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So besides the obvious brands of pickups that we all know and love, are there any pickup brands that aren't as well known as the big names e.g Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Lace Sensor, EMG, Bareknuckle, etc. But yet are built really well and produce some great tones?
I know some of you will mention Tonerider or Entwistle pickups since they are affordable and favoured by forum members but I'm already aware of them.
Opinions/responses are appreciated.
Cheers, Joe
Creamery pickups from the UK produce some great pickups with custom options for a decent price and are used by many reputable artists.
Armstrongs are nice and fairly affordable. I've also used Guitar Fetish (GFS) in a few builds and have been happy with them.
Alex Pribora. Look on eBay. Hand wound Russian pickups. Really good, And I mean good. Fantastic value too.
I can second Guitarfetish pickups for decent quality at a reasonable price. I have the VEH set in my favorite guitar at the moment.
I'll second Kent Armstrongs as good 'uns.
Most Wilkinson gear is relatively cheap and punches above its weight.
I've currently got a set of three white Kent Armstrong Dual-Blades in my Fender Strat, and I love them, if my memory serves me right I think I bought them online from Realtone Music for about $55.00 each, the Dual-Blades are basically humbucking pickups that will drop straight into the pickup holes on a Strat scratchplate with no modifications whatsoever, what I love most about them is that they completely eliminate the background hum-noise you usually get with standard single-coil Strat pickups, but, you don't lose that single-coil twang like you do with noiseless pickups, you do get a bit of the humbucker midrange though, but I reckon that's a good thing, to my ears single-coils tend to sound a bit too excessively bright, and my Marshall amp is bright enough anyway.
The Kent Armstrong Dual Blades typically have a DC resistance of around 8.7k, or so, which is about similar to a hot-wound single-coil pickup, they feature a single blade-shaped pole piece for each of the two coils, this helps to retain a lot of the single-coil character.
So you get the best of both worlds with them.
I'm a big user of IronGear pickups. Probably very similar to Tonerider in quality, but all the pickups I've had from them have been great sounding. Just fitted a P-90 in a US Hamer that had too-thick a Seymour Duncan neck pickup in it. Now I've got a nice mix of clearer bluesy neck and thicker rockier bridge P90. The only initial drawback is that the new pup is out of phase with the existing pup, so it's a very thin mixed sound (thinner than a Peter Green sound), but the SD looks like it should be re-wirable (both have 2-conductor wiring so it's not just a case of swapping wires at the pot end).
I'm not going to recommend them to highly but at the cheapest end of the brand name PU market are the Chinese mobs called Yibuy and Belcat. Both seem to be what they say they are and offer a reasonable known starting reference for a reasonable (cheap) price particularly when you find yourself starting out on the PU upgrade path. I have used a few in various builds and they offer quite good and expectable tone for the price especially when you want to try some more specific magnet or wiring configuration without the expense if something goes horribly wrong...
There are also the PU's sets from the people at Fender and Epiphone that are are a similar price and sometimes can be slightly cheaper than the likes of Tonerider. A quick search on Ebay will find you a set of Epiphone Probuckers with wiring loom and pots at or about AU$150. For a few dollars less you can get a set of Fender Strat Tex-Mex PU's for AU$127 or a Tex-Mex loaded and wired guard for AU$160, or you could go the Fender Squire Classic vibe custom '60's Tele PU set plus decent pots and wiring for AU$85... All great tonal options considering their lineage...