Tele® and Strat® Pickups
Custom Hand Crafted in the USA
Lion Tele/Esquire Bridge Pickup Design - This is not an "overdrive" pickup. This is an over wound vintage pickup, just like the 1950's ones that were "mistakes" and are still quite sought after. As such, it will have a "fat", thick single coil tone without that ice-pick-in-the-ear thing happening, and yet it will happily twang away should you chose that genre of music ... else it will rock your world. I use my Lion Esquire for jazz, too!
Lion Models ...
Fat Lion - 11000 turns of 42AWG coil wire over AlNiCo 5 magnets, steel baseplate, approximately 8.9k resistance
Bluez Lion - 10600 turns of 42AWG coil wire over AlNiCo 5 magnets, steel baseplate, approximately 8.4k resistance
Country Lion - 10100 turns of 42AWG coil wire over AlNiCo 5 magnets, steel baseplate, approximately 8.1k resistance
Jeff Lang Lion - 10600 turns of 42AWG coil wire over AlNiCu 3 magnets, no baseplate, approximately 8.4k resistance
All Lion Tele/Esquire bridge pickups have a North top polarity - the South needle of a magnetic compass will point to the top of any Lion pickup. Reverse polarity (South top) is an option at no charge.
Lioness Tele Neck Pickup Design - The original Tele neck pickup was metal covered to attenuate the high end, reduce treble, and offer a more mid-range or baritone sound for rhythm playing and to offer an alternative to lugging around an upright string double bass. Within short order, Fender invented the Precision Bass, yet still built the Tele neck pickup with a tone blanketing metal cover. The Lioness frees up that great, natural single coil tone that's long been hidden under cold metal.
Lioness Models ...
Lioness - 8600 turns of 43AWG coil wire over AlNiCo 5 magnets, approximately 7.8k resistance
Jeff Lang Lioness - 8600 turns of 43AWG coil wire over AlNiCu 3 magnets, approximately 7.8k resistance
All Lioness Tele neck pickups have a South top polarity - the North needle of a magnetic compass will point to the top of any Lioness pickup. Reverse polarity (North top) is an option at no charge.
Tiger Strat Pickup Design - Based on late 1950's to early 1960's Fender Strat designs, the Tiger Strat pickup set offers classic vintage Strat calibrated tone and volume for all three Strat positions.
Tiger Calibrated Trio Set Models ...
50's Tiger Trio - 8200, 7500, 7200 coil wire turns of 42AWG coil wire over AlNiCo 5 magnets, approximately 6.2k, 5.7k, 5.3k resistance
SRV Tiger Trio - 9100, 8300, 8100 coil wire turns of 42AWG coil wire over AlNiCo 5 magnets, approximately 6.8k, 6.2k, 6.0k resistance
All Tiger Strat bridge and neck pickups have a North top polarity - the South needle of a magnetic compass will point to the top of these Tiger Strat pickups. The Tiger Strat middle pickup has a South top polarity - the North needle of a magnetic compass will point to the top of this Tiger Strat pickup - this allows for a parallel humbucking mode in the 2 and 4 Strat pickup select positions. Polarity changes on any Tiger Strat pickup is an option at no charge.
Cavalier Pickups Build - I hand build all Cavalier pickups with vulcanized fiber board flatware, hand beveled AlNiCo V or III magnets, hand guided 42awg or 43awg coil wire using a Sidewinder coil winding machine. The Lion bridge pickup has a steel base plate and its wire coil is wound with cotton string. The Lioness wire coil is covered with black matte tape. Tigers use either standard Strat plastic covers, or are black matte tape covered. All Cavaliers have cloth covered lead wire, and are vacuum wax potted. After the bobbin has been assembled, the pressed-in magnets are further bonded with wicked-in thin CYAnoacrylate super glue for added bobbin strength, and then the entire assembly is sprayed with several thin coats of resin based polyurethane for added magnet insulation from the coil wire.
Pickup Polarity and Wind Direction - Unless customer specified, the Lion is wound clockwise and is top North poled (a magnetic compass South needle will point to the pickup's top), the Lioness is wound counter-clockwise and is top South poled, and Tiger sets are wound with the middle pickup as reverse wound, reverse polarity (RWRP). Using a simple compass to check single coil pickup polarity ...
As with most vintage style single coil pickups, the pickup height distance between the top of the pickup and the guitar strings is critical to tone - closer to the string for more volume and punch, further away for less volume and more acoustic sweetness.
