Historically associated with inexpensive student-model guitars of the 1960s, gold foil pickups are now all the rage. Before you go down the eBay rabbit hole for a vintage set, do yourself a favor and check out one of the numerous modern replicas available.
Gold Foil Surface Mount
These handmade single-coils were designed to offer clarity and power, with a pristine top-end and a wide dynamic range. Nickel, chrome, or gold covers are available.
Gold Foil Alnico Soapbar
These single-coil soapbars contain flat, alnico bar magnets that are meant to serve up a warmer, rounder high-end than the company’s ferrite versions.
Gold Foils
Designed to have the same character as an original gold foil at an affordable non-vintage price, these fully wax-potted pickups are housed in standard humbucker-sized cases.
Gold Foil Mustache Grille
These handwound gold foils were designed to replicate those used on late-’50s to late-’60s Silvertones. Made to DeArmond/Rowe specs, these pickups can also be ordered with custom specs.
Gold Foil Pickup Set
This affordable set housed in mini-humbucker-sized covers includes a bridge pickup at 10.2k ohms and a neck pickup at 10.8k ohms.
Gold Foil
Down to the specialized rubberized magnet, these pickups are exact clones of gold foil pickups from the ’60s and are intended to sound clear, powerful, and harmonically rich.
Gold Coil
Taking cues from the originals for clear and thick single-coil tones, these modern-version gold foils will fit any humbucker-equipped guitar.
Mini-Humbucker P-90 Gold Foil
Designed to deliver lots of warmth and clarity with enough output to produce that P-90 grind, this vintage-inspired gold foil comes packaged in a smaller, handsome mini footprint.
Lowrider Gold Foil Standard
Lowrider single-coils are flat-magnet, surface-mount pickups with spacing for a standard Strat-style guitar and are underwound to come in at just under 5k ohms.
Dog Ear Gold Foil SC
These custom pickups are wax potted under vacuum (unless requested otherwise) and feature proprietary I-X grounded shielding to reduce noise from external AC electric fields.
Grammy-nominated session guitarist, producer, mixer, and engineer Paul Moak stays busy on multiple fronts. Over the years he’s written, played, produced and more for TV sessions (Pretty Little Liars, One Tree Hill) and artists including Third Day, Leeland, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. But most recently he’s worked with Heart and Ann Wilson and Tripsitter.
Time Traveler
Moak is most loyal to a 1963 Stratocaster body that’s mated to a 1980s-vintage, 3-bolt, maple, bullet-truss-rod, 1969-style Fender Japan neck. The bridge has been swapped as many as four times and the bridge and neck pickups are Lindy Fralins.
Cool Cat
If there’s one guitar Moak would grab in a fire, it’s the Jaguar he’s had since age 20 and used in his band DC Talk. When Moak bought the guitar at Music Go Round in Minneapolis, the olympic white finish was almost perfect. He remains impressed with the breadth of tones. He likes the low-output single-coils for use with more expansive reverb effects.
Mystery Message Les Paul
Moak’s 1970 L.P. Custom has a number of 1969 parts. It was traded to Moak by the band Feel. Interestingly, the back is carved with the words “cheat” and “liar,” telling a tale we can only speculate about.
Dad Rocker
Almost equally near and dear to Moak’s heart is this 1968 Vox Folk Twelve that belonged to his father. It has the original magnetic pickup at the neck as well as a piezo installed by Moak.
Flexi Plexis
This rare and precious trio of plexis can be routed in mix-and-match fashion to any of Moak’s extensive selection of cabs—all of which are miked and ready to roll.
Vintage Voices
Moak’s amps skew British, but ’60s Fender tone is here in plentitude courtesy of a blonde-and-oxblood Bassman and 1965 Bandmaster as well as a 2x6L6 Slivertone 1484 Twin Twelve.
Guess What?
The H-Zog, which is the second version of Canadian amp builder Garnet’s Herzog tube-driven overdrive, can work as an overdrive or an amp head, but it’s probably most famous for Randy Bachman’s fuzzy-as-heck “American Woman” tone.
Stomp Staff
While the Eventide H90 that helps anchor Moak’s pedalboard can handle the job of many pedals, he may have more amp heads on hand than stompboxes. But essentials include a JHS Pulp ‘N’ Peel compressor/preamp, a DigiTech Whammy II, DigiTech FreqOut natural feedback generator, a Pete Cornish SS-3 drive, Klon Centaur, and Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.
Reverend Descent W Baritone Electric Guitar - Transparent White
