Martin A Smith – Single Coil Set

A fairly new name to the boutique world of pickups, Martin A Smith is a winder and builder, quickly garnering praise from tonehounds and guitar aficionado’s

Based in Perth Western Australia, I was able to attend a recent local showcase, testing out various samples of Martin’s pickups, in various quality guitars and can see why a lot of owners are swapping out other high end premium pickups for Martin’s creations.

This review will be focusing on a fairly new set of pickups added to his range, a set of  vintage style single coils, loaded in Bacchus Strat copy (think squier), which has been heavily modified and Plek setup by MT-guitars.

SPECS

Single coil set

Alnico 5 Magnet

Unpotted

Bridge  : Measured DC – 10.58K ohms

Middle : 6.28K ohms

Neck : 6.05K ohms

One common attribute noticed throughout Martin’s  range of pickups, is a very detailed top end response. Insert the usual tone descriptor words, such as “sparkly” and “chimey” here, but these single coils sampled give off an almost acoustic like quality on clean tones, particularly on the inbetween positions.

For  vintage style low gain eg “is it clean or is it crunch?” tones, these are very pleasing to the ear and you could not ask anymore from a set designed for a stratocaster,  All pickup positions are fairly balanced, with only the bridge pickup bordering close, but not quite, on ear fatigue territory.  This is just somewhat something you just have to live with for that particular pickup position on any strat, so make good use of that tone control knob!

For Medium Crunch and Higher gain settings, the unpotted design can be a wild ride, but it may not be for everyone, especially those who are inexperienced with gain staging or those unfamiliar with controlling input signals with the guitar’s volume control.

Build quality is exceptional with nice heavy duty cloth wiring and mounting screws providing for a very easy install.

Overall, for strat players, the neck and inbetween positions of a single coil set are where you expect these pickups to excel…

and they do…with punch, detail and clarity.

The added bonus… they are absolutely affordable (albeit with some wait time for these to be handmade and wound) check out Martin A Smith – Handwound Pickups