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- by Neville Martin
- Lindy Fralin Single Coils
“It's not fair is it. I get this prewired threesome of Lindy Fralin pickups on a torty scratch plate, with vintage knobs and covers--and I've got the choice of Boogie, Marshall, Laney, Carlsboro, Matchless and Fender to try them through. Decisions decisions! I've opted for the Boogie Dual Rectifier Tremoverb combo, as it has all the facilities I require. I also know it's sound pretty well. I could have gone mad and tried everything but I think that would have only served to confuse us all.
So who is Lindy Fralin? He's a guitarist and pickup maker from Richmond, Virginia who reckons he has captured the sound of pre-CBS Fender pickups. "Guitar pickup making is an elusive science," says Lindy, "as much trial and error as theory. It's a complicated relationship between magnetism, capacitance, inductance, and impedance."
Everybody knew that, of course, but what's important to us--especially since this set retails at just under two hundred pounds -- is, do they do what he says? Construction Using Alinco V staggered and beveled magnets to 1955 specifications, cloth covered wire, potting for anti-howl and coming with covers standard, the Fralins certainly do look and feel right. This set came on a tortoiseshell WD pickguard, five way switch and pots ( not included in the price). I attached to a favorite guitar of the six-a-side, two horned variety and set about my business.
In use: It's that old dilemma again; how to describe tone. All I can really do is match the various pickup selections with the classic ones I hold in my head and see how the Fralins compare. I can also do a side by side with a modern guitar of the same general type-if you know what I mean- and see what transpires.
First of all, I have to say that the guitar and these pickups sounded totally "real" with that lovely woody tone you hear in Hendrix recordings (especially live). The bridge pickup is a slightly higher output than the neck and middle, and that's how it should be, to maintain not only the right balance from one pickup to the next, but also to squeeze a bit more out that bridge/middle combination. My two favourite Strat tones are bridge and bridge/middle (a gorilla wearing boxing gloves can get a good sound using the neck position) and so I'll start at the bridge and call that position one. Let's look at clean sounds first...
A good bridge pickup on this kind of a guitar should sound clear but not sharp -- even up loud it shouldn't slice your head off -- and it's bad "broken glass" pickups that have frightened the faint hearted away from position one. Hendrix knew how to use it, Dave Gilmour knows how to use it, and Lindy Fralin knows how to produce it; this is as sprangy a sound as you'll find and you best country licks will sound wonderful here--chuck that old Tele away.
Position two is full and woody and you could use it all night for rhythm and solos; again there is no harshness or fake LA over production about the tone-you know you hear this sound over used and over eq'd on every other LA studio track.
Position three is your actual "Hey Joe". I'm not to keen on this one usually, because to me it's the basic, generic, boring, electric guitar tone. But again this very useable, although I think I'd still flip to the neck position for something similar but more defined. Next is the Knopfler sound, and in this case it really is. A bit of reverb and just a touch of drive make it all the better. And now it's Jimi and classic Stevie Ray!
Like I say, although this is probably most people's favorite Strat sound I rarely go for position five, expect when deliberately aping the aforementioned guitarists. But somehow, even using the 2x12 Boogie I could still hear the sound of a 60's Marshall stack--call me pretentious (Oh, go on!) but that's the only way I can describe it.
And with distortion? The Tremoverb has as much over drive as anyone could need, but these pickups demand some respect, too much fuzz and you lose this tone. What's great about the Fralin's is you can wind up the clean sound really loud until the amp's power stage starts to clip and that's one sort of distortion. Crank both volume and gain so both ends of the amp are sweating a bit and the sound is very musical indeed. Like I say, providing you don't swamp the sound in fuzz, all the pickup selections still sound like themselves-not as obvious as you might think, believe me -- and if you set the amp dirty and the turn the guitar down, that's pure clean Hendrix.
Conclusion: Okay, I come from bluesy rocky back ground and those sounds are what I'm looking for. But my experience tells me that if a pickup is great for my needs then it's usually perfect for others too. What impressed me about Lindy Fralin's products is their faithful reproduction of all the great tones I have in my head. Sure, a fine amp is going to lend something extra-- a springboard from which to let the pickups soar, could be one way of looking at it -- but a good amp will rarely make a bad guitar sound good. I matched my guitar against a modern one with common or "garden" production pickups and it was like a fine Claret against Beaujolais nouveau; i.e. no contest.
So you realise I like the Fralin's, but now I'm going to do something I really hate, and which I view as creepy beyond belief when I see other reviewers do it. But...wait for it...I'm going to buy these pickups. Honestly, I really am.”
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