GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
Post Reply
User avatar
added
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 247
Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:42 am

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by added » Wed Feb 17, 2016 3:34 pm

So does anyone play heavier/more high gain stuff with these? Does Artec make them yet? I prefer to give them my business. Years ago, when Harmony Central was the big guitar board and GFS was new, I asked a question about having trouble getting GFS on Ebay to combine shipping. It became a multipage thread of insults, with GFS joining in to call me names. I avoid them when I can, because with Ebay and Amazon, there are cheaper places to get low end hardware from Asia.

User avatar
Gordon
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 1510
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:22 am
Location: France/USA/Singapore
Contact:

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by Gordon » Sat May 21, 2016 8:18 am

Hey guys, got a couple of question for the P90 owners (single coil with ferrite magnet, ideally, but I assume any SC would do):

- what is the pole piece spacing (bridge and neck)?
- what are the pole screws dimensions? (I assume a M3 thread, as often in import pickups)

I've emailed GFS about the matter, and their reply was to get one and mesure myself, as they didn't know for sure... :w00t: Thanks in advance. :)

User avatar
littlericky
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 105
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:10 am

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by littlericky » Sat May 21, 2016 8:48 am

Gordon wrote:
I've emailed GFS about the matter, and their reply was to get one and measure myself, as they didn't know for sure... Thanks in advance.
Wow!

User avatar
Soselo
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 73
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2012 10:35 am

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by Soselo » Sat May 21, 2016 9:42 am

solderfumes wrote:Long time listener, first time caller. This isn't an offset, but this forum thread was very helpful to me in deciding whether or not to try the Gold Foils, so I thought I'd post this here.

Image

Epiphone Les Paul Special II purchased for $100 on Craigslist, three HB-sized ferrite single coil Gold Foils, a bit of woodwork from my guitar guy, a handful of components from eBay, and about 6 hours of wiring. It's got Dan Armstrong Super Strat pickup switching, and a G&L-style PTB tone circuit. You can reverse the phase of the neck and/or middle positions with push-pull switches. The volume pot is 500k, but if you pull the bass cut knob it adds another 510k in parallel with the volume pot so as to simulate a 250k pot.

It being the OffsetGuitars forum and this being my first post, I suppose I had better post my bonafides:

Image
This is my favorite kind of guitar. Super budget designed to be disposable then completely modified. How do you like the results?

User avatar
funkyeah!
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 892
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 11:02 am
Location: Virginia

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by funkyeah! » Sat May 21, 2016 11:25 am

I forgot to post this! I got the Alnico humbucker and it is MEATY sounding

Image
Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

User avatar
jvin248
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 660
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 5:34 pm

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by jvin248 » Sat May 21, 2016 3:35 pm

Soselo wrote:
solderfumes wrote:...
Epiphone Les Paul Special II purchased for $100 on Craigslist, three HB-sized ferrite single coil Gold Foils, a bit of woodwork from my guitar guy, a handful of components from eBay, and about 6 hours of wiring. It's got Dan Armstrong Super Strat pickup switching, and a G&L-style PTB tone circuit. You can reverse the phase of the neck and/or middle positions with push-pull switches. The volume pot is 500k, but if you pull the bass cut knob it adds another 510k in parallel with the volume pot so as to simulate a 250k pot....
This is my favorite kind of guitar. Super budget designed to be disposable then completely modified. How do you like the results?
+1 on my favorite type of guitar too. Those Epi LP Specials are a great value mod platform. I have a knock-around Special Jr that is a lot of fun with the humbucker I dismantled to split and dropped in there on a push/pull that the second side tweaks the tone cap from 0.047 to 0.022.

I like the clever volume pot transformation you mention.

User avatar
solderfumes
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2015 1:00 am

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by solderfumes » Tue May 31, 2016 1:04 pm

jvin248 wrote:
Soselo wrote: This is my favorite kind of guitar. Super budget designed to be disposable then completely modified. How do you like the results?
+1 on my favorite type of guitar too. Those Epi LP Specials are a great value mod platform. I have a knock-around Special Jr that is a lot of fun with the humbucker I dismantled to split and dropped in there on a push/pull that the second side tweaks the tone cap from 0.047 to 0.022.

