Lollar Pickups Blog

The Fender Wide Range style humbucker is an important part of many Fender guitars that incorporate a humbucker in their design. In 2004 Fender re-issued a number of guitars that use the wide range humbucker, including the Telecaster Deluxe, the Telecaster Thinline, and the Tele Custom. These re-issue era Fender wide range humbuckers are different than the original Fender wide range humbuckers – in terms of internal construction and sound.

Jason Lollar with prototype Wide Range Humbuckers. These will soon be available with your choice of nickel, chrome, or gold covers.

After several years of research (and debating if the cost of tooling would be worth it), we’ve come up with a reproduction of the wide range pickup that sounds and functions almost identically to the originals. In fact, we actually prefer ours. The Lollar version of the wide range humbucker style pickup sounds a little bit clearer than the vintage version. Partly because our pickup covers are made out of slightly thinner material, which reduces the dampening of tone that metal pickup covers can sometimes cause. The original Fender wide range humbuckers had the same winding specs for the neck and bridge. We’ve decided to vary ours a little from neck to bridge, for better volume and tone balance.

These Lollar wide range humbucker prototypes have been developed and tested extensively. They will go into production in a few short weeks.

We make the custom sized bobbins in our shop. The covers, base plates, lead wire, and magnet wire are made to spec for us in the US. Our new covers will be engraved with the Lollar logo and will be available in nickel, chrome, and gold.

The new Lollar wide range humbucking style pickups will likely be available in early September. Make sure to watch this blog for more information – we will announce when they are ready for purchase.

In the meantime, listen to these sound clips of the new Lollar Pickups wide range humbucker:

Lollar wide range humbucker neck, clean.

Lollar wide range humbucker neck, dirty.

Lollar wide range humbucker neck and bridge, clean.

Lollar wide range humbucker neck and bridge, dirty.

Lollar wide range humbucker bridge, clean.

Lollar wide range humbucker bridge, dirty.

Sound File Gear: Clean files were played on a Fender Princeton - 12″ speaker. Dirty files were played on a 65 Amps London - color channel with boost. The pickups were installed with 250K pots (stock on reissue).

®Tele and Telecaster are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments, Inc.

This is the fifth article in our series about best selling Lollar pickups. In this article we’ll talk about some of our best selling items that can’t be classified among the main categories of pickups like strat, tele, and humbucker style pickups.

Lollar Jazzmaster Pickups:

Lollar Jazzmaster style pickups are a consistent favorite. Overall the Lollar Jazzmaster style pickups have a nicely detailed treble and a bit more midrange and bass when compared to a strat style single coil. They also have a very responsive dynamic range.

As you may already know, the size and shape of a pickup coil affect the quality of the tone it will produce. For example, the Jazzmaster coil is very short (1/8″) but very wide. This gives it more surface area and allows the pickup to sense the vibrations of a longer length of the strings. This is part of why they have their own unique tone qualities. To read even more about the unique properties of our Jazzmaster pickups, follow this link to an earlier Lollar pickups blog about Jazzmaster pickups and the Jazzmaster guitar.

Also worth mentioning are our “hybrid” style P-90 / Jazzmaster pickups. They are an interesting option to consider if you are looking for a little more midrange and a little fatter tone than our standard Lollar Jazzmaster. The thickness of the coil and internal construction of the bobbin is actually like a P-90. But the forbon flatwork top and bottom are sized to fit a Jazzmaster sized cover, rather than a P-90 cover. So essentially, they are a P-90 coil wound onto a Jazzmaster sized bobbin. And rather than the fixed AlNiCo pole piece rod magnets of a Jazzmaster, they have the adjustable pole pieces of a P-90. They are also made using two flat bar magnets - just like a P-90. We make the hybrid P-90 / Jazzmaster in all of the same versions that we build our standard P-90s, including an underwound neck and an overwound bridge.

Compare the Lollar P-90 style Jazzmaster to the standard Lollar Jazzmaster.

This photo shows a side view of the hybrid Lollar P-90 /Jazzmaster (top pickup) and the Lollar standard Jazzmaster (bottom pickup).  When you look at them from this angle you can really see the differences between the two pickups.  You can see the thin Jazzmaster bobbin (1/8″) and the thicker P-90 style bobbin (1/4″).  You can also see the P-90 style bar magnet spanning the full distance alongside the adjustable pole piece screws of the hybrid P-90 / Jazzmaster.  Compare this against the 6 individual pole piece magnets of the standard Jazzmaster.  You can also see how these 6 AlNiCo pole piece magnets are set to a radius.

