Pickin' up what you're puttin' down - Guitar Pickups Vol. 3: The Wide Range of the Rio Grande [016]
Stuck in my head: "Powerful Stuff"
The Fabulous Thunderbirds
Powerful Stuff
Pardon the tommy crewsness. I don't like his movies, but I found that many of the other videos for "Powerful Stuff" were shorted by fourteen seconds. This video maintains the integrity of the full studio recording.
This is a follow-up to a fb post; it has been shared here, cleaned up, and outfitted with links for your convenience:
I had placed an order for a Stratocaster neck plate with Rio Grande Pickups in July 2020. At the time, I knew there were delays due to material shortages, so Ii didn't expect the order for such a tiny thing to be fulfilled right away; Rio Grande had done right by me with every previous purchase, so I was totally willing to be easy, especially for such a small, dumb thing.
I'd email them every now and again to check in... but mostly, because it's important to put things in writing. I knew they had experienced shortages all the way through summer 2021, but they didn't respond much after that.
I'm not exactly sure what the hell happened, but the whole thing just fell by the wayside. I wrote them today [May 11, 2022] to cancel the order, but then I realized that sometimes a fucking phone call resolves things.
So, I spoke with Dave today, the owner, and not only does he have no idea what the hell happened and is shipping the plate, but he said they're resurrecting Robin Guitars! for nerds, this is HUGE news!
I'm really glad I called. Hell, the only reason I want the neck plate is so I can sample the material; they use the same brushed steel as the tops for their '72 Telecaster drop-in replacements for the Fender Wide Range reissue mistakes.
"You know, everyone else just makes a clone; ours are different."
"Oh, I know. I already have them installed in my '72. I'm thinking of buying them all over again so I can maintain the look." (the original set do not have covers.)
"Wait... you already own them and are willing to buy them a second time?"
"Yup. 😊 "
"You're crazy. I can respect that."
So... let's talk about this.
I've touched on a few points in a previous entry but I think it's worth a re-telling.
I decided I wanted a '72 Telecaster Deluxe Reissue around 2009 and picked one up about a year later. I'd been pretty ignorant about the pickup situation until the piece arrived and I realized that regular humbuckers weren't going to fit into the pickguard. A few nights of reading went by and I became so engulfed by the legend of the god damned wide range pickups.
There were only a handful of modifications that could be made in 2010, and none seemed either financially feasible, true to spec, or a combination of those factors. The original Fender Wide Range pickups were constructed of The Magic Alloy™, CuNiFe (Copper, Nickel, Iron), so you could either scope for a set of originals on Ebay, hovering around $600 each, or you could reach out to Telenator (and Bob deserves his own post, but... this) and have him construct a brand new set for you. Pickup winder Curtis Novak would also be able to rebuild the reissue pickups that came with your guitar, but that wasn't an easy process, either.
Look... there's a ton of guitar mythos, and I do not believe that a piece of metal has tonal properties. I think the standard alloy of AlNiCo (Alumminum, Nickel, Cobalt) or FeCrCo (Iron, Chromium, Cobalt) are likely to produce the same effect in this application, but legends and traditions are crazy things to overcome.
Other proposed solutions included swapping out the pickguard for a new one that would fit standard-sized humbuckers - which just seemed like cheating - or replacing the potentiometers ("pots") with a 1megΩ set instead of the stock 250kΩ crap that Fender so generously gave us (bastards). No load levels are going to change th electronic construction and tonal capability of any pickup, especially those reissues. A 1meg isn't going to make them sound better.
The last option that was floating around the forums was to purchase true drop-in replacements from Rio Grande... except nobody had actually done this, so there were no demos, there was no experience set, and there wasn't anyone who could validate these assertions.
However, because I'm a hard-ass, and because I believe in my home state, I saved up some money and took the plunge. They've been installed in that '72 Tele for the last ten years.
Here's where I now run into
The Rio Grande Big Bottom '72 set looks like this:
When installed - such as in this sample photo of a bridge pickup - they look like this:
At the time, Rio Grande offered different sparkle or "tortoise" bobbin tops:
Of course, in order to be secretive and feel cool and attempt to maintain a similar look, I used chrome tape to cover mine - it's not attractive:
In recent years, Rio Grande rebranded the pups from "Big Bottom '72" to "Big Bottom '72 Wider Range", and introduced a version with "Raw Finish Faceplates with Skull":
The new covers look like this in a real-world application, but the lighting sucks in these photos... the only photos I could find:
So... I'm torn.
The neck plate is a sample of what those covers will look like in my hand, in my light. Rio Grande has stated that the original pups wil not accept an aftermarket cover, so my options are once again limited if I want to maintain the original look of what has been a guitar obsession for the last twelve years.
Dave is absolutely correct about one thing: his pickups are not clones of the original Wide Range humbuckers; they are very special and unique and powerful and cannot be wielded by a mere mortal man. If these things weren't so fucking special, I'd have opted to strip them out years ago for one of the clones, or even now with the actual Fender 2020 CuNiFe pups that have been sitting in my electronics drawer for the last two months. As I said, I believe in my home state, and these are very much me... and I don't apologize to anyone for that.
Rio Grande Pickups - Made in Texas.
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