in the recordings, it might not be evident in the numbers, you can guarantee the write ups are going to over egg the pudding – but the bode plot? She cannot lie!

So, a quick crash course in reading bode plots?

The higher the peaks frequency (in kHz) the brighter the pickup.

The higher the peaks voltage (in dBU), the more aggressive its going to be in that register.
The ”wider” the lead in and lead out immediately around the peak (the Q factor) the smoother the pickup is going to be. The narrower, the more focused and snappy it will be.

And – a handy hint – view the resonant peak and Q factor in relation to the  lower frequencies (0-2kHz) – a pickup producing 10dbU at 1kHz, and 30dbU at a resonant peak of 5kHz might seem bright in graph form, but its all relative – its bright, but its also very bass rich, so it wont seem that bright in reality)

Sets vs. Singles

Right then – I’ll concede that this is a bit confusing, but, there is some logic to it – its just a little bit involved, so this is worth a read.

So, right off the bat, when we speak about “a matched set” – in this instance, that means 3 pickups that are all the same resistance, inductance, magnets etc – because that’s what was happening in 1957, and was actually the norm right up until the 80s (and even then? The idea of specific pickups for specific positions on the guitar, is something that’s been invented by pickup manufacturers more then it has been embraced by guitar manufacturers)

so, a set of Texas Blues? They’re all going spicy 6.5K bridge, and then a slightly cooler, but, frankly, quite peppery neck and bridge at 6.2K, Alnico 5. Simple!

Now, we offer 2 different sets – and whilst I’m loath to actually name them such, you can think of it as “Vintage” and “Modern”

Theres the “With Middle Reverse Wound” – that’s the “Modern” variation – basically, before 1977, Fender never made a Stratocaster with a reverse wound pickup (and they didn’t make many before 1983!) – the idea of a reverse wound/hum cancelling middle pickup is, relatively speaking, very modern.

And then theres “Middle NOT Reverse Wound” – that’s vintage! As youd expect, it’s a pre 1977 spec, so if your going warts and all reproduction, that’s what you want.

Stuck in the middle

Now, before we get into the why/why not – remember, a reverse wound (and reverse polarity) pickup will sound exactly the same as a pickup that’s standard wind, standard polarity – your not losing or gaining anything by having it as an option.

However – where it does matter, is in positions 2 and 4 on a 5 way switch.

Because there were no reverse wound middles pre 77, there were (officially) no 5 way switches, and the Strat® came with a 3 way switch as standard. (Although some players fitted the 5 way back in the day, and there are rumours Fender even began shipping them loose with new guitars!)

Nowadays, that seems quite minimalist, and we all play 5 ways, purely because position 2 and 4 are, arguably, the best sounding thing on any instrument ever created!

But it does throw a spanner in the works when you factor in that middle pickup.

A ”reverse wound” middle pickup, in combination with a “standard sound” Bridge or Neck will sound normal – you get some signal loss (phase cancellation due to positioning in relation to the strings) but on the whole, its not all that noticeable – its, likely, the tone you’ve been playing for the last 40 years frankly, its very much “the norm” nowadays.

A ”NOT REVERSE WOUND” middle with a standard neck of bridge, is going to sound very different. Your going to get way more signal loss, its going to have a very distinctive out of phase sound. Almost washed out, thinner, but, strangely, a little louder.

Now, honestly, neither is right or wrong – you will, I promise you, have heard pickups, near identical to the Late 50s being played in phase, you’ll have heard them being played out of phase – both tones are equally as good, and both are equally as usable! (Me? I’m a sucker of out of phase personally, its got a slightly dirty, broken thing going on!)

So, theres your options on that front – you can have it like it was in the 50s and stick them on a 3 way switch, you can have it like it was in the 60s, and stick in on the 5 way switch, and experience the slight broken magic of the whole idea, or you can take that 60s spec, modernise it slightly so it behaves like a bog standard Strat set from 2023, and never worry about phase cancellation ever again.

Single and ready to mingle

I do, secretly, like making up little nonsense puns for the headers of these write ups, but this ones quite apt!

If your buying a single pickup, that’s fantastic, I’m all for mixing and matching different pickups together to really personalise a guitar and get it working for you – so, rather then brow beat anyone who dare suggest putting an Axesrus pickup next to a Seymour Duncan or a DiMarzio – how about I actually tell you how to ensure that your going to match the things up properly?
Wind Direction

So, with our single coils – as “standard” (aka, “Not Reverse Wound”) – all models are wound clockwise, South polarity.

And all reverse wound pickups, are counter clockwise, north polarity.

And what that means is, if you hold the pickup in the palm of your hand, with the bottom fibre board down, with the hookup wires facing you, the “start” of the coil (the black wire!) is on the LEFT (and the white wire, is on the right)

That, is clockwise wind! Easy right.

If you’ve got a middle pickup that’s the opposite of that (black on the right, white or yellow on the left), that means your middles reverse wound (in relation to an Axesrus pickup) – but remember, not everyone follows the same standard (even Fender® have been known to wander!) so it’s worth checking.
Polarity
Polarity is a little more complicated/confusing so, to spell it out as straight forward as I can. Our standard is South Top (reverse would be North Top)

Again, not everyone follows the same standard, so its worth checking.

The problem is – when you check, that’s what’ll confuse the life out of you, so heres the way to do it.

1. Get yourself a magnetic compass, identify which is the north needle (and which is the south).
2. Hold the compass so the edge is facing the top of the poles of the pickup – either the North or south needle will point directly at the pole.

