DIFFERENT WINDS

While there's no end to repros of all the classic pickup styles, more and more pickup makers are mixing things up to move forward - Cream T is a good example

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Similar shades of the same thing could sum up the worldwide pickup business. That’s no disrespect to all the pickup makers out there, but we’re seeing more and more new designs mixing elements of the classics to produce hybrids or genuinely new voices and textures.

Cream T’s pickups are made in Ormskirk and its Guitar-X (previously Relish) Pickup Swapping system, which is offered on the company’s guitars, means we can listen to new pickups instantly. A couple of new designs arrived and within seconds of unpacking them we were listening to them on a first-generation pickup-swapping Cream T Aurora, our soldering iron safely in the toolbox. We can instantly A/B the new designs against other Guitar-X mounted pickups we have to hand.

The first of the two new designs is the Single Shot set. Like any Guitar-X designs, they need to be humbucking in size, but these are actually true single coils: the bridge pickup has visible Alnico V magnetic slugs running at a Tele/Stratlike slant; the neck’s run in a straight line across the pickup; and both have a partial nickel-plated cover and fibreboard fronts. They will be available without the Guitar-X mounting frames, too, for anyone who fancies a little single-coil action on their previously humbucking guitar.