Roswell Pickups - any experiences? (2024)

In my everlasting search for good affordable pickups I recently (re)stumbled upon Roswell pickups.
Roswell is a sub-brand of WSC Music, also known as Partsland and they seem to be based in South Korea.

Anyway, they make your dime a dozen Humbuckers and strat pickups. I have a pair of their LAF AlNiCo 5 pickups in a Harley Benton CST-24HB. They sound like your everyday PAF's. Nothing wrong with them.

Aside from those generic pickups, they've been making a few new pickups lately, that are more to OSG's taste I think.

Teisco style Gold Foil

DeArmond style Gold Foil:

Vox Panthom pickup:

Typical Jazz & Jag (said to be the same as the Classic Vibe ones):

Fender XII pickups:

Humbucker sized Strat pickup:

Wide Range Humbuckers (seem to be the same construction as the old Fender reissue's)

Staple P90:

And whatever the f*ck this is..:

They all seem to run somewhere between 30 and 60 Euro's a piece over at Musicstore.de, with the more "regular" pickups closer to the 30 and the more "specialty" pickups up around 60.
Maybe they suck but they sure seem pretty rad!
Not affiliated or anything btw, just a heads up for those interested.

soul1 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 am

IIRC, the stock OEM pickups on the VM Jags and JMs were Roswells, and they were pretty good. I've been wanting to grab a pair of those since they're pretty cheap, but I don't see them for sale, except direct for minimum quantities of 10.

Weren't those Duncan Designed? Or do you mean Roswell-built to Duncan specs?

Never heard of them, but pickups really are fundamentally simple things, and anything made to decent specs with decent tolerances will sound great as long as those specs are to one's taste. I've tried tons of super high-end pickups that I disliked because they were lovingly crafted to the tastes of someone completely different from me (case in point: every overwound humbucker in history).

I want to see a Tele with that humbucker. It's basically a Tele pickup wound into a Duncan Stag Mag. Should be an amazing split tone if they wound each coil to a reasonable number of turns with a reasonable gauge wire.

mbene085 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:04 pm

soul1 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 am

IIRC, the stock OEM pickups on the VM Jags and JMs were Roswells, and they were pretty good. I've been wanting to grab a pair of those since they're pretty cheap, but I don't see them for sale, except direct for minimum quantities of 10.

Weren't those Duncan Designed? Or do you mean Roswell-built to Duncan specs?

Never heard of them, but pickups really are fundamentally simple things, and anything made to decent specs with decent tolerances will sound great as long as those specs are to one's taste. I've tried tons of super high-end pickups that I disliked because they were lovingly crafted to the tastes of someone completely different from me (case in point: every overwound humbucker in history).

I want to see a Tele with that humbucker. It's basically a Tele pickup wound into a Duncan Stag Mag. Should be an amazing split tone if they wound each coil to a reasonable number of turns with a reasonable gauge wire.

Yeah, if I'm recalling this correctly, the Duncan Designed pickups were these Roswells, same for the VM JM pickups: https://roswellpickups.com/product/jg-adwh-n/

if you want unbelievably cheap, good pickups, get Bootstraps.

also, the first pickups aren't TEISCO, they're Guyatone pickups.

soul1 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 am

IIRC, the stock OEM pickups on the VM Jags and JMs were Roswells, and they were pretty good. I've been wanting to grab a pair of those since they're pretty cheap, but I don't see them for sale, except direct for minimum quantities of 10.

I believe axesrus have them! Might be prohibitive if you're not in the UK though.

mbene085 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:04 pm

soul1 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 am

IIRC, the stock OEM pickups on the VM Jags and JMs were Roswells, and they were pretty good. I've been wanting to grab a pair of those since they're pretty cheap, but I don't see them for sale, except direct for minimum quantities of 10.

Weren't those Duncan Designed? Or do you mean Roswell-built to Duncan specs?

Never heard of them, but pickups really are fundamentally simple things, and anything made to decent specs with decent tolerances will sound great as long as those specs are to one's taste. I've tried tons of super high-end pickups that I disliked because they were lovingly crafted to the tastes of someone completely different from me (case in point: every overwound humbucker in history).

I want to see a Tele with that humbucker. It's basically a Tele pickup wound into a Duncan Stag Mag. Should be an amazing split tone if they wound each coil to a reasonable number of turns with a reasonable gauge wire.

Around Y2K Fender did a limited run of John Jorgensen Telecasters with the double pickup; which I think these are based on. Wouldn't know where to source a bridge that would fit them though..
The Stag Mag comparison seems sound! But that would also get you into WRHB territory wouldn't it?

NICQ wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 19, 2021 2:33 pm

I had a pair of their "Filtertron" pickups in a Harley Benton Cabronita - they didn't sound like Filtertrons at all, more like low output humbuckers...

I've heard that before! Too bad they didn't get the Filtertrons right. At least the Fender ones aren't as expensive either and pretty popular.

Lost In Autumn wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 20, 2021 1:45 am

if you want unbelievably cheap, good pickups, get Bootstraps.

also, the first pickups aren't TEISCO, they're Guyatone pickups.

I've heard about Bootstrap! They seem to have a good thing going indeed.
Teisco is what Roswell calls them, and MOJO, and Reverb, and Teisco too; looking at the SS-4l.. So who am I to argue?

There is a sold listing on Reverb of the pickups from an Olympic White Alternate Reality XII. Who knows whether the photos are to be trusted, but the seller does show an AR XII guitar that he claims is the source.

Anyway, the part # shown on the pickup matches the Partsland listing for the "12 string Mustang style pickup."

https://reverb.com/ca/item/39378603-fen ... _sold=true

https://shoppartsland.com/ms12-pch/

So, if the Reverb listing is correct, then Fender is clearly using Roswells on at least their MIM stuff, not just Squiers.