OK, guitar geek-out warning....Originally Posted by kidsmoke
They're not the stock RI pickups, which frankly bore only physical resemblance to the Wide-Range pickups that came in the original '72 Thinline. Those used individual threaded rod CuNiFe magnets rather than the typical humbucker construction with a bar magnet under steel pole pieces, and were known for their great clarity & string definition. The RI pickups, on the other hand, are basically just standard humbuckers in the Fender WR casing.
The original owner had the RI pickups upgraded by a pickup builder named Curtis Novak, who basically replaced the "guts" of the pickups with threaded rod magnets wound to the original Fender specs. You can read about his Wide-Range humbucker replacements HERE. I contacted Curtis and provided him with some photos of the pickups, and he confirmed that they are some of his earliest conversions. I also took one to work, where we had a portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer for positively identifying metals and alloys (a necessary tool when building high precision industrial machinery). I was able to determine that the pole pieces were a permanent magnetic alloy of iron, chromium and cobalt (FeCrCo)--apparently, this alloy is easier to obtain than CuNiFE, while still being easy to machine.
In any case, they sound great, and definitely have the clarity and brightness that the originals were known for. They sound somewhere between a humbucker and the classic Fender single coil tone. I own nothing else that sounds like them.
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