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Boutique, 100% hand-made pickups, for guitar & bass
Here you will find some general, as well as technical information on GAS handmade pickups. And, why should you try GAS Pickups? Well, we give you 3 simple reasons:
1. Expand the tonal range of your electric instrument.
2. Upgrade your electric instrument's quality with 100% handwound, hand-assembled pickups, made from the worldwide best, hand picked materials!
3. Get more response at your
picking hand. That means a wider "tone vocabulary", which will turn
you to a better musician.
GAS Pickups - Making guitar
& bass players happy...!
International customers (ordering, inquiries,
info requests, etc,): Please e-mail us at
gaspickups@gmail.com. We'll be happy to assist you and
discuss your needs, in order to offer you the best possible
solution for your instrument!
Retailer for Attiki and Greece:
Music Accessories (www.musicaccessories.gr)
shop!
Please scroll down on this page, in order to:
- Read
our HOT NEWS,
- Find some interesting information about the design and production of our pickups,
- See some of our custom projects
Or be sure to visit the website's subpages, by clicking on the relevant knobs on top of this page:
-
"Singles",
"Buckers", "Bass" pages are Product pages
and obviously feature more details about our
products.
- "Users" page shows guitar- and bass-players who use GAS pickups, as well as luthiers and guitar manufacturing companies who use GAS Pickups on some of their products.
For the current, valid price list (v12.1 for 2022, prices
are without VAT), just press on the button to the right:
Hot
news...
- March 15th: Please
welcome: Kostis Fouk (lead guitarist at the Greek metal legendary
band Rotting Christ) with his Les Paul fitted with a 58 Legends
set!
- March 11th: New S Single
model: GASlite 55.
A higher output single with A3
alloy rods.
More in our Singles
page!
- March 3rd: New GAS humbucker: GASrailer.
As wished by many guitar
players, our first humbucker in a single coil format. More details
in our Buckers page
GAS Drax Custom Signature video.
At the video to the left, Gus
Drax, Greek guitarist extraordinaire, shows how it sounds on his
Siggi Braun II Signature guitar, playing that legendary Jason
Becker tune with extreme precision.
You
About
GAS Pickups...
GAS
pickups
Elektrisola P155 wire
reels
A Mini coil winder by
CNC
Alnico bars in GAS (II, III,
V)
German Nickel covers (new and
aged look)
Frequency response curves on the
Pickup Analyzer screen
Different staggering on GAS S
singles
Wax potting of the first GAS
pickup ever, the #1 GAStone single!
Aged PAFoid M humbucker with
cover
We
knew...
When we decided to proceed with
the manufacturing of guitar pickups, we knew that it was a really
tough thing. But we made it even more demanding: We didn’t want to
be “just another” pickup manufacturer. We wanted to produce fine,
yet affordable guitar & bass pickups, covering a wide range in
the sound spectrum of the electric guitar & bass, so that quite
everyone would find his favorite one.
And then, we moved
on.
Countless hours of studying
(again, after 25 years!) the Physics, in order to be able to design
properly: A guitar pickup is WAY MORE than just winding a
coil…
Whole weeks of researching the world market for the best materials…
Dozens of mugs, full of coffee,
really helped keep our heads in place...
All GAS Pickups are designed here in our lab, and they are hand wound and hand assembled! Further, all GAS Pickups' parts are made strictly in the US, Italy and Germany! We test all pickups one by one here in GAS, before shipping. And this is our main warranty to you!
We knew… …but we took our chance!
Wire: A
"fine" thing...
The wire, which is used for the pickup coils, is one of the most important materials for creating good pickups, and also for keeping the consistency of the production line on a high level.
At GAS Pickups, we mainly
use the P155 - Grade 1 "Polysol enamelled" copper wire from
Elektrisola™ (AWG 42 & 43), a world leader in industrial wire
manufacturing. The P155 is not just another copper wire. It
furthermore has a thin tin layer over the copper (tinned before
enamelling), that keeps the outer wire surface absolutely even, and
ensures constant resistance and capacitance over length unit. And
this is a crucial fact for perfect coils with maximum
consistency.
Further upon, Grade 2 PVA AWG 42
copper wire from Elektrisola, is also used on some GAS models. This
features a thicker insulation from the same material as the old
Formvar® wire!
Last-not-least, the top-quality
AWG 42 Plain Enamel wire from Elektrisola is also being used on
some GAS models.
A nice
turn...
When deciding on the coil
winding machine, it was clear that we needed a really professional,
reliable solution, that would allow precise creation of the
designed coils, as well as easy, perfect recreation of any of
them.
That's why we finally went for
the CNC mini coil winder®.
