The Steel Guitar Forum

Anyone tried the Railhammer pickups listed in the Stewart McDonald catalogue? They have a rail for the lower strings to give them more definition and pole pieces for the smaller strings.

Thanks

I've seen lots of Charlie Christian pickups like this.

Haven't tried them, but I do know they're very popular with metal / high gain distortion guitarists.

Apparently, they do sound good clean (the lower output models) but I'm struggling to find demos of clean tones...

My guess would be if you're finding your lower wound strings a little muddy after you've set your amp to get your treble strings sounding sweet, these pickups by all accounts address this.

You can see why the metal heads like 'em. By the time they've got that high gain Marshall fizz under control, they've lost some definition on the wound strings.

My favourite pickup design to accomplish a similar thing used a combo of Alnico II and V magnets, being mellower and brighter by nature. Works great in a Telecaster bridge so would be perfect (IMHO) in a classic lap steel design. As per, I digress...

I will assume that you are looking at 6 stringers but if you were to need a 10, the Telonics does some mix & match stuff--

http://www.tpa-az.com/page7.htm

I have not tried the rail/pole pickups so I can't comment.