Bob Shade wrote:I would like to thank Raygun for his purchase of a new Hallmark 60C and for the nice review! I would like to chime in and say a couple of things about the standard H60C.
1. The 60 Custom is not EXACTLY like a typical Mosrite in regards to fabrication of tonal wood, nor was it our goal. The only set neck and alder body combination on a Mosrite was the 1963 Ventures Model when Semie was using upscale components like body binding, set necks, and alder for the body wood. By 1964 Mosrite abandoned alder and went with basswood which is easier to carve and about half the price to boot ( Some guitar builders say basswood is not considered a real tonal wood, that it is in fact 1 step up from bottom of the line balsa wood. I still use it from time to time and it has a mellow dark tone) and they went with a bolt on neck. A set neck will give you a slightly darker tone that a bolt on. An alder body will lend itself to more sustain and more balanced highs and lows than basswood which will give you more of a honk and mellow tone. Also, I have improved the vintage Mosrite bridge with better ingredients in the Hallmark bridge for sustain and tuning stability and no buzz.
One thing I am getting at is in order to test a Mosrite pickup side to side with a Hallmark, you would need two Hallmarks to do it with or two Mosrites as the tone on each will differ slightly.
2. Most guys love our 60C pickups as is. We have had an incredible amount of people writing in to us in thanks, saying that now have "THAT" sound. We have also tried to improve the pickup for this and all of our models. One thing about the Mosrite pickup is as nice as it sounds clean, it sounds horrible if you intend on using gain or loud distortion due to no potting and hillbilly technology of foam and epoxy backing. This lends itself to alot of vibration, which causes micro fonics and feedback. ( not the desirable kind).
We make the 60 Custom pickup so any player can enjoy it. Some pro's would never be able to use the vintage style Mosrite pickup. It has alway's been a sticking point with guys who want more juice. We have improved the structure of the pickup but kept the highly wound bobbin and alnico magnets to give maximum tone. As you can see in the pictures we employ a brass plate for stability and grounding purposes, and wax pot the pickup. We also use shielded cable and shielding paint in our body cavity. The combination of these attributes make the H60C extremely quiet for single coils and you can even crank them up through a Marshall and get as much crunch as you wish, which is not possible with a vintage Mosrite pickup. In a studio environment with a H60C you can be sure the producer will not be saying, "who's guitar is making noise?)
3. Having said that we will still hand wind pickups to your liking with or without bobbins with new or vintage magnets. As you would suppose, these pickups cost more because they are wound by hand, and do lend themselves to variation depending on what magnet you want use for tone and how much wire we wind them up to. Or you can call M3 too, he makes a variety of Mosrite style pickups.
Whatever you decide on it is nice to know there alot of choices that can help you get the sound you want and you can find them right here on the forum.
Thanks again to M3 for purchasing a Hallmark 60 Custom and posting a review!
Bob Shade
Bob, the guitar is great. And, yes, the pickups are great as well. I wasn't really tearing them down, just pointing out the differences. I was understandably curious about the pickups since we've had so many Hallmark owners purchase our pickups - including Mel and Rick Miller from Southern Culture On The Skids. Rick also replaced his Mosrite pickups with RH-100's and requested them wax-potted for all the same reasons you pointed out. The stock Hallmark pickups actually sound very good, you'll get no argument from me on there. For fans of early 60s surf and guitar instrumentals they will be very happy. But we have had a customer that we couldn't please. We even wound a custom replacement set for him and he still wasn't happy. He was pleased with our customer service but described our pickups as "muddy." (Of course, he was also putting them in a Gibson SG with a mahogany body, too.) But he told me he was expecting our pickups to sound really "hot" like The Ventures in the mid-60's, but instead they sounded more like a "fat, bluesy, Stevie Ray Vaughan tone." I referred him to the Ventures' records Knock Me Out, Walk Don't Run Vol. 2, and In Space albums. He admitted that he'd never heard those records. I guess he downloaded them off the internet or something but after he listened to them he admitted that our pickups 'nailed the tone', but that it 'wasn't what he was looking for.' If I remember correctly, he ended up opting for some cheap import pickups off of eBay. He was nice enough to let me know.
I think there a lot of people who are confusing the sounds of other less-prominent surf bands from the 60s who played Strats and Jazzmasters, or maybe The Ventures early years. So I was very curious as to what the stock 60C pickups sounded like with so many people saying they nailed the tone. Especially since, as I mentioned, we've had a lot of Hallmark owners replace them with our's. (We've also bought Dillions, Eastwoods, and have worked on a lot of Wilson Bros when working with Tim Wilson. Hallmark was the only one we hadn't had an opportunity to check out.) To my ears, they sound like a hot Jazzmaster - which I personally like. A lot of people actually desire this tone in their guitars.
By the way, just curious if you guys are using the Start or the Finish wire for your ground lead? Because that, in conjunction with the brass base plate, can help filter out hum and buzz.
Anyhow, as most everyone knows, my dad is a custom guitar maker. We were hoping to get our guitars going soon but with dad's recent health woes and our preoccupancy with the Mosrite and custom parts business, we've been slowed waaaaay down. Even Bob was wondering why I ordered it. But we've sold off our prototypes and I have not owned a genuine Mosrite guitar for years. So I got the 60C so I would have a good test bed for our pickup experiments. (Same pickup routing cavities...etc...). The Hallmark is a nice little axe and I wouldn't have any qualms about taking it to a gig or a jam as a main or a backup guitar. Keep up the good work, Bob.
Seriously, the attack and quick dropoff is something I like. Jaguars and Jazzmasters have similar qualities. If I want sustain, there's always reverb or fuzz.
