Guitar Pickups from Q-Tuner

I have been hearing about these darn pickups for ages, I have heard nothing but rave reviews regarding their clarity and sustain. So, I finally got fed up of hearing stories, so I contacted Q-Tuner and told them I want to hear for myself. We chatted back and forth via email for a while, got to know each other a little bit and talked a lot about these pickups.

A Bit of History

Years ago, back in 1990, these pickups were created using the very expensive neodymium magnet. The inventor, Erno Zwaan, who I was speaking with quite a lot, filed for a patent on his invention. Philips Electronics then ran some tests on the pickup and determined it was indeed a quality pickup and sank $50,000 into creating a bunch of prototype. The unfortunate thing was the Philips all the while was planning to sell their electronics division, and in the sale this product got cut.

To this day Q-Tuners are still made and marketed, but rather than by a very high profile electronics company, Erno and his friends at Neophyzix decided to do it themselves.

Each Q-Tuner is hand made by based on the buyers' needs, and pickup mounting style. It takes about 8-10 hours to build an individual pickup. I will say this, they are rather unusual looking pickups, but it's cool, each one has their own little differences, though very minimal, just making each one unique due to it being hand made, not machine made.

The Pickups Arrive

While the story of getting a guitar fixed isn't really very interesting, I thought this process spoke a lot about the pickup itself, so I will share. When the Q-Tuners arrived I took the guitar right down to the shop to have them put in. I meant to take a picture of them out of the guitar, but just forgot because I wanted to hear them, so I had to email Q-Tuner and ask them for some pictures. So the picture you see of the raw Q-Tuner is from them, not me.

A couple days later, the luthier called about some other work I wanted done, I got some neck work and fret work done as well while it was there. During the conversation he says "Oh, and about those wacky looking pickups, where did you get those? What are they? They look crazy." So I told him the story of Q-Tuner and we chatted a bit about them and as we got off the phone he told me he is going to get right to work on mine because he really wanted to hear them.

A couple more days pass and he called me back telling me the guitar was ready and that it would be back at my store (the Music Go Round in Burnsville, MN *shameless plug for a friend*) that night. He also told me he played around with it for a while and that the neck is smooth and nice and that he thought the pickups sounded really good, and was kind of interested in them.

My Experience

Well, I got home and plugged the guitar in right away, cranked up a wicked dirty sound on my POD and started jammin'. The sound was very powerful...much more than previously. I switched to a clean model and was immediately impressed with the crisp, pure sound of the guitar. After a bit of rockin' out, I pulled up a project I am working on. My goal was the re-record the guitar part and do some A/B type comparisons against some old tracks I had recorded. I grew into the habit of double tracking the guitar for a bigger sound, I have found with the Q-Tuners I didn't need to double track, the original take is so clean and strong it seemed unnecessary. For a test I did it anyway and the doubletracking virtually took over the mix.

The very clean and powerful (and expensive) neodymium magnets in this pickup produce a very, very accurate sound that will give you a whole new sound. Even cranked up in a very hi-gain, heavily overdriven situation the hum produced by these pickups is un-noticeable. I am really quite impressed and wonder why these pickups have not been mass produced by a large pickup maker (or, one that actually intended to continue with them anyway). I have tried a few different pickups in my life, admittedly not as many as some people, but enough to have a good meter to measure by.

My ol' favorite Washburn A-10 was aging, and I had been shopping for pickups for a while, the stock pickups were starting to get rusty and nasty so I had been playing a few guitars, listening to the pickups and nothing really tripped my trigger so I figured I'd give these Q-Tuners a chance. Very glad I did, they are the best I have heard.

The appearance may be a turn off to some because it is very non-traditional, so if you are into appearances, you may miss out, however, I can honestly say the sound is quite possibly one of the best pickups I have ever had the pleasure of using, and they are staying right where they are, mounted in my main guitar, for many years of future use. Also, it really makes me think about trying their bass pickups as well...