Why buy Revel Custom Pickups? This is the part where I present to you my “value proposition.” That’s a mostly ridiculous phrase intended to convince you to buy my pickups and not someone else’s pickups. So here it goes…

HONESTY:

It is the cornerstone of Revel Pickups. It may be more important in the guitar business than in most businesses. What is true and false about pickups and the history of pickups, what can and can’t be done in a single guitar, whether or not you should spend a lot of money on caps or cables, how to get the sound you want and whether or not Revel can get you to that sound? I have only the truth as an answer, like it or not. I am old fashioned. I want our relationship to be founded on honesty. I would love to have Revel pickups in every guitar in the nation, but..I don’t need your business; I value your business.

I PROVIDE SOMETHING DIFFERENT:

What you get from Revel Custom Pickups is a thing designed and built by me and me alone. From cutting the flatwork to building the bobbins, from the winding to the potting to the quality control, the packaging and shipment, your pickups receive personal attention that is downright antiquated.

I go to great lengths to use the highest quality, USA made, materials available. I machine parts in house, have them made locally, and have my plating done locally and domestically.

EXPERIENCE:

My path to pickup winding includes the building of thousands of pickups to understand why they sound the way they do and how to make them sound the way you want. It took many years of this before I so much as gave away my first pickup. Ten years later I now do repairs and rewinds for shops and customers around the globe. I’ve fixed and rewound more pickups than I can remember. I’ve worked on, rebuilt, rewound, and reverse engineered pickups and coils from the dawn of the technology. I’ve torn down 50’s era PAF’s and Fender pickups from the outside in and have studied them intensely (like most great pickup makers have and do).

MY GOAL, FROM THE START, HAS BEEN TO MAKE THE BOUTIQUE PICKUP EXPERIENCE AFFORDABLE TO THE WORKING CLASS PLAYER:

It’s no easy task. I think the effort and the art sounds and shows and the experience speaks for itself.

UNPARALLELED CUSTOMER SERVICE AND REPUTATION:

Revel Custom Pickups is the definition of small business. One owner/operator. As of today (June 5, 2020) we have had one return. It goes to show the quality of our customer service and the quality of Revel Custom Pickups.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:

We recycle everything, from coil wire to shipping boxes. Even extra wood whittled away in the creation of a custom guitar or cabinet makes its way into one of our machines or into the fire pit. And we use 100% recycled and recyclable packaging materials. No plastics or foams! It is great for the environment and great for our pricing.

HANDWOUND/SCATTERWOUND PICKUPS

I handwind a lot of coils. Every Revel single coil pickup is hand wound and many humbucker coils are, too. Scatterwinding, more often than not, produces the tones I covet and can only be done by someone who really knows what they are doing and why to do it. It takes a lot of time and concentration but produces far superior tone and richer harmonic voicings in many pickups.

WINDING MACHINES

Some pickups must be wound by an auto-traversing machine. Revel uses a combination of hand-made winding machines and 2 old Geo Stevens winders.  Having had the somewhat rare opportunity to see, inspect and measure many vintage coil winding machines that were used to wind historic pickups, the Revel winder was modeled on them, and remains the most busy machine in the shop. The 60’s era Geo Stevens handles the winding of the Vintage ’72 Wide Range Humbucker and the Wee Range Humbucker exclusively. The 1957 Geo Stevens machine winds the Heyday Retro P.A.F. and is responsible for rewinding 50’s and 60’s era PAF coils, being the same machine Gibson was using at the time. They are all wonderful, one of a kind, creations – just like the pickups wound with them!

CUSTOM DESIGNS

Want a custom humbucker in a Jazzmaster assembly for the neck of a Tele? That’s not even that weird! Yes, I can do that. Contact me. 

JUST THE FAQS

Here is some insight into commonly asked questions, like pickup output, staggered magnets, etc.