Genuine Vintage Strat pickups sound and feel great ... except for the bridge being too sharp and spikey and impossible to balance volume-wise with the neck and middle . Ohhh and then of course there is the dreaded hum .... aaand that horrible string warble .... accompanied by the clutter of strings crashing into frets. Fender pickups were never perfected, Leo found something that worked OK for the 1950's and it was cheap and easy to manufacture, so, he and his successors stuck with it until 1996 when Fender got serious about ridding their pickups of 60Hz mains hum. The difficulty Fender face is that Chris Kinman owns the most, and the best high-value patents for hum cancelling and tone enhancing technology.
Our Impersonator E56 (enhanced 56) pickup is crisp, snappy, pristine, the real deal if authentic 50's Strat sound with brilliant highs is what you want ... minus the mains HUM .... as well as the nasty string warble and also the clutter of buzzing strings-into-fret crash thanks to our special lo strength Alnico magnets. The sounds are airy and with the top end glassiness that vintage enthusiasts crave and has a great instrumental twang all the way down to the open E-6th string.
Our unique Impersonator MV is the perfect vintage bridge pickup because it's softer attack eliminates the razor sharp trebles that vintage pickups are well known for and the midrange is rich in piano-mid-tones for a fantastic twang. As well as producing higher output so it balances with the other two, it's trebles are outstanding and airy, the perfectly focused twang is like nothing you ever heard before, and the lows .... there's no other word for it, just PERFECT.
All 3 pickups also sustain extremely well and all 5 positions have Zero-Hum (no crude RWRP middle pickup needed here). And of course positions 2 and 4 are absolute Knopfler-esque.
This Perfect Vintage set is living testimony to our claim that Kinman Gen-2 and Gen-3 Strat pickups are the new Gold Standard for Stratocaster pickups and it is also available in our Magnum Opus format.
Kinman is the King of Noiseless and the King of perfect 50's Stratocaster sound.
Signal chain requirements for best tone and dynamic performance: Like any pickup it's not a bad idea to use a low capacitance cable to get the incredible performance of these pickups and hear all the nuances you and your guitar can muster. Learn why here Any old cable won't do.
Some people will call these noiseless Stratocaster pickups but Kinman prefers to describe them correctly as Zero-Hum Stratocaster pickups. That's because there are 2 types of noise, Hum which is cancelled in the pickup and Buzz which can only be minimized by shielding the wiring cavities (refer to >Technical >Perfect Guitar >Shielding for newer guitars
*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.