To read more about either of these styles or to listen to sound clips, follow this link to Lollar Jazzmaster pickups.

Lollar Single Coil for Humbucker Rout:

Another popular “miscellaneous” pickup is our Single Coil for Humbucker Rout. For a “non-standard” pickup, they are a popular choice. The main advantage to this pickup is that they offer a chance to install a single coil pickup into an instrument that is routed for full sized humbuckers. AND - best of all - no routing required.

We like to be precise with our terminology when talking about this pickup. Customers often call and ask if we make a “P-90 for humbucker route.” We think it’s important to point out that this pickup sounds very much like a P-90, but it’s not a “true” P-90. Like we mentioned above, the size and shape of the coil affect the tone. The most popular cosmetic choice is the chrome surround with the matte black top. To learn more about this pickup please follow this link to Lollar Single Coil for Humbucker Rout pickups.

We hope you have enjoyed this series of blogs on best selling Lollar pickups. Like we’ve mentioned before, there is no “wrong” answer. All of our models of pickups have their own unique advantages, and much of what’s involved in the selection process is simply a matter of personal preference. Our best advice is to know what you’d like to accomplish for the particular instrument you’re working with, and then choose the pickups that will help get you there. Contact us if we can help point you in the right direction.

This is the fourth article in a series about best selling Lollar pickups. In this post we will talk a little about best selling Lollar Imperial® humbuckers, plus give you an overview of the three full sized, stock humbucking pickups that we build. For this discussion we’ll stick to our full sized humbuckers only.

Lollar Imperial® Humbuckers:

We build three general categories of Lollar Imperial® humbuckers. They are categorized based on their output levels, using the standard wind Imperial as the “baseline” or point of reference. The three categories are the Lollar Imperial (considered our standard wind), the Low Wind Imperial, and the High Wind Imperial.

As the name implies, the Lollar Low Wind Imperial is a slightly lower output pickup as compared to our standard wind Imperial. Our High Wind Imperial is a slightly higher output pickup as compared to our standard wind Imperial. For detailed descriptions and sound clips of the three different full sized humbuckers we build, follow this link to read about Lollar Imperial® humbuckers.

On a side note, this is a good opportunity to clarify the word “wind” as used in the names Low Wind and High Wind. This word refers to the amount of copper wire that is wrapped – or wound – around the humbucker bobbins to form a “coil.” The wire is wrapped around and around the bobbin, literally thousands of times to make each coil. The number of times the wire is wrapped around the bobbin is called the “turn count.” The turn count is the number of times the copper wire is “wound” around the bobbin. The term Low Wind refers to the fact that there are fewer times the copper wire is wound around the bobbin to make a coil. The term High Wind refers to the fact that there are more times the copper wire is wound around the bobbin to make a coil.

A favorite: standard Lollar Imperial humbuckers, with nickel covers and traditional single conductor leads.

Getting back to best selling Lollar humbuckers: Our standard Lollar Imperial is our best selling humbucker – by far. We sell roughly 50% more Lollar standard Imperials than Low Wind and High Wind Imperials combined.

Each of our humbucker models is available in eight different “finishes.” These include nickel, chrome, gold, aged, heavy aged, double-black, zebra, and reverse zebra. In addition, each of these is available in your choice of either the traditional Gibson style single conductor lead wire or 4-conductor lead wire. So in other words, you have 16 different choices of standard Lollar Imperial sets to choose from.

Among all of these choices, our nickel covered single conductor Lollar Imperial sets are the top sellers. The second most popular Imperials are (again) our nickel covered Imperial sets, but with 4-conductor leads. Our third best selling full sized humbucker is our Low Wind Imperial neck, with nickel cover and single conductor lead wire. This item is popular for two reasons. First, our Low Wind nickel single conductor sets are popular with archtop players. Second, our Low Wind nickel single conductor necks are great for tele applications. The Low Wind Imperial neck (usually nickel, single conductor) is frequently combined with the Lollar Special Tele bridge.

