Wilkinson Vintage Classic Alnico 5 Overwound Open Style Humbucker Pickups Set for Electric Guitar, Zebra

I was giving a budget flying V for my birthday, but while I liked the guitar the pickup was weak so I started looking for replacements that wouldn't break the bank. This had decent reviews so I took a chance.1. The packaging was great, and it came with instructions if you weren't familiar with pickup swaps.2. The wiring feels like very good quality. I've had other budget pickups where I had to replace the cheap wires.After installing, this is a fantastic pickup. It has fairly high output and just sings. Thanks for rescuing my cheap axe!

This bridge pickup is AMAZING. Truly one of my favorite bridge pickups I've ever tried. For the price, it's the best bridge pickup for me, period. For reference all my other humbuckers in other guitars are Seymour Duncans. SH-4, SH-11, and Hyperion. This pickup is scalds, it's every bit, or hotter, than these other pickups, and it just screams and sounds amazing. Can play anything from Rush to Pantera. I truly love it. The only caveat is that the hot wire is really, really thin. It broke twice after I soldered it and then tried to stuff the cables into the cavity. I had to solder it in such a way that when I stuffed the cables it put no pressure on the cable itself.

These pickups look and sound great. Installed in a custom Les Paul style kit build with 4 pots that I chose to use the complicated "Jimmy Page" wiring/switching system for more than 20 different tone combinations, so I had to do modification on ground wire per below.NOTE - if you want to wire alternative switching or push/pull pots, these humbuckers (like many) are technically "4 wire" with north and south start/finish leads for each pickup, HOWEVER they use a grounding wire wrapped around the black wire like shielding (ie., ground on each pickup is part of the "North Start" wire), which is why the black wires are thicker and have their own shrink sleeve. The wiring diagram list the ground as being part of the N-Start black wire, but if you're a novice, it's not plainly stated for wiring purposes. IF you intend to wire guitars other than straight humbucking, many options require a SEPARATE ground wire (so in effect, you need 5 total separate wires including ground, not 4 with a common ground to one of those):After spending some time getting frustrated at not finding any websites/blogs that fully explained this situation on humbuckers like Wilkinsons, I then determined I could make these work pretty easily with my own modifications; if you have decent DIY and wiring skills, this is a pretty simple job that takes about 10-15m per pickup - buyer/user beware regarding warranties, etc.Instead of the common "wrapped ground", I had to create an independent ground wire (in effect, a total of 5 wires - 2 start/finish for each coil of humbucker, plus a 5th ground wire). Once I sorted all this out myself and examined the pickups, here's my steps (sorry, didn't take pics while doing this but marked up attached image):1). Remove 4 back plate screws on pickup, carefully remove plate. There will be a bit of wax but they came right apart without any issues/damage. You have to pull the common wire sleeve thru the hole in corner of plate.2). Once you've exposed the common wire for access, remove small shrink sleeve near end that was inside pickup and you will see where the wrap of bare grounding wire follows that black wire but then terminates in a wire tip soldered to the inside of backing plate to ground that shielding to the pickup (and on opposite end, that shielding is simple soldered as part of the black N-Start wire so they're "common")3). You have to separate that solder connection between the grounding wrap and back plate; you can leave the wrap in place with black wire (and I recommend that so you're not disturbing rest of common wire/sleeve unnecessarily) but make sure there is no connection between the plate, black wire and original ground wrap (so you are effectively disabling the wrap ground around black wire from inside end of wiring and thus even though the finish end of it remains attached to black "N-Start" wire, it's disabled). I used soldering tool to heat up and remove that wire tip, then tucked it right back into the common sleeve and added some new shrink tube to insulate and seal off.4). Add the new separate ground wire for the pickup - used same gauge wiring of right length matching rest of your wiring and solder new wire to the backing plate, right where the original shielding connection was soldered.5). Carefully reassemble pickup, including sliding main wire sleeve together with new ground wire thru the exit hole in backing plate (it will be tight), and then reinstall backing plate.6). You will end up with your reassembled Wilkinson looking exact same with main common wire containing 4 wires (yellow/red/white/black) plus a 5th new ground wire. Wire your pickups accordingly.

No issues. They work just fine, ohm in the right range, and sound very good. For the price they are a no brainer. Are they a Seymor at $300/pair? No. Will they blow away your muddy, flat sounding pickup that came stock in a budget guitar? Or... Are they just a cool change from what ever else you have? Yes and YES!

Trev Wilkinson knocks it out of the park again. One of the best designers in the business and a genius at producing great bang for the buck. Super pickup for the price. Crisp, modern sounding and articulate. Neither a warm vintage sound nor a screaming shred tone, these sit somewhere in the middle and are nice and versatile. Ideal for what I need playing 80's and 90's alt rock. Can be coil split if you're into that.

I put the Vintage Classic Overwound Alnico 5 neck model in the neck position of a warmoth parts-tele I bought used. It had a true single-coil P90 in the neck (Tele custom) and I wanted to put a HB in. Great price prompted me to try this and I had good success with Wilkinson trems and other guitar parts..This Alnico 5 classic overwound is versatile for me, feels that slightly bit overwound (which I like in a neck position), has an "airy, harmonic" quality to the tone yet provides great response to picking dynamics and it sounds great at 10/10 or with vol/tone messing about. Hats off to Wilkinson for providing this great value on a pro sounding pickup.

I bought an inexpensive, imported single-cut guitar to have as a knock-around instrument. After a fret level and recrown, it played very well, but it didn't sound great. I have Dimarzio's in all my other guitars, but didn't want to spend more on pickups than I did on the guitar so I figured I'd try these Wilkinsons.Wow, just, wow! I'm impressed. These sound similar to Dimarzio's PAF Pro, but the bridge pickup is much hotter and a little brighter. Because of the higher output, the bridge pickup in particular doesn't clean up as well when the volume is rolled back on a higher gain amp. I can live with that.They are four-conductor so you can do a tap or put them in parallel if you'd like. I'm running them in the default series without a tap. As you can see from the picture, I got the zebra set and they look great in the guitar.I highly recommend these if you're looking to upgrade an inexpensive guitar.