Railhammer Chisel Pickup

I have the Hyper Vintage in a Reverend guitar I bought, and a chisel bridge in a strat that I built. I love these pickups. great clarity on the low end without that "boominess" you can get when using high gain amp settings. This allows me to set the bass a tad higher which lets the lead tones really blossom. The mids really cut through the mix which to me is very important. I am pro player for many years, but this will be the first thing I change in any guitar that's handed to me from now on. Yes, it's that good.

I like these Railhammers more now over time. I originally installed both in my Pagan guitar below. I was never quite sure I was getting the Heavy Metal sound I liked. Railhammer folks, who are amazingly engaged with their customers like no other guitar part company I've ever seen, actually contacted me to ask how things were and to recommend different pot/cap configurations based on the materials and construction of my guitar. Ultimately, I left the Railhammer neck in the Pagan paired with a different super-high-output bridge and that guitar is sufficiently metal now. The Railhammer bridge then went into a 60th Anniv Mexican Strat with an HSS configuration. I upgraded the single coils as well, and replaced the OEM humbucker with the Chisel. In this setup, the Chisel is a five-star. In hindsight, I probably would have liked the Railhammer Vintage even more, since I wanted this Strat to be more vintage sounding, but whether combined with the singles or selected alone, the Railhammer really works in this guitar. It still has a very brassy upper-mid bite, but that's a great contrast to the smoother chirp and quack of the singles in the middle and neck.

I got a set of these to replace the Duncan SH-1 and SH-5 I had previously put in my Epiphone '58 Explorer. They completely blow the Duncans away! In both positions, the Railhammers are both louder and clearer. The neck position on this guitar always seemed to be muddy (even after I put in the SH-1); however, with the chisel there's no mud AT ALL, even with a ton of overdrive. Definitely recommended.

The jury is still out on the Railhammer Chisels I installed in my Pagan project. One thing I'll say is, they definitely make a difference... I'm not experiencing that letdown where you replace the pickups and think, "I can't really hear much change." The bridge pickup has a LOT of natural mid-range (I used the recommended 500K pots and .022 cap). On a high-gain setting with only the bridge selected, I can get pinch harmonics on every note -- in fact, it's a little hard NOT to get them. The neck, too, is very crisp and much brighter than I would expect while in the "neck only" position on any guitar. But the neck definitely adds more bass to the sound while remaining fairly bright. On clean settings, that bass can be quite rich indeed. Where I think these pickups respond the worst is in the middle position. Maybe I haven't got the heights adjusted quite right yet, but where the bridge/neck-only positions have their definitive character, in the middle position mixing the two, volume seems to decrease and the tone just sort of muddies up. Again, I may need to keep tweaking the relative heights. Overall, the pickups tend to sound bright and kind of brassy -- I actually use my tone knob a lot with these to roll off some highs, and with my usual pickups (various models), I hardly ever touch the tone knob. Also, they seem to depend tremendously on the amp/setting you play them through. Where I can grab one of my other guitars and play through my amp and get decent sounding results on any simulated amp or setting, the Railhammers sound brilliant on some and just awful on many others. So, if you are looking for a setup that makes one guitar unique compared to all your others, these would fit that bill. Otherwise, you might want to try either the neck or bridge in combo with a different brand pickup. If you go that route, remember the bridge Chisel is very brassy and biting, with a lot of upper mid and the neck is fairly bright, too, but with more gusto.

Gostei dos captadores. muito interante. nao tinha usado ainda esta marca! esta aprovado. obrigado - gostei muito do som.

Liked the pickups. very interesting. had not used this brand! This approved. thanks - I really enjoyed the sound.