Main Description

A Vintage Pickup in a modern world

The Classic, (belatedly, the Classic 50, which was the erstwhile “Classic 50s Deluxe”) is  a humbucker, much like the Bourbon Cities and the Hot Irons, that we’ve been making for nearly 20 years at this point, and have survived the change from far eastern OEM manufacturing right through to their current form, where they’re high end, UK made, hand wound, heavily customisable little things!

The names a little bit of a hangover at this point, and, honestly, it makes me cringe a little, because, really? They’re not all that 50s… they’re certainly closer to “what was used in 1957” then some humbuckers we make, but, if you’re looking for a historic recreation? The True 50s is miles closer.

Nowadays, the Classic falls into into a funny little niche really. Its not a historic replica, and its not overly specialist, and its not massively “seasoned” to make it “ a must have” for any particular style of music. Its just a very capable, very pleasing, very well balance humbucker within in the “vintage” realm, without really trying to impose itself on your style.

Built around an alnico 3 bar magnet, and wound to a versatile at 7.7K, using 42 AWG Plain enamel, it retains plenty of headroom, a gorgeous roundness in its crystal clear, brassy highs, and a warm, rich, well behaved low end. All coming together to make an absolutely perfect combination that’s going to sing when used for Blues, Jazz and pop.

If I was being a little hard on the old girl, I’d maybe argue that the extra warmth and rounded nature of the highs, mean that if your planning on using her for “vintage rock”, shes maybe not going to have the definition in her bite that you’d maybe be looking for, and the Bourbon City would be a better choice, but, honestly? The Classic isn’t a slouch when it comes to a little gain, and it will be more then capable of rattling the windows if that’s your thing, but it wouldn’t be my first choice personally.

Where it really excels, is in the cleans, in the heart and soul, in that ragged edge just before true amp breakup. It really is a truly wonderful humbucker that’ll tick an awful lot of boxes.

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Sound Clips

Should be just below!

Customisation

Once upon a time, we used to make all of our humbuckers “entirely customisable” – you could get any of our humbuckers in the traditional setup, with 6 screws and 6 slug poles, you could get them in 12 slug with a H gate cover and a pink foil top plate, you could get them with 12 hex poles and an oversized ceramic magnet… you get the idea. The options were endless – it was great!

However – it did throw up a weird “quirk” with humbuckers. In short, “Pole choice matters”, and, to put that into real terms, a humbucker built with 12 screw poles, sounds different to one built with 12 slugs, or to a traditional 6 and 6 setup.

So, before we get any further, go into this eye open.

A 12 screw version of any humbucker will sound different to a “normal” version – it contains less iron within the coil, that reduces the inductance, which pushes the resonant peak to a higher frequency. This pickup will come across as slightly brighter, and slightly less powerful.

And, inversely to that, a 12 slug humbucker contains more iron, which increases the inductance, pushes the resonant peak lower, and makes the pickup feel darker and more powerful.

So, the reason we stopped “ultimate customisation” is this. Part of the skill of designing humbuckers (and selling them!), is knowing EXACTLY what they do, how they do it, and being able to guide people to buy the right pickup for their needs. And, ultimately, when you start changing things about a humbucker, like, swapping the magnets, or changing poles, you are changing what a pickup does, and, very quickly, you get to the point where the pickup isn’t behaving the same, and, eventually, that put pay to the idea of “this pickup can be anything you want it to be” (at least with humbuckers!) because, seemingly cosmetic changes were changing the tone.

However, having said that? I do appreciate that, at a certain point, form does overtake function, and if you’ve got your heart set on a 12 screw pole humbucker, and you want it to be 8K, Alnico 2, so on and so forth… me sitting say “well, its not going to sound the same!” probably makes absolutely no difference.

So, to close out the worst sales pitch I’ve ever done – if you want a Bourbon city with 12 screw poles, or a Classic with 12 slug, so it looks all modern and fancy, and you can live with the idea that its not going to sound the same as the traditional set you’ve got in your Les Paul… crack on! With my blessing.

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.

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, as always, mute what top end "snap" there is ever so slightly - i actually prefer the Classic WITH a cover, because, lets be honest, if your going for warm and wonderful? You might as well go the whole hog right? We're not in this for clarity and definition, we're in this for body and soul, and fitting a cover, not only gives you something that looks a million dollars, but it does round things out a little, and gives a slightly more "luxurious" feel to the tone.

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).