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Today I installed the new Mosrite pickups I purchased from Ed Elliot. To say they sound great and have that 'true' Mosrite sound I've been looking for, is an understatement.

I removed a set of Hallmark pups from one of my custom clones and replaced them with the Elliot's. For a comparison I used four guitars. One of my clones has a set of GFS P-90s, one has the Hallmark, now one has the Elliot, plus an original '66 Vetures model .

The results are the Hallmarks sound more like the P-90s and sound nice, but to my ears they just don't have that true Mosrite beautiful dimensional sound on the neck+bridge setting. All pots and caps are the same value in all those guitars. The Elliot and Hallmarks are all in 12,000 ohm range with the Hallmarks being the hottest or highest.

To my ears, all four versions of the pups sound very similar on the single neck pickup. On the middle position the Hallmarks and P-90's sound very similar to each other but nothing like the Elliot Mosrite and vintage Mosrite. The Elliot's and the original Mosrite are extremely bright on the bridge pup compared to the Hallmark and P-90's.

When it comes to choice, I guess it's all in the ears of the beer holder.

Danny,
Thanks for sharing these observations. I'm really looking forward to getting my Elliot-equipted V3 together.
Interesting that the tonal difference is so much more noticable on the bridge pickup. I'm curious - which of the clone guitars in the test have a shade vibrato and which has the vibrato plate you custom made? Just wondering if having the bridge and string ends mounted on a single piece of metal would make a difference.
So, now you've got to see if you can get your hands on some Seymour Duncan, Tym and Novak replica pickups for a complete market test!
Mel

Two of the clones tested have the Shade vibrato. They are virtually identical. One has the Hallmark and one has the Elliot. The one with the Elliot sound 'real' close to my original '66 on a three settings.

Possibly the difference in sound comes from the polarity of the magnets. The Elliot uses the same magnetic polarity as Mosrite with south 'up' on the bar magnets. Unkown if Hallmark or the P-90's use this polarity.

Since they are registered here on the forum, I sent both Elliot and Novak a pm regarding rewinding the bridge pickup on my '64 that I just acquired, but neither have responded. I'll give them a few days then I'll call them if I don't get a response here.

I thought I'd post an interesting find during an experiment today. While waiting to get the bridge pickup in my '64 rewound, I decided to install the bridge Hallmark pickup in it. I was totally surprised to find that beautiful Mosrite sound on the 'both pickups together middle setting' and that 'bright' bridge pup sound.

It has that Mosrite 'sqwak' sound that I love, but cannot achieve on my other guitars with Hallmark and P-90 pups. So, next I tried the bridge pickup only setting and found the Hallmark installed in my '64 was just as bright as my '66, but yet when I tried my custom build with the Hallmark bridge pups it is slightly more mellower.

I am dumb founded. If I had different valued pots and capacitors I could easily understand it. This makes no sense to me. As I said before, my other custom clone has the new Mosrite pups in it and it sounds like a Mosrite. However between two clones built and set up virtually the same sas pup's, there is a significant difference.

At any rate I thought I'd share my recent findings as I do not wont to mislead anyone into thinking Hallmarks do not sound like Mosrites because apparently they do/can,should. Hopefully someone else will do a side by side comparison test between a Mosrite and Hallmark pickups and share their findings.

BTW, I sent the pickup to be rewound to Elliot even though they both responded. Since Elliot worked for Semie winding pickups, I wanted to keep my 'original' it in the 'Mosrite' family. I will use Novak on my next Strat rewind.

Test guitars minus the blue burst with the P-90s

Well that's interesting! What are the other factors - body wood / wood age, neck construction? Wiring thickness and construction? Manufacture of the potentimeters and capacitor?

I suppose you should try a Mosrite or Elliot pickup in the guitar that had the Hallmarks on it and see if it sounds less bright. That would tell you it's something other than the pickups.

Ah, science!

Nope! I give up. &

Danny, are you saying that when you put the Hallmark pup in the '64 and '66, it sounded like a Mosrite Pick-up? And when you put the Hallmark in the Custom Builds, it had a mellower sound???

That is very interesting. If you remember back to the old forum I was saying that my 60 Custom sounded to mellow so I changed all the electronics to top quality parts and used 500k pots instead of 250k's and it was much better but it is still a bit to mellow on the neck pup. I did find an old video of me playing my Ventures Mosrite and it sounded much brighter on the neck pickup.

Jim

PS: I have some songs that I recorded on my web-page and Twilite Over Texas was recorded using the Mosrite. It was done in a studio so it is a much better recording that the other songs there. All the other songs were done on my computer and recorded in a hurry to give to my mother.

http://www.ridgeroadramblers.com/Jim_Songs.html
This is the only link to get to the page as it has nothing to do with the current band. LOL

Very interesting, Danny.
Could the difference be the wood: aged vs. new and alder vs. basswood ? , or, to paraphrase: old alder vs new basswood

Jim,
Twilight Over Texas is real nice! Care to detail amp used, pickup combination? What is the origin of the tune? It's a really nice instro.