GFS Pickups Neovin Pure Vintage

Supposed to be noisless, so it can't be a true single coil. Passive.

Custom built Strat, center position. Neck and bridge are TV Jones.

There is literally NO output level. GFS stresses placing their pickups as close to the strings as possible. This is to make up for their lousy design.

I only wish someone would steal it. I'd personally thank them. Been playing 50 years profesionally. Gear too numerous to list - and it's not important here. Bought this PUP because it was cheap, and I couldn't get a hold of Bill or Becky to get one of theirs. You get what you pay for, only I paid $29 and got NOTHING!

I received the Fat-vintage set.

I installed these in my Squire vintage modified strat which has been further modified by me to have a bridge on switch for 7 pickup configurations and the second tone controls the bridge an mid pickups. As well as some cosmetic mods. I replaced the stock Duncan Designed alnico pickups. Which are good pickups but noisy in front of the computer or any light source other than a 40 watt bulb at least 20 feet away. Standard single coil stuff.

I use this with a Line 6 Bogner spider valve and the sound is amazing. All the strat stuff is there and then some. It just is fuller and rounder more powerful than the originals. I can get every thing from John Mayer clean to Eric Johnson drive. Out of these things. Will they crunch out death metal type thrash?....NO they won't, but then again, they are not supposed to. They do as advertised they offer awesome strat tones with no noise at all. They take some time to dial in pickup height to balance out the sound but once you get there they are great.

I've been playing for over 25 years and have owned many guitars and i absolutely love these pickups! I will be buying more of them in the future. I think that I will get the power rock set a try on my other strat. Thanks GFS

GFS Neovin Pure Vintage
Single Coil strat set

82 Fender (Japanese) FotoFlame Strat/maple neck/ash body
replacing stock Japstrat pickups

Not high output.(use your amp!)
Good vintage-like tone. Not dead-on, but pretty close. (I used to have a 61 strat back in the early 70's - I know vintage tone) Good for blues,60's rock,etc...
If you want awesome vintage recreation, try the GFS Alnico II Hand-beveled Premium II's with non-RWRP middle pickup. (killer tone)
These NeoVins are great pickups for a good strat tone with ABSOLUTELY NO NOISE.
The guy below must have a wiring issue (either in his guitar or his head) He described his oriiginal pickups as muddy and then complained about the NeoVin's being muddy too. Poor pots, poor or wrong caps, poor wiring , incorrect wiring, dead strings, crap guitar wood? I can't say for sure but his review is WAY OFF.

If 60 cycle hum bugs you and you don't want the price or the tone of EMG's, these will cure your ills.

this is a review for the GFS NEOVIN noiseless OVERWOUND set....not the pure vintage set...

humbucking single coil sized(in black)
neck is 9.7k,middle is 9.7k,and bridge is 11.5k

passive pickups,wired standard with the exception that middle tone now works as a tone pot for the bridge,and the neck has its own individual tone pot as well.

all wiring was updated to switchcraft(ie pickup selector,pots,jack)
all pots now are 500k,and the guitar is fully shielded from outside rf signals(kind of redundant,i know..but i live near an airport)

these were installed in my black fender strat(1990) with maple on maple neck,medium jumbo frets,schaller tuners,and locking strap holders.

replaced all pickups as the noise was aggravating to say the least...
the stock pickups were so bad i almost sold this guitar..really glad i didn't.

previously..the output was,shall we say weak...shrill...sharp..no definition.now..it's an entirely different story.full,fat,warm,but with amazing clarity.does it sound like a strat?yes..but better.

it's kind of like having a REALLY good PAF style pickup in the single coil space.it now covers all styles of sound..want santana?it's in there..dire straits?yep...

and amazingly..eric johnson as well.i can get that violinesque sound no problem now...and thats with a peavey special 130 soild state amp(or backstage/backstage plus combo).i run it into a pod xt live,and that sound is there...too cool!

it can do just about anything i throw at it now...and,it's utterly silent...until it isn't.

i'd get them again for sure..they certainly work well in my strat..

playing over 20+ years,pro for 15 of them(i'm 38)...i have a tele,a 335,an old alvarez 5013 acoustic,and several old school peavey amps.

i love these pickups,they are a total bargain.

Noiseless passive pickups to suit stratocaster. Resistance seemed too low to be true at a shade over 5K.

I put a set of 3 into my strat which has dimarzio area 62 noiseless in it prior to this. I became tired of the areas coz are so dull and lifeless. Not like a real strat pickup. From what I read on GFS site these Pure Vintage seemed at least worth a try.

I should have known that nothing worth what these sell for would be worth a pinch of doggy doo. I have never felt such a total waste of money as these things.

I took the area 62s out and put these in, no change to the pots or anything. I couldn't believe my ears, the output was so low that i had to turn the volume control on my fender amp to 7 to get the same volume as the areas on 3.

The tone was nothing like a Strat. The bass strings were not crisp n clean but more like a soggy cardboard box, no .. in fact exactly like a wet cardboard box.

I thought something was wrong with the wiring so I took them out and put the areas back in just as a reference. Bingo, they sounded as they did before, sort of a dull facsimile of a Strat pickup.

I put the Neovins back and got the same result as before so it is definitely the pickups and not a wiring fault. To say the bass string were muddy is a gross understatement, even a muddy sound would be better then these things.

I am lost for words to describe how bad these things are, simply unuasable. In my mind they are absolutely useless for anything, even a beginner would not use these coz they don't sound like any sort of guitar let alone a strat. Maybe a bass but certainly not a guitar.

If this was some kind of practicle joke i sure dont appreciate it, for that's what i think of these are. I simply can not fathom how a company can make claims they way they do on their site. Simply outrageous, I will never trust GFS again with my money no matter how little it is.

If these were stolen i would feel pity for the thief. I thought about getting rid of these on ebay but i just can't being myself to knowingly rip off some other guitar player.

So having tired of the dimarzio area 62 and found GFS neovin pure vintage to be unspeakably bad I have decided to spend the money and go upmarket. It's looking like the old saying you don't get something for nothing has a ring of truth to it. Looking at spending serious dollars to get seriously good sound now, I've quit fooling around with these economy pickups as a complete waste of time and money.