Greco PU-2s and the letter "A"

These "A" stamped pickups show up from time to time, with no real reason or rhyme. Why did they use an "A" stamp on some 80's Maxon pickups made for Greco?

The only working idea I have is that they wound the "A" pickups in the same place and at the same time as they wound the "Z" pickups. I think they probably didn't want to get them mixed up so decided to use an "A" stamp for PU-2 pickups.

Are all "A" stamped pickups PU-2s? There are also some "A" pickups without "PU-2" embossing in the plates. One more mystery.

The pictured set is from a 1980 EGF-850. The numbers suggest different production dates. Only one has an "A".

New catalog added: The Mint Collection 1982

Just click right here to get to it.

DRY-Z Part 3: From the blog of Jun Takano

Sorry, finishing this translation of Jun Takano's blog posts on DRY-Z development slipped my mind. Better late than never!

Part 3 of the blog entry of Jun Takano regarding the "Z-DRY" development. Translated from the original Japanese.

Part 2 here.

Part 1 here.

The factory cost of the pickups we had developed up to that point was higher than the popular imported Dimarzio pickup of the time and it didn't make any sense to put them in the lower-priced guitar models so they were used only on the high-priced models.

Many guitars that had the pickups installed were passed to foreign artists. Among them were some people like Andy Latimer who didn't want a guitar but only wanted to have the pickups.  

Of course, I was still not 100% satisfied with what we had accomplished up to that time. I wanted to improve the specifications but I was unable to successfully negotiate this with the factory side and so the road for being able to suggest further improvements became closed.

I was able to improve the bobbins at the time of the Mint Collection ramp-up but that was the end.

Some time after the new bobbin was introduced the specifications were changed for the worse. The stock of wire ran out and they switched to plain urethane wire but I never had any report of this.

After that rich tone was completely lost, it never came back.

From http://ameblo.jp/ktguitarresearch/entry-10475069153.html

DRY-Z Innards

I have a couple of DRY-Z that came with plastic shielded leads and changed them over to the braided wire yesterday and took a few pictures along the way.  According to the seller the pickups were from an ESP strat, hence the plastic shielding to avoid problems with accidental grounding.

Up to now I had the Zs in my Tokai LS-150 and they completely lived up to their reputation for clarity and responsiveness. So why take them out? I have a nice set of Seth Lovers that I wanted to used in the LS-150 and I want to use these Zs in my Tokai LC-100 or Greco EC68-80. To deal with the lack of gold hardware I also traded the polepieces and covers with those from a set of PU-2s in gold I got from Yahoo Japan recently.

After measuring the resistance I realized that the one that had been in the bridge (with a shorter lead) has lower resistance at about 7.7k compared to the neck at 8.3k. The bridge needs a bit more volume so I switched them around.

From the numbers on the baseplates these pickups were made about 5 months apart. 210509 should be May 9, 1981 and 201106 should be November 6, 1980 if I am not getting things confused. The "2" is a production line number as far as I have read and doesn't indicate the model. These were not made They could have been purchased as after-market parts which may explain the different dates.

Here are some pictures to show the innards of these pickups.

With polepieces and bobbin screws removed

Outer tape layer removed.

Double black bobbins.

210508 with bobbin removed. Maple and mahogany spacers?
Note light wax potting and polished roughcast magnet.

Back of the magnet showing some rough edges.

Wax potting and very rough magnet surface. I didn't take this out to see if the back was the same.

Back of the bobbin of 201106

Ready for installation in the Greco EC68-80.

Greco SA-700 クランチ+ブースト Whipping Post

Great demo here of a rare 1982 Greco SA-700 made to 1981 Super Real specs. This model had a coil tap toggle switch.

This is from a store in Japan called Heavy Gauge Guitars  in Funabashi City, Chiba Prefecture with some interesting guitars and great video demos.

Disclaimer: No association in any way with Aoyama Oyaji.