The sound that started it all — perfected.
Vintage soul. Engineered without compromise.
Tap to read Customer Reviews for the neck & middle
Impersonator E56
Tap to read Customer Reviews for the bridge
Impersonator MV
Vintage Strat® pickups gave the world magic — and problems ...
such as piercing bridge, Volume imbalance, 50~60Hz mains hum, warbling notes from excessively strong magnets, the infamous overbearing G-3rd string.
Leo Fender’s 1950s design was brilliant for its time. But it was never perfected.
Kinman perfected it.
The Impersonator E56 middle and neck pickups deliver true vintage ’50s brilliance — glassy highs, airy chime, instrumental twang and the classic low mid scoop — without hum, without string-pull warbling, without strings-into-fret crash. Just pure, gorgeous, uncluttered open Strat tone.
The Impersonator MV in bridge position is what vintage never achieved: rich piano-mid authority, focused twang, balanced output, and sweet extended glassy highs — no razor edge and no icepick.
All five positions: Noiseless - Zero Hum.
No crude RWRP compromise.
Sustain that breathes.
Positions 2 and 4 are utterly Knopfler-esque.
This is not a re-creation.
It is the completion of the original idea.
Kinman Gen-2 pickups — the Gold Standard of Strat tone.
Also available in our supreme Gen-3 Magnum Opus format.
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Noiseless & Zero-Hum — Precisely Defined
If you're searching for the best noiseless Strat pickups, you've found one of the original pioneers. Chris Kinman has spent over 30 years solving the problems that traditional stacked pickups fail to solve: IE eliminating hum while preserving the full dynamic response, harmonic bloom and expressive feel of a genuine vintage Stratocaster pickup. It took a Patented magnetic invention to achieve this lofty performance.
We call them Zero-Hum™ pickups because that is technically more accurate than the best "noiseless" Strat pickups. Hum generated inside the pickup is eliminated. Electrical Buzz noise generated elsewhere in the guitars wiring is a different phenomenon and is minimized through proper shielding. See >Technical > Perfect Guitar Shielding for newer guitars)
Signal Chain Matters
For maximum tone and dynamic range, use a low-capacitance cable — as with all passive pickups. Learn why ordinary cables restrict performance Any old cable won't do if you want great sound.
*Stratocaster* and Strat* are a Trade Marks of Fender Musical Instrument Corp. Kinman is not connected to Fender.
** Alnico-K is a unique proprietary rod magnet developed by Kinman in 1985. It has 40% less string pull than Alnico-5 so sustain is longer and there is much less clatter from string crash and no Strat-itis string warble ... and yet it produces the identical sound of Alnico-5.
