What do you think of cheap rails?

[Deleted]

I just found those :

www.axesrus.com/axepickup.htm#Scoils for 16 GBP (around 20 USD or 15 Euros)



and those

www.northwestguitars.co.uk/product/Single_Coil_Size_Humbucker_Pickup_SBA-77 for 13 GBP



What would you say?

[Yew]

I would say look at irongear pups. I have some good experience with them

[Deleted]

ok, but iron gear come at a price around 40 euros, while with these above even if it is total crap no big deal! i might order just one.

[Yew]

aha, I was assuming the Irongear rail was only a few quid more expensive. I would say that axesrus pup is probably an artec sounds model, so could be worth going for if you like

[Deleted]

aha thanx. Thing is, i bought stuff from northwestguitars before and they were very helpful and friendly. (+ i have a discound voucher from them, so the rail will be nearly 11 GBP .....) but maybe i will go for axersus ....

Would you suggest buying two (neck/bridge), to reduce shipping cost overhead, or just one and see how it goes?

[Yew]

I would say, look at the soung clips, and look for some reviews online. if you lie what you see, get two, if your not sure, get one and see

[Deleted]

Yew,i couldn't resist and ordered the cheap ones from northwestguitars. I'll let you know of the results!

[Deleted]

Yew, the northwestguitars is artec as well. I have them, but i wont get them working till tomorrow,
i'll write a review ASAP. They measure exactly 12 Kohm !! which is good compared to the 11.5 advertised!

[Deleted]

I installed them!!! and .... they rock!!!
Fast track 1, fast track 2, super distortion, and of course the YJM HS-3 all seem to eat the dust of the mighty artec !!!!

Great for shredding, great for solos, great for heavy rythms, for fast muted riffs, for harmonics, for sustain!!!

The only pup in the house that beats them is the Seymour Duncan livewire bridge (active) !! (the Seymour Duncan livewire neck (active as well) sounds weak compared to the artect.

I hope to upload some real material soon.

The sustain has improved impressively and i think major bridge upgrade (i am thinking of 2-point pivot wilkinson) will add to more sustain!

[Deleted]

some gotchas with the artec rails....

1) they are not so quite. The dimarzio hs-3 which i now have in the middle position and the Dimarzio rails (fast track) which i have on my other guitar are 100% noise free.
2) a strange thing happened regarding a certain very intense buzz, when i touched the pups with my hand.

partially this was due to my wiring error, but let me get this str8 from the beginning.

I must mention a certain peculiarity with my wiring due to which this problem was manifested : the tremolo ground was in air, unconnected.
This was due to the fact that i am anticipating the moment when i am gonna properly shield the cavities
so i postponed the installation of the tremolo wire, leaving the wire taped in the wooden control cavity, waiting
to do this metal plate +ring connector trick as described in the GN1 site. (basic quieting the beast article).

Even with this peculiarity, i never had noticed *any* problems before the rails.
Before the rails i had the dimarzio hs-3 in the neck, and two cheap and ultra-weak single coils in middle-bridge.

What i idiotically did, which was an error regardless of anything else, on the rails I just isolated the bare ground wire along with the two connected wires and taped them.
I did that to both artec rails. With the middle dimarzio, i idiotically swapped the ex-hot with the ex-ground in order to deal with phase swapping. *BUT* i forgot to unbind the bare ground wire and to connect it to the ground, so i had the bare wire connected to the hot!

So i got this intense buzz whenever i touched (with hands or strings)*any* of the pups artec rails in neck/bridge or dimarzio hs-3 in the middle.

As soon as I understood the mistake, i rewired the bare ground from the dimarzio hs-3 to the actual ground (instead of the hot), and correctly the pup started to behave ideally. I did the same thing with the artec rails.... but the thing with the buzz did not seem to get away.
I witnessed smth, which i guess a lot of you have witnessed in the past as a symptom, whenever i touched the artec rail pups , they buzzed hard, but when I touched both a rail pup (any of the two) and the ground at the same time, the buzz seemed to get away.

So, i had to connect the tremolo ground to the ground circuit, in order to make this buzz go away. Now the only way to create the buzz would be to touch the pup, but in order to do that i had to touch the strings first and then the strings to touch the rails, so the effect was canceled in its creation, but i really have a problem explaining this, why the whole thing took place and behaved the way it did.

Why did the dimarzio was absolutely perfect (with the ground was connected correctly to the ground circuit) even if the ground circuit was not connected to any sort of external real ground, while the artec could not be quieted in the same manner. Why does the artec need a "real" ground in order to be buzz-free when it is touched, by either hands or strings?

One cheap explanation would be that the fast track(s) and the hs-3 are very good quality and nicely made, while the artec have less man-work and less expensive-good materials.
But on the electricity-physics level i cant accept that as an explanation.

Anyways, even with these handicaps, the artec have a really fat-full sound and give ultra power and a nice sound... for 15 USD/EUR/GBP

[4real]

If the pup rails are buzzing like that, you have some kind of problem with the wiring, the rails are hot instead of grounded. If they were grounded the effect would be exactly the same as touching the grounded strings or any other ground point.

Test things as best you can as it should...so don't leave ground wires hanging, solder to the claw! It is pointless trying to test things with critical parts disconnected. Keep the bare ground wire separate from the 4 conductors is a good idea, take it to a 'star ground'...you might want to do some rewiring and such and you need this to stay always grounded regardless of what else might be going on. Many single coil pup poles are not in fact grounded, so touching them will have no effect.

