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🇺🇸 U.S. Customers – Shipping, Customs & Import Tariffs (Effective August 29, 2025)

Thank you for shopping with us from across the pond! As a UK-based business, we value our U.S. customers and want to make sure you’re fully informed about how international shipping, customs, and the new U.S. import tariffs may affect your order.

We’ve set out the key info below so everything is clear and fair — both for you and for us.

 

💼 U.S. Import Tariffs & Customs Charges

As of August 29, 2025, the U.S. has introduced new tariffs on imported goods from the UK. These may affect the total cost of your order.

📊 What’s Changing?

• 10% Tariff on Most UK GoodsMany items we sell — including guitars and music gear — may now have an added 10% import tariff applied on arrival in the U.S.
• No More $800 Duty-Free ThresholdPreviously, orders under $800 USD may have been exempt from import duties. This exemption no longer applies. All shipments are now subject to tariffs and customs fees, regardless of value.
• Carrier Charges & Processing DelaysShipping carriers (like UPS, DHL, USPS, FedEx) may also apply brokerage, handling, or processing fees. Customs inspections may cause delivery delays.

📌 Your Responsibility as the Customer

As the importer of record, you are legally responsible for paying:

• All import duties, taxes, and tariffs
• Any additional brokerage or handling fees

We do not collect or prepay these charges on your behalf.

📦 Unclaimed, Refused or Returned Shipments

If your order is refused at delivery, goes unclaimed, or is returned to us due to unpaid import duties, incorrect address, or any customs-related issues, here’s how we’ll handle it:

🔁 Return Shipping & Customs Costs

• You (the customer) are responsible for the cost of returning the parcel to us, including:
  • Return shipping fees
  • Any customs duties, import taxes, or clearance charges incurred during the return

🚚 Reshipping the Order

• If you'd like us to resend the order, we’re happy to do so! But we’ll need you to cover:
  • The original shipping cost
  • The return shipping cost
  • Any customs fees that may apply again

❌ Cancelling the Order

• If the item is returned and you decide not to proceed with reshipping, we’ll issue a refund for the product price, minus:
  • The return shipping cost
  • Any non-refundable customs or processing fees
• Please note: Original shipping costs are non-refundable.

🕵️ Keep an Eye on Your Shipment

To avoid delays or issues, we strongly recommend:

• Tracking your shipment regularly
• Responding promptly to any customs notifications
• Contacting your local carrier if your parcel is held at customs

✅ Our Commitment to You

We’re actively monitoring the evolving tariff situation and doing our best to:

• Adjust our shipping methods and pricing to reduce costs where possible
• Keep you informed of any significant changes
• Make the international buying process as smooth as possible

If you're ever unsure about customs, fees, or delivery, our customer support team is always here to help.

⚖️ Legal & Tax Disclaimer

We are not responsible for any customs charges, import duties, or taxes incurred on U.S. shipments. These are government-imposed charges outside of our control.

This information is provided for general guidance only and should not be considered legal, tax, or customs advice. For detailed advice, please contact a licensed customs broker or tax advisor.

💬 Questions?

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out before placing your order. We're always happy to help!

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One of us is always in from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday. We're a hard working bunch (even if I do say so myself), so there's a chance that one of us will be in outside of these hours. If you need to come in outside of working hours, please give us a call and we'll see what we can do to help.

We are happy to take pretty much all payment methods, including cash, card, Paypal and bank transfer. 

I know some people get a bit sceptical about the effect that the construction of a capacitor can have have on a guitar's tone, but we really believe that it makes a difference. A few years ago, we put some original bumblebee capacitors in a client's Les Paul. We were amazed to find that, despite the values being the same as the old capacitors, it really opened up the sound of the guitar, making the tone knob far more usable; rather than simply getting muddy as we rolled the tone down, we found that the guitar now developed a really interesting mid-range character, reminiscent of a subtle wah sound. We were determined to find some caps that sounded as good as this and, after much looking, found these NOS Russian caps. 

If you've thoroughly perused our website and are yet to find anything that tickles your fancies, we would be delighted to make you a set of custom pickups (or a custom loom for that matter). Please just drop us an email to get the ball rolling.

