MojoTone Quiet Coils for Telecaster Analysis & Review

[antigua]

I bought the Strat set www.strat-talk.com/threads/mojotone-quiet-coils-for-strat-analysis-review.534842/ and they looked like pretty good pickups, though I'm still waiting on others parts in order to put them into a Strat. I bought a set for the Tele, and have installed them, and they sound pretty good to me.

The design is basically a "single coil sized humbucker" that uses two AlNiCo "blades" instead of two steel "blades" as is typical of Bardens, DiMarios and all the rest. The only other production pickup that comes close to this are Gibson Firebird pickups, which are not single coil sized. Then there is a fake vintage looing facade over the top that makes the single coils sized humbucker look like a vintage single coil. The neck pickup just uses a conventional looking cover, but the bridge pickup has a really convincing top, with a real, and very thin piece of fiber board, and shiny looking fake pole pieces that. They have sort of a plasticy sheen to them that is not identical to AlNiCo, but it's good enough, IMO, even better than the Strat version. These Tele pickups seem to be all around more refined that their Strat version, they feel more solid and look more perfected.

$180 isn't a bad price for such a novel pickup set. I'm impressed by the apparent effort that went into the design, especially considering how the vast majority of the models that come out these days are nothing less than lazy tweaks and reissues of existing production pickups.

MojoTone claims their QuietCoils match the electrical values of actual vintage pickups, and testing them shows that to be true. There isn't a single spec that couldn't be matched to a vintage Telecaster single coil.

Since AlNiCo blades are used in the construction, and because AlNiCo is more resistive, there are low eddy currents, and so the Q factor is rather high, like vintage pickups. Thusly, these pickups will pair well with stock 250k tone and volume pots and don't require 500k pots, as MojoTone had suggested in a FAQ. This is in contrast to steel blade pickups, such as those offered by Seymour Duncan, which due to the steel parts, pair better with 500k pots. Ironically, even though Seymour Duncan's steel blade pickups pair would better with 500k pots, they claim their Strat sized humbuckers suited for 250k value pots.

I had a Tele ready to take these pickups, so I installed them and have used them, and they sound good similar enough to vintage style single coils to me. I was a little worried they might be under-powered due to the unique AlNiCo blade configuration, but the output seems fine. I did set the pickups closer to the strings, knowing the Gauss strength of the blades is only around 500G, similar to AlNiCo 3, and about half that of AlNiCo 5 pole pieces.



Mojotone Quiet Coils for Telecaster

Bridge
- DC Resistance: 7.446K ohms
- Measured L: 3.105H
- Calculated C: 126.24pF
- Gauss: 570G (AlNiCo 5)

Neck
- DC Resistance: 7.887K ohms
- Measured L: 2.396H
- Calculated C: 162.11pF
- Gauss: 400G (AlNiCo 5)

Bridge unloaded: dV: 9.3dB f: 7.63kHz (black)
Bridge loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 5.0dB f: 3.47kHz (blue)
Neck unloaded: dV: 6.5dB f: 7.46kHz (red)
Neck loaded (200k & 470pF): dV: 4.4dB f: 3.76kHz (green)

[ms]

Looks like a capacitor across the output.  I guess that is to give the correct capacitance, since two narrow coils in series have less capacitance than one standard sized coil?   I do not see the cap on your photos of the strat version.  Do they have it as well, hidden away somewhere? 

I hate cheesy looking plastic fake pole pieces, but other than that, they look like really good pickups.

[antigua]

Mar 8, 2020 7:02:56 GMT -5 ms said:

Looks like a capacitor across the output.  I guess that is to give the correct capacitance, since two narrow coils in series have less capacitance than one standard sized coil?   I do not see the cap on your photos of the strat version.  Do they have it as well, hidden away somewhere? 

I hate cheesy looking plastic fake pole pieces, but other than that, they look like really good pickups.

That yellow hump is just the ground wire having been shoved through the hole in the flat work, and then back down again to form a loop. I've never seen that on a Fender pickup, I don't know why they did that, but I suppose they think it makes the solder joints less prone to torsion. 