I like the clever volume pot transformation you mention.
Sorry I missed these messages last week -- haven't checked in on this board in a while I couldn't be happier with the result. The pickups sound great! Lately I'm all about the space between Strat/Tele single coils and humbuckers, and the Gold Foils are a really cool option. I feel like this is the guitar I'm going to reach for any time I previously would have reached for a Strat. They're chimey but round and sweet. The Dan Armstrong super switching is awesome, as well, and I intend on putting it into my Strat as well as a project bass I'm currently working on. I call it my Red Special, because the switching and phase reverse stuff give you the kinds of combinations that Brian May's guitar can do (and more). Since I posted about it, I had the frets dressed because there was a nasty dead spot right around the 12th fret. Those are the perils of the cheapo Epiphone, I guess. Since the fret dress it is silky smooth and wonderful to play.

Originally I bought this guitar to install P90s in, but literally within two days of buying it, an Epi Les Paul Special with P90s -- one that's much nicer than this one -- became available on Craigslist for $130. I snapped that one up to be my P90 guitar, and decided to have some fun with this one. Glad I did!

User avatar
Numbskull999
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 10:41 am

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by Numbskull999 » Tue Feb 13, 2018 12:40 pm

I took apart the humbucker and they are SURPRISE! HUMBUCKERS!

User avatar
tommycarlos
PAT. # 2.972.923
PAT. # 2.972.923
Posts: 100
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 2:55 am

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by tommycarlos » Wed Feb 14, 2018 5:36 pm

added wrote:
Wed Feb 17, 2016 3:34 pm
So does anyone play heavier/more high gain stuff with these? Does Artec make them yet? I prefer to give them my business. Years ago, when Harmony Central was the big guitar board and GFS was new, I asked a question about having trouble getting GFS on Ebay to combine shipping. It became a multipage thread of insults, with GFS joining in to call me names. I avoid them when I can, because with Ebay and Amazon, there are cheaper places to get low end hardware from Asia.
I just ordered two single coil ferrite soapbar sized GFS gold foils. I play kinda noise pop/shoegaze/punk stuff and there is some pretty high gain stuff there (RAT into a maxed out Ram's Head Muff, etc)... so I can report back once the guitar is built (it's a partscaster of sorts). I went for the GFS "kwikplug" harness so I could easily switch them out for something more traditionally p-90 if they aren't working in that situation.

User avatar
mynameisjonas
Admin
Admin
Posts: 12696
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 5:55 am
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Contact:

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by mynameisjonas » Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:04 am

I recently got a P90-sized Gold Foil humbucker, and thought I'd share my experience with it:

It's a very simple construction, two small coils with bar magnets inside (kinda like a Firebird pickup), no baseplate or anything. It has adjustable "pole pieces" but they are just for show (since they're positioned between the coils and have no connection to the magnets). It comes with a 4 conductor wire, but it's very low output in full humbucker mode, so I don't really see many useful applications for splitting and such.
The sound is very clear, and fit's pretty well into the general Gold Foil realm, but it definitely sounds like a humbucker. The closest thing I can think of is a Filtertron, but it's got less bark in the lower mids, and overall feels like a lower output pickup.
I was easily able to dial in convincing Jesus Lizard and U.S. Maple sounds, something I've been looking for for a long time. :)
It's definitely not a pickup for most people's general needs, but if you're after a certain thing, it's great.

User avatar
Big in Japan
PAT PEND
PAT PEND
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 12:25 pm

Re: GFS Goldfoil pickups - now with comparison clips!

Post by Big in Japan » Thu Feb 27, 2020 1:10 pm

I apologize for reviving an old thread. This seems to be the most exhaustive source of real world info on these pickups.

I have a set of these GFS Gold Foils incoming (alnico single coil in humbucker case) to drop into a Squier Jagmaster that I'm hoping to breathe new life into. Is the general consensus here that these pickups sound best when installed "backwards" (pole pieces facing away from the bridge and neck)?

I could experiment; but if it's pretty unanimous that one way sounds better than the other, I'd rather just do it once. Your input is appreciated.
Fender guitars > MKII Tonebender clone > Keeley Comp > Lovepedal Roadhouse Eternity > Boss DD-8 > Princeton Reverb RI

Post Reply