Fender CuNiFe Wide Range Humbuckers

I ordered a pair of these during Fender's 30% off accessories sale. I received them on Thursday and finally installed them today, along with a set of 1 meg pots. I can't get over how awesome they sound! Great with my Princeton Reverb clone and they really brought my Dr. Z amps to life! The Cure sounds great, the Monza sounds like a dirty old blues amp, and the Z Wreck Jr sounds unbelievably rich and complex.

The guitar is a 2013 MiM Classic '72 Thinline Tele that I paid $350 for. It weighs under 6-1/2 pounds and is a lot of fun to play, especially now!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...ce39b878_b.jpg

Oddly, the new bridge and neck pickup are ambossed differently, though they both just came directly from Fender. It's hard to see in pics, and I'll probably forget about it over time.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...8c1f3e40_b.jpg

I’ve wondered about those pickups. Glad to hear you like them.

I wish Telenator had managed to get his product popular enough to stay solvent - great pickups!

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Originally Posted by gibsonjunkie

I wish Telenator had managed to get his product popular enough to stay solvent - great pickups!

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I agree. Would these even exist if it wasn't for his efforts?

I contacted Fender about the engraving being different on the bridge and neck pickups and they said it's supposed to be different. Odd. I just wanted to make sure there was nothing weird going on.

Sure enough, I looked on Reverb and some of the ads for new American Vintage II Thinline Teles (that show a pic of the actual guitar that's for sale) have different engraving on the neck and bridge pickups. The images on Fender's site and ads with stock pics do not.

I had the pleasure of receiving a cease and desist letter from Fender around 2015. It was pretty funny. They wanted a complete inventory of our parts and pickups.

We had our legal team talk to them about it.

In the end, it was all about modifying those dreadful early 2000's bar magnet pickups and re-using the Fender chrome covers. We had to remove all photos of Fender products, and any mention of the name "Fender" from our website.

We were the ONLY pickup manufacturer approached by Fender for this reason. I know they had a set of our pickups. They would have been foolish not to, LOL!

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Originally Posted by Tele-Bob

I know they had a set of our pickups.

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How else would they know how to make them like the originals, LOL!

Ironic that FMIC won't extend any effort to stem the flow of cheap chicom-made knock-off "Tender" guitars into this country yet they'll go to the mat to shut down some domestic mom-and-pop pickup company.

Kinda shows us who's really driving the bus at Fender......

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Originally Posted by phantomman

Ironic that FMIC won't extend any effort to stem the flow of cheap chicom-made knock-off "Tender" guitars into this country yet they'll go to the mat to shut down some domestic mom-and-pop pickup company.

Kinda shows us who's really driving the bus at Fender......

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Well, since the Wide Range Humbucker had never been patented, we were looking at doing so in the early 2000's.
It would have been so ironic for Fender to be paying us royalties on that pickup now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tele-Bob

I had the pleasure of receiving a cease and desist letter from Fender around 2015. It was pretty funny. They wanted a complete inventory of our parts and pickups.

We had our legal team talk to them about it.

In the end, it was all about modifying those dreadful early 2000's bar magnet pickups and re-using the Fender chrome covers. We had to remove all photos of Fender products, and any mention of the name "Fender" from our website.

We were the ONLY pickup manufacturer approached by Fender for this reason. I know they had a set of our pickups. They would have been foolish not to, LOL!

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I'd say the brand name Telenator had more "cachet" than Fender, anyways!