That small unit, operated entirely from a PC, allows not only
precise coil winding, but also perfect reproduction (since all coil
designs are saved in its library directories). Further upon,
automatic-, manual- and also scatterwound winding are offered. It's
easy to operate and needs very limited space due to its small
footprint.
Magnetic
issues...
Magnetic material sets important
prerequisites for the main dynamic behavior of a pickup. In GAS
Pickups we use AlNiCo II, III and V cast magnet bars & rods,
and also OX Ceramic bars.
AlNiCo material affects also the
inductance of the coils, and therefore the final frequency response
of the pickup. The A2 & A5 magnet bars, which are used on out
humbuckers, are made by the world's top manufacturers in the US (as
Thomas & Skinner, AMT, Adams Industries), the same ones who
delivered magnet bars in the 50's & 60's to the top US music
industry brands!
All magnet bars and rods are
strictly magnetized by our suppliers on our specs. Although, during
our extensive quality control, poor magnetized bars & rods are
trashed, and replaced with proper ones, in order to ensure the
required field strength and homogeneity.
Base,
Roof & in-between...
Metal parts used in humbuckers,
like baseplates and covers, can be really disastrous for the sound,
since these may sigificantly increase the Eddy currents and thus
decrease the upper mids and treble response of the pickup. The
effect appears mostly (but not only...) on cheap
pickups.
The baseplates and covers used
in the GAS humbuckers are made exclusively from high quality German
Silver (copperles plated!), a material with extremely high
impedance, in order to keep the Eddy currents as low as possible.
Other small tricks, such as inslulating the magnet bar &
poleshoe from the baseplate, do also help in reducing those
currents.
Further upon, also all other
metal parts in our humbuckers (fillister screws, slugs, poleshoes,
mounting screws, etc.) are of the best available quality, ensuring
proper function of the designed magnetic circuit.
The naked
truth...
The assembled pickup needs to be
measured, in order for its correct functionality to be verified.
However, to just measure its R-L-C data it's not enough at all. The
frequency response is the
main measure that will show if the pickup really works as it was
designed to.
For this task we use the
Lemme Pickup Analyzer, a PC based
tool that allows precise measurement of the frequency response of a
stand alone pickup, but also when connected to a volume and/or a
tone control, with a cable, etc. Therefore, you can be sure that
EVERY GAS pickup which leaves the
house has passed such a high-grade quality & consistency
control.
Correct
staggering...
For proper balancing between
strings and best response, we set the correct pole staggering on
our pickups, which is almost unique for every
guitar.
While for Humbuckers and G-Singles it's fairly easy to set up the screw height anytime, S- and T-Singles, GAS-Masters as well as Bass pickups require a very careful staggering, depending mainly on their position on the relevant guitar. Currently, most of our single coil bobbins arrive already with our GAS Custom staggering.,
Wax against
howling...
In order to keep GAS pickups as immune as possible against feedback, we do pot them inside a wax mixture (paraffine & bees wax).
Wax potting, however, affects
the resonance frequency by lowering it for a few hundreds of Hz
(depending on the model, the wax mixture and the potting time).
Therefore, we have to consider this side effect into the initial
pickup design, so that the final, potted pickup delivers the
desired frequency response curve.
Note: We always pot our pickups
in the old fashioned way, taking the desired time and temperature,
ensuring the best results. No vacuum potting is used in GAS,
because the pickup needs some time to get in the (higher) potting
temperature too, apart from the wax, in order to allow to the wax
to perfectly fill any space inside. This is not possible within the
few seconds of the vacuum potting.
Lookin'
old...
Since artificial Aging was (and
still is) out business, we can deliver any of our pickups in an
authentic aged look.
After all, G.A.S. means "Guitar Aging Studio" (we bet you didn't know that, did'ya?)
Just ask us for aging services!
Disclaimer:
All company names used here (Gibson, CNC, EMG, Elektrisola, Lemme, Fender), and also all product names (Strat, Telly, Jazz-Bass, Precision Bass, Les Paul, P90, P155) that are mentioned in the website, are registered names of the relevant companies and in no way related to GAS pickups.
Limited
Warranty:
GAS Pickups have a limited
warranty of 3 years after purchasing (as dated on
the pickup warranty card). We will either repair or replace your
pickup with a new one (same model) in case that your pickup fails
due to improper production/quality control from our side.
Installation of the repaired/new pickup is included. After the 3
year period, we will replace a failed pickup by charging ONLY the
replacement costs.
The limited warranty does
not cover damaged pickups due to any
further cause (improper installation,
re-installation & de-installation, exposure to
heat/humidity, coil deformation, exposure to high magnetic field,
improper electrical connection). Freight costs during pickup
replacement are on the customer. Warranty is not valid without the
relevant pickup warranty card.
All trades are imposed to the EU
law.
Copyright: Guitar Aging
Studio
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