Kinman Jaguar pickups - possibly the first online account of them ever being installed

[mylona]

Kinman don't have 49.5mm E to E pickups available. I just tried to place an order and you can only get 52.5 or 51mm. Also they don't have all the colour options.

[Embenny]

Thanks for sharing, I'm interested in hearing your final verdict down the line.

The website says they make either 51mm or 49.5mm spacing, which both seem narrower than standard. Did you get the narrower ones to go with the Staytrem bridge?

How is the balance between the neck and bridge, is the bridge pickup like overwound more than the neck, or are they pretty similar?

Keep in mind the difference between polepiece spacing and saddle spacing. Polepieces need to be narrower than bridges because the strings narrow in spacing as you travel away from the bridge.

Neither my Jaguar nor my Jazzmaster with Kinmans have any issues with balance. When ordering, they ask you to tell them what kind of bridge you use, so my pickups have whichever spacing they selected based on my answer (I use a Staytrem on that guitar).

The neck and bridge are well balanced to my ear, meaning the bridge is probably slightly overwound. I don't think it's the vintage-style "every pickup is wound the same" approach, but it's certainly not significantly overwound. More like what you'd expect from any boutique winder who wasn't specifically trying to offer a vintage replica by making the pickups identical in output.

Since my pickups are - intentionally - a bit higher output than his most vintage-like model, I definitely expected the bridge to be balanced by a slightly higher wind.

I think one of the really special things Kinman does is sort of decouple midrange boosts from output, though. His pickups are extremely convoluted and over-engineered, but the end result is that you can get both a noiseless and high-output signal without the midrange hump from an overwound single coil.

Putting the Kinmans up against similar-sounding single coils, the Kinmans register as much louder on my AxeFX (which has an input gain meter). They remind me of Firebird pickups that way, which have the highest raw output of any "thin, bright, scooped" vintage pickup I've ever played.

[tammyw]

Neat. I still have some interest in them, but I couldn't seem to get the wide spacing with black covers on their website, and they're on the high end of the price range. I ended up going with a conventional set of pickups from Bootstrap for my project last year, but maybe look at these again some time this year.

Next, someone needs to bump the Big Bird firebird pickup thread for an update.

[Norrin Radd]

What a sweet Jag! I. Glad you found the Kinmans AND gave us a first hand account of them.

FWIW, I put a set of Kinman Scoops in one of my Strats. They are fantastic. When I was shopping for noiseless pickups for my JM I didn’t get Kinman’s, and that turned out to be a mistake. If I ever buy more noiseless pickups, they WILL be Kinmans!

[Embenny]

Next, someone needs to bump the Big Bird firebird pickup thread for an update.

I've still got a pair of those in one of my Jags. Fantastic pickups. Much less dear than the Kinmans, too.

[Lost In Autumn]

Next, someone needs to bump the Big Bird firebird pickup thread for an update.

I've still got a pair of those in one of my Jags. Fantastic pickups. Much less dear than the Kinmans, too.

I have his regular Firebird pickups in my Dipinto Belvedere, they're fabulous.

I'll let myself out...

[ThePearDream]

Next, someone needs to bump the Big Bird firebird pickup thread for an update.

I've still got a pair of those in one of my Jags. Fantastic pickups. Much less dear than the Kinmans, too.

I have a pair as well (in a Talman), and they really are fantastic.

[Embenny]

I have his regular Firebird pickups in my Dipinto Belvedere, they're fabulous.

I'll let myself out...

I have a pair as well (in a Talman), and they really are fantastic.

I had a pair of regular FBs of his that I let go because they were in a hardtail Jaguar, and my Big Bird were in...another hardtail Jaguar. Found them too similar. The guitars, and the pickups, so I sold them together. I of course have come to regret that decision...

I also sold my pair of Phoenix pickups (his original single-coil-sounding Firebird-format design that I'm convinced is an overwound Firebird coil plus a dummy coil) as part of...another Jaguar. I just went too hard into Firebird/Jaguar mashups and and found myself with redundant guitars.

Now, I find myself on the verge of ordering another set of Firebirds and/or Phoenixes, because they're just such damn good pickups at such a damn good price, and I have non-Jaguars that would benefit from them.

[mylona]

I'm not sure what Kinman have sold you. If you have a Staytrem bridge with 52mm E to E, ideally you need a 51mm bridge pickup and a 49.5mm neck pickup to get perfect pole and string alignment. It's misleading on the Kinman site when they ask for your bridge details and imply they have 3 pickup pole spacing options. If you try to order they come back with only 52.5mm or 51mm pole spacing available, but even that's dubious because they may not be in stock or in the color required.