GFS Pickups 50's Repro Bridge for Tele

This is a single coil pickup and it's passive. It has some nice construction points in terms of the cloth leads, cord wrapping and the beveled edges. It says it's resistance is 7.2k which makes sense.

I put this pickup in two different guitars. One was a Squier Affinity Tele and the other was a Squier Standard Tele. Before being judged, I've been working in a music store for 10 months now and I know a lot about how a guitar should sound. I replaced the stock pickups in both guitars with this because the stock ones were too brittle and horrible.

The output was sufficient for its purpose. Here's my point of contention. This pickup is a good replacement for Squier pickups but it's that same sound quality as anything else out there stock. This compared to a Mexi Tele, same difference. GFS has a way of boasting about everything they sell. Well guess what? Not everything they sell is worth a damn. I've bought quite a bit of their gear and most of it is just okay. I see reviews everywhere that say that these are as good as handwound boutique pickups....no they're not. There is a reason it costs $30. GFS also makes some rediculous claims about tone. This thing is not super bassy with the huge bottom they claim. It's balanced, yes, but not bassy. Don't get me wrong, it sounds pretty good, but their "enormous bottom-end" they say this has couldn't get the treble strings to sound as they should. I replaced this pickup in my Affinity with Fender Original Vintage pickups which do have great bottom end and I don't have issue with treble strings on that guitar. I also replaced this pickup with a Dimarzio Pre B-1 in my Standard. The difference is there. Now look, I know this pickup is merely 30 bucks so I shouldn't expect the world, but GFS continuously says that they'll put their gear against high end boutique gear. And that's fine but you know what's going to happen in that situation? GFS will lose. I mean, I will put my banjo playing skils up against Roy Clark, but guess what? I don't play banjo so I'm going to lose that one.

If this pickup was destroyed I wouldn't buy it again because there are better alternative out there. I've been playing for eight years, I play though a Fender HRD. I have 14 guitars, and I'm down from 22. I work in a music store. I've tried everything from super high end Gibsons and Fenders down to Squiers and low end Ibanez. To replace low end guitar pickups with this is a good idea and for that purpose it works well. I do really like the construction of the pickups that I mentioned earlier in the features section. It's not going to solve all your problems though and you're only going to spend extra getting a higher end pickup and so that $100 set of tele pickups just turned into a $160 set of pickups. It's your choice. Again, it's not a bad pickup, but it's nothing special either and don't belive the hype that GFS is really good at, because their pickups are much like the spelling errors in many of their descriptions in that they are flawed.

single coil, 7.2k ohms, made like vintage broadcaster with seemingly no potting. alnico 5.

SX stl50 with a true tone technologies custom "keith richards style" PAF in the neck.(Unbelievably authentic Stone's riffs, but that's another review)

The output is just right for vintage twangin'. I would say the sites claim of 7.2k ohms is just about on the money. It pairs well with vintage output humbuckers and all tele neck pickups. I use a fender usa princeton 112 with a eminence legend speaker. I plug straight in the amp. Not as much bass as the site claims but sounds more like a regular tele bridge pickup than a broadcaster. Very crisp, clear, and rich sounding pickup with virtually no noise. Sounds good on all treble settings and gives a very zeppelin like distortion. I was looking for a short term, decent quality pickup until I could afford a handwound pickup. This GFS almost sounds handwound. It has great dynamics and a very rich musical tone. I'm probably just going to keep this one. For classic rock, rockabilly, or country this is a great pickup. The fact that it's cheap ($30) is just another plus.

I've only tried a few tele bridge pickups, but this is the best. I've played guitar for 12 years and I've been swapping pickups for the last 3 years. I've only recently gotten into hand wound, mainly getting custom pickups from vintage vibe and true tone technologies. I'm shocked that I like this pickup so much and that I refuse to replace it with a hand wound. I guess I just figured that no pickup could sound that much better than this thing. Give it a try, its a boutique quality pickup for 30 bucks. GFS has a few great sounding pickups. However, tone is subjective.