Review: Benson '63 Strat Pickup Upgrade

[gavinturner]

hi guys,

Recently, Adam graciously sent me a set of Benson '63 strat pickups to try out. It has taken me forever, but this week I finally got the pickups installed in my Ash Sratocaster and I'm in a position to document my experiences. I wasn't sure where to put this in the forum, so admins, please move to wherever you think it should be. Anyway on with the review...

The pickups came nicely boxed, with each pickup individually wrapped in brown paper and twine - a nice touch that added to the overall sense that this was a 'vintage' product. Nice.



Each pickup also comes with vintage, push-back cloth wire that is really stiff. It's solid, high-quality stuff and made working with the pickups very easy indeed. My biggest concern about the pickup swap was that I would lose my nice gold pickup mounting screws, but I should not have worried. The Benson pickups went straight into the pickguard using the standard Pitbull screws. Magic!

Fortunately, strat wiring is very straight forward; especially with these import 5-way switches. With just the 3 hot wires to take from the switch motherboard, and a common earth to remove from the back of the first tone pot, the stock pickups were quickly removed and replaced.





The push-back vintage wire made soldering a dream, with no risk of shorts in both the hot and earth wires. The stiffness of the wire meant that I could easily run all three wires down the centre of the pickguard to easily match the control route in the body. No messing around pushing wires back under the pickguard while I tried to fit it this time! I used a couple of zip ties to keep everything nice and neat, and trimmed the length of the middle and bridge pickup wires to keep them all the same length. A pretty neat job all up, and I am very impressed at how easy the Benson wiring made it.



With the wiring done and tap-tested to make sure everything was good, the pickguard was screwed back into place and she was ready to rock again.

So the big question is, just how do the Benson pickups sound? Well, there is no question that the sound of the Bensons is a vast improvement over the stock offering. That is not to say that the stock pickups sound bad at all! Being a little gun-shy over such an important demo, I cajoled my friend Jonathan from Sydney rockabilly band 'Rock Cat Rock' to do some demos for me. When he first picked up the strat he actually remarked at how good the Stock pickups sounded!

But there is no doubt that the Benson's sound an order of magnitude better. The sound is fuller with a much better dynamic range. Highs are clearer, with a beautiful crispness to the sound. The string attack sounds just beautiful and the mid range is there in abundance.

We recorded two sessions. One with the Stock pickups, and then again with the Bensons. I have turned these sessions into 3 demo videos. The first shows the stock pickups, the second the Bensons, and the third provides a side-by-side comparison of the two. Although I don't have a great set-up for recording, I hope that the videos provide some comparison of the two set-ups. The guitar is being played clean into a Fender Deluxe Re-issue tube amp.

You'll find the videos in each of 3 the following posts.

What do you guys reckon? If anyone *really* needs a demo of me bludgeoning a Ramones track to death on this new beast then please let me know - I think that I can just about manage that . I gotta say that all up I think that the Bensons sounds amazing and a big thanks to Adam for giving me this opportunity to upgrade my axe and to enjoy the Bensons. I cannot recommend this upgrade more highly!

cheers,
Gav

[gavinturner]

Stock Pickups:

[gavinturner]

Benson '63 Pickups:

[gavinturner]

Side-by-side comparison Stock vs Benson '63s

[Andy40]

Gav, Great videos. look really good. Thanks for taking the time to do all of this for our benefit. It's really interesting to see the comparison.

I don't suppose anyone with a bit of pick up knowledge could explain the differences in tone we are seeing here?

[wokkaboy]

good comparison Gav, you should have been playing though bro !

[adam]

Hey Gav, what a great job, well done! I'll let John know about this thread if he hasn't found it already.

The comparison video is particularly good. Well done to you friend for wearing a different shirt in each demo ;-), makes switching back and forth between the two sounds really easy. I can really hear the stock pickups sound a quite "tinny" compared to the Bensons, which have a much fuller, richer tone.

Thanks so much Gav, this will be a really helpful demo for customers who want to hear how the stock pickups sounds and what the Benson upgrade will sound like.

Yeah, I confer with the Mods to see where this thread should go, perhaps in the Video Demos forum and we re-title it to include pickup demos.

[tonyw]

Gav, Great videos. look really good. Thanks for taking the time to do all of this for our benefit. It's really interesting to see the comparison.

I don't suppose anyone with a bit of pick up knowledge could explain the differences in tone we are seeing here?

This ceramic bars across the bottom of those Pitbulls is why they sound so icepick, also not knowing whether they are underwound "sharp" or over wound "less treble"

A combination of A5 neck and middle and A3 in the bridge and they way they are wound, is why they sound warmer, the bridge being A3 on the Bensons means it wont be as sharp as an A5 magnet, A3 is the softest/weakest of all magnets, very delicate and open sounding. If i am asked to wind a 63 era pickup to spec i use 42AWG Formvar, 8300+ turns CW rotation to about 6.37k using all A5 mags polarity South facing, this gives you a slightly warmer pickup but with some spank, as i said the A3 in the bridge takes out some of the attack and warms it up and clears it up.

Good pots and switches would improve it even more.

I take those ceramics off the bottom and replace them with Alnico slugs, makes the Chinese pickpus heaps better.

[andrewdosborne]

Excellent demo Gav. I can really hear the difference with the Benson's, especially on the bridge pup. So much warmer than the stock and less icepick attack on the ears

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

[Andy40]

This ceramic bars across the bottom of those Pitbulls is why they sound so icepick, also not knowing whether they are underwound "sharp" or over wound "less treble"

A combination of A5 neck and middle and A3 in the bridge and they way they are wound, is why they sound warmer, the bridge being A3 on the Bensons means it wont be as sharp as an A5 magnet, A3 is the softest/weakest of all magnets, very delicate and open sounding. If i am asked to wind a 63 era pickup to spec i use 42AWG Formvar, 8300+ turns CW rotation to about 6.37k using all A5 mags polarity South facing, this gives you a slightly warmer pickup but with some spank, as i said the A3 in the bridge takes out some of the attack and warms it up and clears it up.

Good pots and switches would improve it even more.

I take those ceramics off the bottom and replace them with Alnico slugs, makes the Chinese pickpus heaps better.

Thanks Tony, great explanation. (confession - I did read it 3 times before I got it!)