If it NORTH needle is pointing towards the pole, that means the pole is SOUTH top (confusing right? North literally means south (weirdly, the earths north pole? That’s south polarity too!)

Alternatively, you can download a pole checker on your smart phone – it’s a free download. If that says “north” when you offer it up to a magnets pole, that’s true – North = North!

Once you know the polarity of your other pickups, your going to know what you need from your new one.

Remember, we wind these to our standard (and it’s a very widely used standard outside of Axesrus too) but, if you do find yourself needing a pickup that’s clockwise wound, north polarity, or something way out – just give us a ring, and we can do it, no problems at all.

Humbucker compatibility!

And one of the times where you ARE going to find weird and wonderful situations where you need weird phasings, is with a HSS guitar.

A much more widely enforced standard, is the polarity and phase of humbucker coils – the slug coil is ALWAYS Counter Clockwise, North Polarity. Always (the screw coil is always clockwise/south)

So, when coil splitting a humbucker, so it behaves correctly in pos 2 on a HSS guitar, you will, normally, be tapping down to the slug coil. That leaves you with a Counter clockwise/North pickup live.

Our middles (and most other middles as standard!) being reverse wound, are also counter clockwise/north – and, technically speaking, that’d be wrong by the modern standard. So – HSS guitars, your better off getting a NOT REVERSE middle pickup, that way, pos 2/split isn’t out of phase. (unless you want it to be, then go for a RWRP middle!)

Alternatively, you cheat – you stick the neck pickup in the middle slot, and the middle pickup in the neck slot (its VERY rare that neck and middle pickups differ in terms of resistance, so, tonally, they’re the same anyway)

Remember though, this is just with HSS guitars – HSH models, you don’t want a reverse wound middle. Get the phasing and polarity right! And if in doubt, I’m but a phone call or email away.

Does Pole staggering matter?

This ones one those things that crops up every so often, and i dont think anyone really has a straight answer, so i figured i'd try and explain what pole staggering is, and whilst i probably cant say "this is better then that!", atleast your slightly better informed.

Why does it exist?

So, traditionally? a single coil pickup comes with staggered poles - specifically, the E and A poles (17.5mm long poles) are shorter then the D ang G poles (18mm) , the B pole (16.5mm) is shorter again, and the high E (17mm) is slightly higher. Its very common, and is an idea thats been around since the very first Stratocaster, and exists purely to "balance" the strings, because the wound strings are "quieter" then the unwound (because they constain less steel within those nickel wraps essentially) and with the 7 1/4" radius necks of the 50s, the strings sat further away from the pickup compared to more modern, flatter radius' necks.(old guitars had worse actions, basically)

Interestingly, on the very first Strat single coil models, the staggering was different, with a 17.5mm being used on the G string, which caused the wound Gs of the time to be slightly too quiet, and that was phased out in 1956 for the "normal" staggering we see pretty much everywhere nowadays.

However - that change in 56, is interesting - because, really, it was done to account for wound G strings... which are a bit of a rarity nowadays (with "unwound Gs" becoming common in the 70s), so why has the idea of staggering not evolved further?

Now, this is going to get a little more into the psychology of guitars rather then the science of pickups, and i dont have all the answers on this front, but if we take this information with a pinch of salt, it does make some sense - and it all boils down to the unavoidable truth of guitar parts in general.

"Pickups with staggered poles have been used, from 1954 until (on the whole) this morning, to make all the music we listen to"

And knowing that? We're basically at a weird point where we've got to admit "all we've ever heard" is music played on the Stratocaster, with pickups that had staggered poles. Its the sound we like. Nowadays, its actually a slight imbalance in the strings, but its something we've grown to love.

Sure, the staggering might have been designed for wound Gs, which we no longer use, sure, necks are, on the whole, flatter then they were in 1957, and allow us to get a much lower action, and the idea of a staggered pole doesn't make a great deal of sense any more, because we're not fighting the same problems we'd have faced the fifties.... but, that doesn't change the fact that our favourite new band, formed in 2019, who play guitars from that year, are all STILL playing pickups with staggered poles. Its just standard practise now, so, dont fight the tide - staggering is the norm, so stick with it, it might be wrong, but its sounds right!

The Exception
Flat necks!

Whilst i can sit here and say "staggering is wrong, but its the wrong we know" - it is still, on the whole, quite helpful! With either a 7 1/4" or a 9 1/2" radius neck being the standard on most models, the only thing thats "wrong", usually, is the G string - theres still enough of a curve in the neck to get the strings sitting far enough away from the pickups face to warrent having staggered poles.

But - when we get away from that? When we get into the world of 12" and 14" and Compound radius necks? We actually come out the other side of the problem. We're not capable of getting the strings so "flat" across the face of the pickup, that staggering is actually causing more of an inbalance in string volume then correcting it.

so, if your playing a guitar with a flatter radius neck - avoid staggering! (its also not a bad idea if your making a HSS or HSH setup either, because no one adjusts the poles on their humbuckers in the same way) - Non-staggered poles will give you more consistent results.

In summary
Warts and all replicas? vintage re-issues? Meet your hero guitars? Where your working with 7 1/4" radius necks? Those of us stubborn enough to still be buying wound Gs? Go for staggering!

Modern guitars based on old designs? 9 1/2" radius? 7 1/4" radius but not using wound Gs? Normal guitars? Your still wanting staggering!

Ultra flat necks? HSH and HSS setups? Super low action? Your probably going to want non-staggered.

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).