Cheap pups that suprise with great sound!

[savage]

http://www.jcfonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84012

[Cuthbert]

Ok desperately looking for zebra PUs for my Paulie I bought a pair of Tonerider Rocksong, cheap pickups made in China from outsourced parts, 75€. Here there's my review:

The tonerider rocksong...well I bought it because I wanted to try a alternative to the SDs and I was looking for a overwound Alnico II PU, no much possibilities on the market. Here there's my review.

The Pus came in a pair of nice presentation boxes, where it is clearly stated that they're assembled in China with outsourced parts from all the world, mainly USA, China and Japan. The PUs are contained in some foam that may be of some use, the coils look VERY glossy and nice, the baseplate is a exact clone of a vintage PAF, in general from a aesthetic point of view the PUs look like nice PAF clones, although a little too shiny, maybe.

The cream coils, anyway, have a strictly different shade of colour than the rest of cream hardware of my '97 Paulie, this the only visual flaw. If they provided their own mounting rings, it would be perfect, but in the box you just have screws (shorter than the normal reissue series), springs and a small sheet with essential informations on how to cable the PUs in a Gibson-type guitar and a Fender-like circuit. No information on split, no total circuit with two Pus, not that much: I have bought a Bill Lawrence L-500R NOS from '77 and their sheet included split, out of phase and complete circuit diagram.

Anyway, following the instructions there is no problem installling the set in a Paulie: the wiring consists in five cables, two of them (white and black,the ones to make split, out of phase and all the nice sounds we all love) already soldered, leaving the green and ground to be solded on the chassis of the pot and the red on on the middle pin. The cables are long, maybe too much for a Paulie, but anyway I guess for other guitars this would be welcome.

Ok, having completed the installation, it's time to plug it. In my Classic I tried a long list of PUs, from the original ceramic ones, to the SD'59 nickel cover, to the alnicoII pro/CC combo. Since the guitar is the same, these Pus are the best comparison for the Rocksong, whose output result definitely higher than the '59s, the alnico II pro and MAYBE the CC (I had this impression), in particular, the neck is extremely loud and needs to be kept low in order to match with the bridge, that surprised me because its DC resistance should be 8 kohm while his mate is around 12.

I use as amp a VOX AC30, with a DOD250 to overdrive it...without preamp the PUS sound clean and very nice, expecially the neck, very full rounded sound, while the bridge results a little bright and not that articulate. The distorted sound you get with this amp and box result more overdrive that "hard" distorsion, a very spread sound, not focused like the CC but with the energy on a wider spectrum of frequencies, in short the sound result more "open". Surely the PUs are rougher than a Alnico II pro, but still retain the sweetness of a alnico II magnet.

In general, the sound you can get is very 70s, very Led Zep, in particular in their late works like Physical Graffiti...playing with these PUs the main riff of Sick again sounds EXACTLY like in that album, I also feel some ZZ top wibe, while for a "Slash tone" like Sweet child o'mine, the sound results slightly more aggressive, but still not not unsuited for the song. If you want to play more heavy metal, like Ozzy Osbourne, I don't think these are the right PUs, since songs like Crazy Train or I don't know result...like they were recorded in 1973, not in 1979.

In conclusion, I've played those PUs for not more than one hour, I reserve the right to change my mind but so far, I'm pleased with them, they aren't the lemons I thought they may have been, for what I play on the Paulie probably they work better than the SD, therefore I see for them a future on ebay. Although of course they are "humble" PUs that somebody may not like because of the aggressivity of their promotional campaign on the net, they seem to be built with quality standards similar to SD and Dimarzio and at least for this model, to mantain what they promise.

"Rocksong" is definitely a good choice for describing the sound and the use of these PUs.

[pinto79]

I like the Ibanez IBZ humbucker they used drom 1985-1986.