Gorilla Pickups - Via delle sette chiese 60, 00145 Roma - P. IVA IT15589641008
SHARE THE KNOWLEDGE
We've been around music and instruments from a young age, we've played with bands, recorded in studios, mixed songs, met great musicians, studied, learned, even to this day. The self-improving process never ends and it is our call and pleasure to share our knowledge with customers and friends.
In this section, we will give you all the info about our business and share our knowledge about the guitar pickups world.
How to buy a pickup
On the SHOP page you will find the order’s form. Just fill it with the options you like and send the order, we'll reply as soon as possible with the order checkout and the payment details.
Warranty
We guarantee that our products are free of component and manufacturing defects for 5 years to the original purchaser. The warranty is not transferable. The warranty does not cover any damage through misuse, improper handling, modifications, or the normal wear of covers, bobbins, or poles.
Shipping methods
We ship worldwide with DHL, 5 days max delivery time.
You can find the shipping prices inside the product's order page.
Wires used in our products
We use Polysol and Formvar in AWG42, AWG43, AWG44 and AWG45 gauges. We also have Plain Enamel but is mostly used for custom works and not on our main line.
Do you make replicas?
No. We make our own models with custom shapes when needed, to fit any instrument. Send us a message and, if it’s possible, we’ll make it happen. If you desire something outside of our catalog we can talk about custom-made works.
Pole spacings
Our standard pole spacing for strat sized single coil is 52mm.
Our standard pole spacings for humbuckers sized pickups are:
50 mm - 6 strings neck
52 mm - 6 strings bridge (covered)
53 mm - 6 strings bridge (slanted & open frame)
61,2 mm - 7 strings neck & bridge
71,6 mm - 8 strings neck & bridge
81,6 mm - 9 strings neck & bridge
Can you customize the pole types?
No, poles are not just for aesthetics (in most of the cases), each one generates a specific magnetic field so it’s strictly bonded to the design of the pickup. Only color options are available.
Hand wound coils vs machine wound coils
Let's start by understanding how it works: a coil is a bobbin with an insulated copper wire wounded around. Even the smallest coil has thousands of turns and the process takes about 5/10 minutes depending on how it is performed. While the bobbin (hooked to the machine) spins, a person or a mechanical arm holds the wire and determines the winding pattern. The common industry standard is the "parallel winding", easily performed by a machine and very efficient, no waste of space inside the bobbin and the possibility of many turns in a small space (machines can also manage the wire tension better than human hands so you get more solid and dense coils). An alternative pattern is the "scatter winding" one, while the bobbin spins the wire gets randomly moved so the turns end up not being parallel. The result is a "messy" coil, larger if compared to a machined one with the same number of turns, and with a bigger impedance, because the wire has more way to go. The scatter winding can be performed by human hands or by a programmed machine, the way the wire is wounded determines how sensitive the coil is, plus some technical variations and each pickup builder has its own patterns. There is no scientific method to determine which is best, it is a subjective preference, related to the tone we're after. The technical benefit of a scatter wound coil is that it is sensitive to more harmonics (because of the larger area of the coil, compared to the parallel wounded one) and has a higher resonance peak, a consequence of the random winding pattern that generates a higher distributed capacitance.
Can we make the same pickup for 6, 7 and 8 strings?
It's very difficult and perhaps impossible to have the same tonal profile on all the string types on the same pickup and the reason is the different architecture of the coils. The longer the coil, the bigger the DC resistance it will be. So if you make, for example, 6000 turns on all the bobbins, you'll get a bigger DC resistance on the longer ones, this means a less pronounced resonance peak and more compression. On the other hand, If you make fewer turns on the longer coils to match the general DC resistance, you'll get a higher resonant peak because the coils are thinner, with lower inductance. On most of our products, we don't offer a multi-string choice because sometimes the design is too specific to be modified but, when we give the option, we're considering that the 7 and 8 string version will sound brighter. That's actually a good thing since 7 and 8 string instruments usually sound darker than the 6 string ones, so the shifted resonant peak will minimize the differences.
Understanding the sound of a pickup
When we buy a pickup, we are not really aware of all of its potential, we have to listen to it with our guitar, by playing it with our hands, with our pedals, our amplifier, anything else we might own. Pickup makers might give us basic info like DC resistance, type of magnets, and some EQ spec, but it's just the starting point! Your signal chain and ability is the biggest determining factor. No one will stop you from playing jazz music with an aggressive pickup or execute good riffs with a low gain humbucker and, talking about styles...they evolve, besides, there are trends, so an "extreme" pickup today could be a mild one tomorrow. That being said, can we understand a pickup before buying it? In my opinion, we can figure out 50% of it. Can we trust other musicians? Of course, but we have to keep in mind that the sound is shaped by their signal chain and playing style. Often times is a matter of faith, and even though a well-built pickup is a good starting point, knowing how to match the right product with your instrument is fundamental. In my opinion, the most important thing is the pickup’s potential, what can or can't do, his response to the touch, how it manages distortions, the purpose for which is created. If you can get your pickup to sound exactly as you need then it’s the perfect pickup for you.
Is the tone profile of magnets useful?
Magnets are the pulsating heart of the pickup and we can easily find all the info about them on forums and maker's websites. Alnico2 is soft and clear, Alnico5 is hotter and punchier in the low-mids, Ceramic8 more output and tighter low end, Alnico8 is halfway between Alnico5 and Ceramic8, etc. These are all true and partially useful info, but you must focus on the fact that the magnet tone profile is just the starting point and there are a lot of other factors to take into account, like the wire we're gonna use, the gauge, the insulation, the number of turns, poles type and material, etc. Each of them can more or less influence the final sound of the pickup and for this reason you can't expect, for example, to have a warm pickup just because it has an Alnico5 magnet in it. So, rely on the pickup tone profile given by the builder but use all other info with caution.