[Deleted]

Mar 6, 2011 18:46:34 GMT -5 4real said:

If the pup rails are buzzing like that, you have some kind of problem with the wiring, the rails are hot instead of grounded. If they were grounded the effect would be exactly the same as touching the grounded strings or any other ground point.

Thanx 4real.

One idea i had last night before i fall asleep (enlightment!) is that the bare wire on the artec pups does not really connect to the pup chasis, as in the dimarzio case. It is a shield for wire maybe, cause i cannot think of any other explanation.

If i swapped the hot and ground on the artec rails it would have the effect of phase swap, and nothing more, right? Besides, in their site artecsound.com/wiring/wiring_book01.pdf it says that for std humbucking red and white are soldered together, black goes to ground and green to hot.
So what should i gain by swapping green to ground and black to hot?

Update: as a side note, all the above artecsound staff are not *official*. Just speculations. I just googled the part-no i found on the back of the pups and it got me to a polish site where it said it is an artec, and then saw the same exact shape on the artec sound site, but as an OEM model, not a retail model.

So, i guess what the artec site writes bares questionable importance, so i am wondering, should i try with the black-green swapped ?

hmmm, thinking loudly here, but then again, the coincidence of black-green is another hint strengthening the artecsound-diagram-theory.

[Yew]

Those bare wires should ground the chassis of the humbucker, and probably the rails. Soldering them to the tone pot should sort this out.

[Deleted]

Mar 7, 2011 3:55:32 GMT -5 Yew said:

Those bare wires should ground the chassis of the humbucker, and probably the rails. Soldering them to the tone pot should sort this out.

Lets summarize, initially, and after the rails installation i had

1)
a) the tremolo wire unconnected
b) the dimarzio bare wire to the hot (that was obviously very wrong, i was just anxious to listen to the rails, that i did everything in full throat speed, cause we had to go somewhere with the family and i wanted to hear them before our departure
c) the bare wires of the rails were taped along with the white-red wires

effect : ALL pups buzzed *hard* when touched with bare hand

2)
a) the tremolo wire unconnected
b) the dimarzio bare wire correctly to the ground
c) the rails bare wire untaped from red-white and (correctly??) soldered to the ground

effect :
- dimarzio behaved perfectly, BUT
- the rails continued to buzz hard in the exact same way whenever touched

3)
a) the termolo wire *connected*
b) the dimarzio bare wire correctly to the ground
c) the rails bare wire untaped from red-white and (correctly??) soldered to the ground

effect :
- dimarzio behaved perfectly, AND
- the rails stopped buzzing when touching at the same time the tremolo or the strings, (which make up for the 99.99% of the occasions, so its ok as is now), *BUT* still buzz if i somehow manage to touch only the pups without touching anything else grounded (strings, bridge, etc..)

so, i can only assume that the rail chassis is not connected to the bare wire, and its too late for me find out, next time i open up the guitar i will try again.

In doing so, my main problem is that the strings tend to break, and that the bridge saddles lose their height adjustment, so its a PITA.

[Deleted]

Just returned from a (successful) marathon with the new strat build!
In the process i had the chance to unfold the tape on one of the artec rails and i saw that it is connected only to the metal shield around the 2 coils. I didn't see how it can be connected to the bottom metal bar or the rails themselves.

I don't know if it is the case with other humbuckers (mini or maxi, or stacked or whatever) but the artecs seem to behave this way.

[Deleted]

just measured the dimarzio rails (fast track I, fast track II) and the artec rails.
well, there is a difference, as i had suspected. The dimarzio rails themselves are connected to the ground,
by testing for connectivity between e.g. the rail and the bridge, there is indeed connectivity.
However when i test the artec, there is no connectivity between the metal rail and the ground circuit of the guitar.

That means that the bare wire of the artec does not connect to neither the rails or the bottom alnico magnet bar of the pup....

Maybe that's why the artec are so much cheaper than the dimarzio....

[Deleted]

i read in numerous places on the net, that changing the polarities (swapping black for hot, green for ground, instead of green-hot, black-ground as they are now) can reduce the buzz, since it has to do with the inner/outer coils or smth.

I will have to try this out.

But the most important question/job is if i can actually ground the rails and the magnet of the artec rails. That would solve both this problem and the general hum that the artec produces.

[BlackAngusYoung]

I've been reading good things about Dragonfire pickups sold by guitarpartsonline.com/ from Oregon. They sell on their own site and a lot on eBay. Their single-sized hot rails are about $20 and reviews I've read say they're decent and maybe comparable to DiMarzio or Duncan.

I think the concept is that they're a small company getting a good reputation from customer feedback so they can afford to sell quality stuff at low prices because they're not trying to supply every store in the world and advertise like the big companies would.

I ordered one of their hot rails pickups to put in the middle on my strat, while bridge and neck are Fender's Original Stratocaster replica pickups. I'm giving it it's own volume, before the master volume so I can add it in as a sort of boost effect. Haven't received it yet, though.

They also have knobs and pickup covers in every colour and all that kind of thing. Even prewired pickguards really cheap. I ordered the one pickup, 3 knobs/3 covers/switch tip and trem cavity cover in unique colours and it came to only like $50. But I'm not endorsing them or saying they're great yet, just passing on the info because their offers impressed me.