In our PAFs, we use Alnico 5 for the neck and Alnico 2 for the bridge. The choice of Alnico 5 often raises eyebrows, as many people consider that it is too strong a magnet for a low wind humbucker. 

We decided upon this combo after years of research, getting hands on with literally hundreds (We think. We've slightly lost count) of sets of original PAFs that we've had the incredibly good fortune to test and/or repair. We've found that the best sounding PAF sets have a fairly strong magnet in the neck and a weaker magnet in the bridge. This keeps a nice amount of clarity in the neck pickup, whilst preventing the bridge pickup from getting too shrill. After testing basically every combination we could think of, we realised that the best way to replicate this is to use Alnico 5 in the neck and Alnico 2 in the bridge.

Obviously it goes with out saying that the choice of magnet is only one part of a pickup's design; the sound of a pickup is created by the interaction of all of its parts, so it's difficult to say that a particular magnet has a certain sound. Our PAFs are built around the Alnico 5/2 magnet combo and we believe that they sound their best when using this combo. That being said, everybody's taste is different; if you're sure that you want a different magnet combo, we would be delighted to custom wind a set of PAFs to your specification. 

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Braided 2 conductor wire is the stuff that Gibson used in the 50's. It's comprised of an insulated live wire surrounded by a braided sheath that gets soldered to ground. It's lovely and easy to work with, but doesn't allow for any coil splitting/tapping or series/parallel switching.

4 conductor wire is a more modern layout. It's comprised of 4 wires (a live and a ground for each coil), as well as a foil sheath that grounds the metalwork. Having a live and a ground for each coil does allow for all kinds of wiring trickery, but 4 conductor pickups can also be used in exactly the same way as their 2 conductor counterparts, so there's no harm in getting 4 conductor, even if you don't want any fancy wiring.

50's wiring was the wiring that Gibson used in the 50's and modern wiring is the wiring that Gibson uses now. The main difference between the two is the way the tone cap is wired into the guitar; Modern wiring has the cap coming off the input (left hand lug) of the volume pot, whereas 50's wiring has it coming off the output (center lug). 

Whilst this may not sound like a massive difference, it has a huge effect on the behaviour of your guitar's electronics; whereas the sound of a guitar with modern wiring tends to get a bit muddy as you turn down the volume pot, a 50's wired guitar will stay nice and bright. 50's wiring also tends to be a little brighter overall. Whilst some people prefer to use modern wiring and overcome the muddiness with the addition of a treble bleed, we find that treble bleed circuits negatively affect the taper of the volume knob. As such, we would always recommend 50's wiring over modern wiring.

It also worth saying that, whilst this electronical dichotomy is normally only applied to Gibson guitars, you can wire basically any guitar with 50's wiring. In fact, we like it so much that we wire all of our Fender looms with 50's wiring as standard.

We would always recommend using 500k pots with Humbuckers/P90s and 250k pots with Fender single coils. That being said, there really are no rules, so don't feel that you can't mix this up a bit if you want to.

It is worth saying that higher pot values will always be brighter than lower ones. So, if your Fender-style guitar is sounding a bit muddy, 500k pots might be the perfect thing to brighten it up.

Yes we can. Monty's is an active repairshop and we regularly fit both our own pickups and other manfacturer's pickups to our client's guitars. If you want us to fit your pickups for you (or do any other work on your guitar), please feel free get in touch.

Unfortuantely we aren't able to solder pickups into wiring harnesses before shipping them to you. This will prevent you being able to install them in most guitars and, even if it doesn't, we'll never be able to get the pickup lead length right.

If you are at all uncomfortable installing your pickups, please bring your guitar to Monty's or any other qualified tech and we'll happily help you install them.

Like original 50's PAFs, our PAFs are completely unpotted. Unpotted pickups sometimes get a bit of a bad rep for squealing and being excessively microphonic, but, when they are well built (and I promise that ours are), they will be able to handle almost any amount of gain that you can through at them; we have clients that use them for heavy metal without any issues whatsoever.

