?Lindy Fralin is a small pick up builder in Virginia. He’s been at it a long time and his pickups are passing the test of time, ?as a small following of customers has grown into international acclaim. He basically recreates the great Gibson and Fender pickups of the past and puts a tweak or two in them for good measure, there are many folks who believe that his pickups are BETTER than vintage. He excels at customer service and offers a rewind guarantee on ALL his pickups, so if you don’t care for it he’ll rewind until it fits your personal tastes, now that’s incredible and an iron clad guarantee in my opinion. Maybe not the cheapest but for a hand wound humbucker of this caliber $120 ain’t bad.

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?The pickup I’m reviewing is the humbucker 9k in output with open coils. His better selling humbuckers range between 8k -9k in output depending on what YOU need, other winds are available if these don’t cover your needs. On the construction side his pickups are made like the old P.A.F.’s with many of the same materials for accurate sound but he uses Alnico IV magnets instead of the popular Alnico 2’s or Alnico 5’s. He feels that the Alnico IV’s provide a better tonal blend and I’ll agree but more on that later. This is a direct replacement for any Gibson humbucker with single braided hook up wire, additional wiring changes can be ordered for splitting the coils.

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?O.K. so how does she sound? ?Well I tried the pickup out in my Les Paul Classic and immediately I was impressed with the tone. The sound was very articulate and “complex” for lack of a better term, it just seemed the guitar came to life and the overtones and sustain was incredible. Plenty of gain, very ?similar to Duncan ’59 in gain just smoother. Nice and even sounding with GREAT mids, singing highs and tight lows. No harshness at all although I would say it’s a little brighter pick up, certainly not “dark” sounding in any way. Very lively and you could hear overtones in the guitar I’ve never heard before. The best way to describe it is that it really brings the best from your guitar, so if you have a good sounding guitar this is the ticket, nice and BALANCED. ?Compared to Alnico2 pickups it’s a tad more aggressive but still smooth and compared to Alnico 5’s it’s much less harsh with maybe a bit less aggression but certainly not lame in any way. I would describe the tone as just beautiful, more like you would hear in the difference in tone between a boutique amp or a regular circuit board amp, just simply more pure TONE. These are perfect for the Blues guys or rockers but for shredders it’s just not hot enough to bring out all those pinch harmonics. The tone is hard to explain because it’s different than all the other PAF type pickups because of the magnets he uses. I would add that these are slightly more Hi-fi in sound and definately more tonally pleasing on the ears. There is a clarity even in the high gain mode that’s really cool, these simply work great under all operating conditions, clean or distorted.

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? I love Lindy’s stuff, if you want a beautiful sounding pickup that’s just tonal heaven in the tradition of the great PAF’s look no further!! It’s a 9 of 10 only docking it because it lacks a little in the pinch harmonic mode but then these aren’t ultra high gain pickups either. Judging against most Duncan pickups I would say these just have more “complexity” and “articulation” in the tone. Try it out, I think you’ll love it if you want something with just pure TONE!

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Guitar Guru