Now, like we have mentioned throughout this series, there really is no “wrong” answer. All of our pickups have their own advantages. The best approach is to know what your specific goals are, and then make your selection based on what you’d like to accomplish for the particular project or guitar you are working on.

Next week’s discussion will be about a few other popular “miscellaneous” items.

This article is third in a series of discussions about best selling Lollar pickups. This session will feature our best selling Lollar P-90 style pickups.

Lollar P-90 Pickups:

The Lollar P-90 is really the “flagship” Lollar pickup, and is often considered “the” pickup that began to draw customers’ attention to Lollar pickups.

Lollar P90 soapbar sets are a strong favorite.

Our best selling P-90 is the standard wind soapbar style pickup. In fact, we sell over twice as many of this particular model of P-90 than all of our other p-90 pickups combined. That includes all of the other soapbar and dogear models that make up our entire list of P-90 stock models.

Many of the builders we work with install the Lollar standard wind P-90 soapbar sets. Some of these builders include Collings, Godin, Heritage, and National Resophonic.

In fact, as an historical tidbit, it was National Resophonic that was the first established guitar builder that purchased a small run of Lollar P-90 soapbar pickups for use in one of their electric instruments. Since that original purchase in 2002, the Lollar P-90 soapbar has continued to be original equipment on the National Resophonic “Resoelectric” guitar.

For more specific information on our standard P-90 follow this link to Lollar P-90 pickups. And, as we’ve mentioned before, there is really no “wrong” answer when making your individual pickup choice. Each model of Lollar pickups has its own unique advantages. Our best advice is to decide what you’d like to accomplish for the specific project or instrument you are working on, and then base your decision on what’s right for you.

Next week’s discussion about best selling Lollar pickups will focus on best selling Lollar humbuckers.

This is the second blog in a series of discussions about best selling Lollar pickups.  Today we’ll cover our best selling Lollar tele pickups.

Lollar Tele Pickups:

A discussion of Lollar tele style pickups is a bit more accurate if we talk about favorite combinations of necks and bridges.  The reason for this is because our customers often like to “mix and match” our different tele style pickups.

The Lollar Special T Series set is one of our most popular tele style sets.

Our best selling stock Lollar tele bridge is the Lollar Special T Series® bridge. We sell more of these bridges than any of our others.  There are 2 favorite combinations that include this choice for the bridge position.

The first combination is the Lollar Special T Series bridge plus Lollar Special T Series neck.  In other words, simply a Lollar Special T Series set.  A second popular combination is the Lollar Special T Series bridge plus the Lollar Vintage T Series® neck.  

It is generally a “tie” when it comes to which of these stock combinations is more popular.  Some months we sell more straight Lollar Special T Series sets, and some months we sell more combination sets consisting of the Lollar Special T bridge plus the Lollar Vintage T neck. 

In our previous blog about best selling Lollar strat style pickups, we mentioned the popularity of the Lollar “Dirty Blonde” strat set which is a combination set consisting of the Lollar Special S bridge and Lollar Blonde neck and middle.  It is interesting to point out that there is a similar pattern with teles.  The combination tele style set made up of the Lollar Special T bridge plus Lollar Vintage T neck is also popular for one of the same reasons that make the Dirty Blonde set so popular: That is, Nash Guitars.

This combination set consists of the Lollar Special T Series bridge and the Lollar Vintage T Series neck. It is another very popular choice.

If you wanted to order what you hear in a Nash tele style guitar equipped with Lollars, you would want to order the Lollar Special T Series bridge and the Lollar Vintage T Series neck. For more detail on this Nash style combination for tele, take a look at the previous posting about Lollar Pickups and Nash Guitars.

One last question that is worth addressing: What is the most popular choice to go along with the Lollar Charlie Christian neck for telecaster?  Answer (which you may have already guessed): The Lollar Special T Series bridge. 

And again a reminder, these are current purchasing trends.  Ultimately there is no “wrong” answer.  It still all boils down to your personal preference and what tone you are seeking for the particular project or instrument.  As you know, we sell a variety of Lollar tele style pickups.  Each of them has its own unique characteristics and advantages.  For more details and sound clips, follow this link to read more specific information about each of the various Lollar tele style pickups.

Next week we will look at best selling Lollar P-90 style pickups.