When buying through our website, you can pay by card or PayPal. If you'd rather pay by bank transfer, you are more than welcome to drop us email detailing what you want to order and we'll get an invoice to you.

DON'T PANIC. Did I help?.

Once of the advantages of being a boutique company with a build time on most of our products is that there's a bit of a delay between your order being placed and us actually shipping it. If you notice a mistake on your order, please just contact us and one of our team of guitar enthusiasts/coffee connoisseurs will sort it out for you.

In the unlikely event that you notice a mistake on your order after we've shipped it, things may get a little more tricky; be assured that nothing makes us more happy than making you happy, so we'll do everything we can to sort the issue as quickly and easily as possible.

If we've made a mistake, then it's absolutely at the top of our priorities to fix it for you. Please contact us to tell us what's wrong and we'll get it sorted.

Yes we do! We offer a trade discount to guitar builders and repair shops. If you fall into this category and are interested in getting our products at trade rates, please do get in touch and we'll get you sorted out.

We can ship to pretty much any country and regularly deal with customers from every corner of the globe.

UK:

We have two options for shipping within the UK, 1st Class and Special Delivery. 1st class shipping is only available on smaller items and costs £4. Special Delivery is our standard delivery and costs £9, or £15 for heavier orders.

International:

The rate for international shipping will vary from country to country, our checkout will calculate an accurate shipping value for you.

Some of our orders are subject to build times that can be seen here. All our pickups and international orders are sent out fully tracked, so, once they've been dispatched, you should be able to follow them on their journey to you. If you haven't received a tracking number, or if we're being slow dispatching your order, please drop us an email and we'll be able to help you out.

Our build time on orders varies depending on the product:

Pickups and MORE! pedals have a 2-3 week build time.

Wiring harnesses have a 1-2 week build time.

Custom orders have a 2-4 week build time, depending on the availability of parts.

All other products are kept in stock and should be dispatched within 1 day, although at busy times of year this may be a little longer..

We'll send you an email telling you when we've shipped your order. Please note that we will always ship your order in one package, meaning that we won't dispatch any of it until we've finished making it all.

All UK orders will arrive with you the day after they are shipped (see our build time FAQ). International orders should arrive in:

Europe: 3-5 days

Rest of World: 1 week

Please be aware that international orders can occasionally get held up in customs, so they may take a little longer to arrive than shown above. If you're worried that your order hasn't arrived, please contact us.

For most international countries there will be tax to pay when importing products from the UK. Unfortunately, these are completely out of our control, so we are not able to provide for them in the shipping cost.

You can tell us of your intention to return an item any time up until 14 days after you have received it. You then have a further 30 days to return it to us in the condition you received it. We will then issue you a full refund for the item and the initial postage (postage will not be refunded if only part of an order is being returned). Unfortunately, we can't refund you for the return postage and you are responsible for the getting the item to us safely. If the item is returned to us in non-original condition, we reserve the right to refuse the return or, in the case of pickups that have already been soldered into a guitar, charge a 25% restocking fee. The intial postage is not refundable in this instance. 

Please note that we can't accept returns on custom orders. This is defined as anything that you asked to have spec'd outside of our standard options.

We know this all sounds a little nasty, but we promise we're really very nice; if you have any issues, please feel free to get in contact and we will do our absolute best to help you out.

We really hope that you don't want to cancel your order, but we quite understand that sometimes you need to. Under UK/EU law, you have the right to cancel your order any time up until 14 days after it has been delivered. If you want to cancel your order, please send us an email stating your intention to cancel. If we haven't shipped your order yet, we'll refund you straight away.

If we've already shipped your order, please refer to the returns FAQ. This should outline the process for returning items to us. As ever, if you have any questions, please do get in touch.

All of our pickups and pedals have a lifetime warranty to the original owner against defects in materials and workmanship (we back ourselves like that).

In addition, all of our wiring looms have a 12 month warranty against the same defects.

Obviously it goes without saying that we can't guarantee against damage caused by incorrect installation, use or modification, as well normal wear and tear. If you're at all worried about fitting your pickups/loom please contact us and we'll be happy to help you out or point you in the direction of someone who can.