Speaking of capacitance, for some reason Telecaster neck pickups always measure around 150pF to 250pF capacitance, a lot higher than Strat pickups. I wonder if that's due to the geometry or the 43 AWG, maybe a little of both. 

[mr22]

I can confirm that 250k potentiometers worked better for the Mojotone Quiet Coil Broadcaster pickups I installed.

I tried the 500k potentiometers since the manufacturer recommended them, but the sound with 500k's was shrill, hollow, and weak.

When I tried out a MIJ 1972 reissue Telecaster with the Broadcaster coils with a UAFX Dream 65 (a Fender Deluxe Reverb DSP sim pedal), I found that the sound of the pickups was pretty good if I set all of the knobs to noon and then rolled off some of the reverb to taste. The choice of speaker & cab made a huge difference. All of the 'red' ones sounded all right, the 'green' ones in comparison lacked some presence and sounded like AM radio in comparison.

The magnetic strength of these pickups is definitely weaker than a normal alnico 5 single coil, so I found that I had to boost the signal a lot to make them sound okay.

These pickups are just okay. I prefer my alnico 5 single coil pickups on my other Telecaster. Sadly, since I have to boost the signal so much to get a decent sound out of the quiet coils, there is, ironically, a noticeable hum when I use them.

I'll be replacing them with Alnico 5 single coils pretty soon.

[antigua]

I think I prefer Bardens for a quiet Telecaster, they're the basic steel blade design with a ceramic underneath, which you can get from a variety of makers, cheap and expensive alike, provided that the inductance is on the lower end, and not trying to be a "full sized" humbucker sound, such as Hot Rails or Choppers. I have a feeling I'd like EMG single coils for Telecaster a lot also, they're great in Strats, but I haven't got around to trying it out. You forget they're not regular single coils and you say to yourself, "where is that hum I'm used to hearing in between songs?"

[mr22]

Hi Antigua,

Thanks for the recommendations. I love your posts. Thanks for putting in all of the careful work (and huge expenses) that are required to do pickup research.

I like the EMG idea. I've never tried active pickups in a guitar before. Perhaps if I'm careful I can fit a 9V battery into a Telecaster control cavity (I doubt it) so I don't need to do any carpentry.

Something funny happened after I wrote my post saying that I was going to replace the Quiet Coils with Alnico 5 single coils. I found that I'm actually starting to like these pickups. I just needed to find the right amp configuration and get used to the guitar. I was using the Dream 65 with the speaker sims, thinking that the Boss Katana was close enough to a FRFR speaker. I don't think that's the case. Turning off the speaker and cab sim makes a huge difference. It's possible that my Alnico 5 single coil Harley Benton sounded fine even with the speaker sim because it's a much higher output guitar, and louder always sounds better.

Although the quiet coils have grown on me, the Quiet Coils were straight-up intolerable when paired with 500k potentiometers. The sound was (predictably) the sort of ghostly, hollow, and weak sound that you get when you split a humbucker. If the resonant frequency, inductance, and capacitance of the quiet coils are more or less the same as a single coil that is usually paired up with 250k's, then why would they suggest 500k's? I don't get it. 

[Edit update Feb 7 2023]

I replaced the Mojotone Quietcoils with Tonerider Vintage pickups. It was the right choice. The guitar sounds alive again. I plug in and just practice and have fun -- instead of spending 30-45 minutes at the start of each session twisting knobs and trying out every configuration of boosts and overdrives to get an acceptable voicing from the quiet coils. It was likely that I was just cranking the amp louder and louder with my knob turning until my ears finally gave in and decided to like the odd cardboardy tone of these pickups. Noiseless 'single coils' -- I don't think I'll be trying them again.

[b4nj0]

I have a 1980-ish home build blonde "Esquire" made from Roger Giffin parts which I originally had wired by Chandler Guitars back when they were still at 199, Sandycombe Road in Kew, West London. It had Chandler's switched pre-amp in circuit (which was quickly discarded) and I recall that it was necessary to have the control cavity relieved to be able to squeeze in a PP3 battery.

HTH.

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