Special Lion Info - There is no ground strapping with Lion pickups, so if you haven't done so with your Tele or Esquire, just stick a small bare wire under the bridge before screwing it down, and run that bridge ground wire to any ground location inside the control cavity (i.e. - back of a pot). Without pickup ground strapping, the leads can be swapped within the control cavity to fix any possible phasing issue. Lion Tele/Esquire bridge pickups have unusually high coil wire turn counts, therefore their tall bobbins are packed full. Take care installing a Lion into its bridge mount, insuring the string wrap and wire beneath it aren't crushed.
(Note - "Fender", "Tele", "Esquire", "Strat", "Precision Bass" are all copyright of FMIC)
Soundbytes | |
Cavalier Lion Tele®
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 Test guitar is an uber-light 5.2# Esquire partscaster, solid paulownia body, TRO-W Fender® Japan neck, vintage Wilkinson brass compensated saddles, and 11-50 nickel wound GHS strings. Two amps were used - a Li'L Dawg "Champster Special" 5F1 w/JJ 6V6, 12AX7 & NOS 5Y3, 12" Weber AlNiCo 12A125 speaker, and a stock Reissue Fender Deluxe. A tad of pedal compression was used for all tracks, guitar volume always left full up. Amps were stereo digitally recorded directly to a Zoom H2, 44Hz/128bit wav files were generated and converted to mp3 files. Other than cutting and saving tracks, there was no sound editing of any kind. The Cavalier Lion goes a little bit country ... Guitar pickin' courtesy of Sean Aumack of the The Detonators Champster Special - 1.2M - The master no-load tone pot fully engaged which completely removes both the pot and .022uf tone cap out of the signal path for direct raw pickup tone. Champster Special - 3.36K - The master no-load tone pot is rolled back back 1/3 to 1/2 turn, which kicks it in for a nice fat P90-like tone. Champster Special - 332K - Listen for the tone pot to go from a 1/2 rolled off fat P90 tone to completely off for a biting, cutting treble tone without that nasty ice-pick-in-the-ear. Blackface Deluxe - 1.2M - A bit of reverb and overdrive added for some classic overdriven Tele/Esquire tones.  Test guitar is a "heavy" 6# Esquire partscaster, solid paulownia body w/bound maple cap, TMO-FAT Fender® Japan neck, vintage Wilkinson brass compensated saddles, and 11-50 nickel wound GHS strings.The amp used is a box stock VHT Special 6 combo with no mods, tone set to 1/2, vol set to 3/4, no boost - you can hear the amp breaking up as it gets pushed. All fingers, no pick. Sound 1 - pup w/no tone pot or cap in the circuit, sound 2 - pup w/.0047uf cap on the signal to ground, soundb 3 - pup w/250k tone pot and .022uf cap, tone pot fully dimed (mud!). Amp was stereo digitally recorded directly to a Zoom H2, 44Hz/128bit wav file was generated and converted to mp3. Other than cutting and saving the one track, there was no sound editing of any kind. VHT Special 6 - 1.1M - Three playing styles, three switch positions, three distinct tones.  Another Esquire, this one sports a Trem King. GFS Paulownia body, TRO-W Tele neck, Cav Lion bridge mated to a special under pickguard dummy coil. The controls are my typical for an Esquire - bridge pup only, pup + tone pot/.022uf cap, pup + .0047uf cap. Centrance & PC - 1.9M - Fingerpickin' recorded directly to the pc with no modulation fx, tone pot rolled in slightly. Listen to the Lion's acoustic-like sparkle. | |
Cavalier Tiger Strat®
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 The mint green Esquire® had some surgery recently, and like the emerging beautiful butterfly has become a Tele® (not that the Esquire® wasn't a beauty, either!). A Cavalier Tiger Strat® neck pup has been added, a 4-way pickup switch, and the rosewood TRO-W neck replaced with a solid maple TMO-C Fender® Japan neck. Does the fun ever stop? :) Champster Special - 360k - Tiger neck pup into a bit of EH Memory Toy analog delay, into the Champster Special (as above) with amp volume at 3/4's and guitar volume full up, tone pot removed from the circuit, power section is way overloaded and pushed well into amp distortion. Recorded with a Zoom H2, fingers only (no pick) and no sound editing with Audacity. Centrance & PC - 743k - Fingerstyle with the Tiger neck pup, recorded directly to an old notebook via a Centrance AxePort Pro and mixed down with Audacity in Win7. No modulation added or removed, just direct guitar-to-pc in one take. Centrance & PC - 1.1M - Tele® with Cavalier Lion bridge and Tiger neck, recorded directly as noted above. No modulation added or removed, it is what it is. Tiger doing the rhythm, Lion on the lead. Fingers, no pick. Freebie drum track courtesy of the Web. | |
Cavalier Lion and Tiger pickups are wound exclusively using a custom Sidewinder coil winding machine that's available through Ohm Guitars. This is the finest professional hand guided coil winding machine on the market!
