STOP PRESS .....................................................................

As those of you who regularly dip into my website and diary may already know, I am a great advocate of Wizard Pickups.

Andy Blake, who runs Wizard Pickups Ltd, produces a useful range of pickups, all handwound, nicely produced that give tremendous tones AND great value for money. Moreover, he is established as the UK's leading pickup repair and restoration service. I wish he'd advertise more, his products deserve more publicity.

Well, this isn't meant to be an advert, Crimson and Wizard have jointly done a lot of work recently and we are both very pleased with the relationship we have built, such that we have both undoubtedly benefited from the advice and critique of the other.

Both companies and their owners relish a challenge and both have a similar ethos: listen to what the customer wants, advise honestly on the practicalities and/or pitfalls, build and create to the highest possible standards whilst providing value for money service AND keep the customer informed.

Well, I suggested to Andy that we look at making a small range of custom pickups exclusively for our joint use. I'm pleased to say that Andy agreed.

For the moment we will keep the details under wraps but I am prepared to say that we have already prototyped a conventional looking humbucker set with a type of magnet not used before for guitar pickups and they are fabulous. I'm using them on my personal guitar and the tones they produce are wonderful, they are similar to Alnico 5 but they have more attack and volume, subtly different but a massive step forward. We are not yet ready to release these to the public, we want to make sure by testing that we've got the best sound we can, and, we also wish to bring on line some other pickups currently being developed.

Others will use new build techniques, some new materials and others novel styling, as Andy said, " Well Ben, if you are redefining custom guitars - then I'd better try to redefine my bespoke pickups"

We both look forward to a fruitful, successful and happy business relationship.

Our joint aim "Total Guitar Solutions".

*****   Watch this page for more news and developments.   *****

Crimson Guitars and Wizard Pickups  -  redefining tone