'72 CuNiFe Wide Range Humbucker Set

Welcome to a realm of fat and expansive tones, please let us introduce the Monty’s '72 CuNiFe Wide Range Humbucker Set!

Wide Range humbuckers are not like any other pickup, they are not simply a big humbucker; they are something unique. Full bodied while at the same time being airy with natural chime. If you are looking to turn your reissue Deluxe, Custom or Thinline Telecaster into the real deal, look no further.

The first real Wide Range I saw that opened my eyes to what they really were was the neck pickup on an early 70’s Tele Custom. After years of being put off by the reissue models and their dark and dead-sounding pickups, this was a big thing.

Once I knew how excellent the real deal could be, it wasn’t long before I heard the best Wide-Range set that, still to this day, has ever come across my bench. The guitar was a ’72 Tele Thinline, heavily tobacco-stained, and really played in. It had come back from the States with a musician friend. Both pickups were perfect. Not only did they sound incredible by themselves, but they also blended really well. The lack of balance was always a problem with the reissue pickups.

The thing is, most Wide Ranges are not real Wide Ranges; they are just humbuckers in a larger cover. We would bet that the sound that most people equate with WR tone is dark, muffled, and hard to balance in a mix. This is the sound of the reissue pickups, not the originals. The originals are bright, thick, and airy. This is a combination of unique magnets and the larger, almost tele bridge-sized coils.

This set has been one of our most popular non-menu items for years. Those in the know have been using them and loving them on a variety of guitars, but before we were ready to release them, we had a couple of hurdles to get over.

One was we always wanted to use our own branded covers. A year or so ago, after many trials and tribulations we took the plunge and has a batch made. Our covers are made from premium German nickel silver and plated in either nickel and chrome or for those who want to keep it au natural, raw nickel.

The other hurdle was the magnets… we have historically always used FeCrCo it is the closest thing to CuNiFe in composition and the closest thing out there sonically, and it is also readily available. They always sounded great but the first thing absolutely everyone asks when talking about Wide Ranges is ‘are they CuNiFe’, so sourcing these vintage correct magnets was always an important thing. In the last few months our magnet supplier has started to produce period correct CuNiFe magnets, and we ordered a test batch. We couldn’t have been happier with the results and believe we have achieved the best vintage Wide Range tone we have ever heard. 

We have made every effort to make our ‘72s as vintage accurate as possible, we use the aforementioned vintage spec CuNiFe magnets, 42-gauge plain enamel wire, we make the bobbins here in Cheltenham with our resin printer to the exact vintage specification and they are also unpotted like the best examples we have seen. 

We hope you are as excited about them as we are. We can’t wait for you to hear how special they are!