Potting the pickups
There is not much to add to what you may already know. A guitar's pickup works like a standard microphone, but it uses coils instead of a vibrating membrane, that’s because it needs to capture a magnetic field modulation instead of a mechanical air vibration, BUT what happens if the wire constituting the coil moves? The pickup will become a microphone and we don't want that, at least not all of the time. What's the solution? To fill the spaces between the windings to prevent them from moving and we can achieve that with a few methods: Potting the pickup in a warm bath of paraffin or a paraffin/beeswax mixture (it changes the melting point and the structure of the solution) or in a cold one of epoxy resin (for active pickups). The result is a reduction of the pickup’s feedback and a dulling of the high frequencies response due to the lowering of the resonant peak (because we're changing the internal distributed capacitance), from the perceptive point of view is like talking in a room without furniture and then in one with lot of stuff that attenuates the echoes. As always, we have to make a decision taking our style into consideration along what genres we're gonna play (If you're a clean tone player an unpotted pickup might be the one you’re looking for, otherwise, if you only play heavy music be sure to pot them in a vacuum).
DC Resistance
I'd like to clarify the role of the DC resistance, one of the most determining factors when it comes to choosing a pickup. it is commonly mistaken for something that tells us when a pickup sounds louder than another one and it's partially true, but is not the whole picture, because many factors contribute to the "electrical" volume (to distinguish it from the perceived one). First of all, you have to consider the type and size of the magnet. You'll have a louder pickup, for example, by changing the magnet for a bigger one of the same type, because the magnetic field will be more intense and will extend further outside the poles generating more output and overtone presence. Other elements are the shape of the poles (thinner ones concentrate the magnetic field giving more output) and the shape of the bobbins. So why is DC resistance so important? Because it gives us an idea of the pickup's attitude and is a simple parameter that anyone can understand. Usually, a higher DC resistance means more gain, more compression, more bass presence, and aggressivity. I say usually because if I make the same pickup with the same DC resistance and a thinner wire the result is gonna be a less full sound, due to the smaller coil, therefore a decreased perceived volume. On the other hand, a smaller coil means an uplift in the resonance peak and POTENTIALLY an increase of the perceived output because we are more sensitive to the midrange of the spectrum, so the higher is the resonance the more our ear is stimulated. So let’s just agree that DC resistance tells us how much a pickup is compressed, but keep in mind that there are more ways to make a pickup sound aggressive and even a 14Kohm pickup could beat a 20kohm one.
The right potentiometer
For some, changing the value of the potentiometers means changing the sound of the guitar, for others the difference is nonexistent. Who is right? Science is. We are not talking about someone's ability to hear what changes from case to case, we are talking about how a single component on the electrical circuit can really affect the final sound. So, what does science tell us? A potentiometer is a resistance, not an inductance, it cannot change the position of the resonance peak but it can make it more or less pronounced, so it alters the perceived volume (because the resonance peak is usually hearable in the middle frequencies, the area of the spectrum to which our ear is more sensitive). We can also see a small shift of the resonance peak, but it depends on the wire/potentiometer system and not only on the potentiometers. So how do we manage that? Learn this little rule: the higher the potentiometer’s value is, the more pronounced the resonance peak will be, so we perceive more volume, presence, and brightness. That's why we usually find 500Kohm potentiometers on guitars and 250Kohms on basses (or on guitars with single coils where you need to soften the high frequencies). But we're not finished yet. The lesser the value of the potentiometer, the more control we gain on the volume knob, and the more chances it has to "eat" the signal. So, for example, using low-value potentiometers will increase the "volume roll-off" control, slightly darken the sound and lower the output. Each pickup and context has its ideal potentiometer but it is not a defined rule, there's not right and wrong, just make sure that the total resistance of the guitar’s electronics is 10 times bigger than the resistance of the pickup so it won't drastically affect its sound. Keep in mind that as usual, I'm simplifying a system that, in reality, is much more complex.
Adjusting the pickup height
Most of the time people don’t really care about the distance between the strings and the pickups. Big mistake. The height adjustment is CRUCIAL. Why? Because the magnetic field changes every millimeter you get away from the poles. Each type of pole generates a particular magnetic field and normally the intensity of this field is halved after 3mm (of distance from the pole) and after 5mm is about a third. We are not really losing power, we are just enlarging the magnetic flux so if we take a small portion of the field we will have less energy but what we obtain is a larger sensitive area. The magnetic field is like a fountain pouring out from the poles, going up and then falling down and running on the side of the pickup, to finally return back from the other side of the magnet. So, if we increase the distance between the pickup and the strings we get less output, more sustain (due to a lower magnetic pull on the strings), and a larger sensitive area, meaning more and broader harmonics. The result is a warmer and fuller sound, with less bite and presence, but that is not necessarily a bad thing because it all depends on the taste of the artist. Pickups have several internal configurations, several magnets with different strengths therefore we can't have a “standard” setup, and I'm not here to say how to set your instrument but to give you the knowledge to do that properly. The better option is to follow the maker's directions and, after that, modify the setup by ear, making sure to stay at least 3 mm away from the strings to avoid bad signal distortions due to the magnetic pull.