Tonerider: Awesome Jazz Bass pickups from an awesome company

I upgraded my JBA-4 to Tonerider TRN1 pickups. PBG did not have stock at the time, so I ordered a pair from Realparts here in Australia.

The pickups are advertised as having cloth tape to protect the coils. However, one arrived with cloth tape, the other didn't leaving the coils (which were beautifully wound) exposed.

I contacted Realparts, who simply said I had received my pickups from two different batches, and as the lack of cloth tape did not effect the functioning of the pickup, offered nothing to rectify.

To settle my mind, I contacted Tonerider themselves. Tonerider said they ran a small batch of un-taped pickups to show off how well the coils are wound. They were keen that I have a matching pair. And despite knowing I purchased mine from an Aussie retailer, and despite me not asking for them to do anything, they sent out a, replacement pickup all the way from the UK.

What an awesome company!

The pickups now installed sound fantastic. Good amount of volume, great warm tone, and I have the peace of mind that those beautifully wound coils are protected with cloth tape. Tonerider care about their customers as much as they take pride in their pickups.

I could not be happier with these.

Nice story. We all hope our products work perfectly but if not, you’ll be surprised at how much support a lot of manufacturers do give.

Any chance of a photo of the bare wire pickup, as they were obviously keen to show the construction off?

You can get the cloth tape and wrap the windings yourself. I’ve just bought a reel from Allparts as I need to do the wax potting on an old (1982) pickup as it’s gone microphonic. You can dip with the tape on (you’ll have to with a covered humbucker unless you want the hassle of taking the cover off), but the wax will penetrate more easily with just bare windings and the pickup can spend less time immersed in the hot wax. But the tape comes in a confusing variety of widths, none of which seem to conform to the typical gap between the bobbins!

As requested, here is a photo of the Tonerider TRN1 pickup without the tape. The winding is beautiful.
Attachment 43601

Thanks.

You can definitely see the scatter-winding, with the slightly diagonal path across the length of the bobbin a lot of the windings take.

Hi Mathew,

I was looking for some tone rider pups that were not in stock so I went to the company website direct. I ended up buying two sets of pups as the postage was the same for both. One set with postage was still slightly less than buying them from an Australian supplier. They took a little while but were well packed and they were insured and tracked. Still haven't got to use them yet.