Awesome guitar
@jak3af3r ! I’ve been considering one like it after the continuing dearth of reasonably priced NF3s available. Looking forward to hearing more on your impressions of it!
The pickups themselves are really interesting. The first thing is they're probably the most sensitive pickups I've ever had as far as height is concerned. Just a quarter turn of the adjustment screw has a pretty profound effect.
In the pictures, the pickups are labeled for each position but measuring them with a meter (I measured them with an LCR meter too) shows they're all 3 identical. Almost freakishly identical. We're looking at about 4.9 henries on the inductance and a DC resistance of 8.4K which puts these hotter than the McCarty neck pickup in my '97 but just a little less than the McCarty bridge.
Because of the high-ish inductance and resistance readings and the physical design of the pickup, we end up with what sounds almost like overwound tele bridge pickups. There's a lot of clarity because they're not cancelling out a ton of overtones along the length of the string.
This is not to say they're bright and clear like a strat or silver sky though.
They're close. Freakishly close. Like so close at rehearsal if you closed your eyes you probably couldn't guess what guitar I had.
Anyways, the wiring is rather simple. It works like a strat. I know there were some changes made for 2011 that I believe added a treble bleed (odd if it didn't have one originally).
I have a custom 24 from the same year, same month, with the production date a week apart for these two. The 24 is an oddball with some of the newer features like the 5 way blade and lampshades but the neck shape is "standard" and the blade has the rotary positions.
So I thought I'd take a peek in the cavity to see it the SAS is in-between. Which it is with the treble bleed.
Because of this, as you roll of the volume you also brighten up the sound so it gets really really single-coily.
The dynamic response to pick attack is phenomenally good. I suspect most of the initial attack and snap when you start digging is due to the body/neck material so NF3 may be similar but a little more mellow.
The only plans I have is put a push-pull to get 7-way switching for N/B and all 3 pickups and maybe see if I can find mini buttons for the tuners like my cu24 has.
Otherwise, these are great and I'm glad guitarists everywhere are afraid of not being able to change pickups so the prices are about that of a used S2 in the market from 3 years ago (or at least this one was).
