how low can they go

[kevinT]

This takes the cake. $15 is the lowest price that I've seen for a humbucker... and double cream bobbins too.


http://www.guitarpartsusa.com/item--...-Creme--PROD47

[Spence]

The obvious thing to do is buy loads of them with bulk discount and re-sell them on ebay as genuine handwound.

People will believe it and happily pay you $35 for them.

[kevinT]

or

or we could sell them from bubble gum machines and offer the pickups in all grocery, Wal-Mart, and Dollar stores.

saturate the market and profit from volume sales....the hell with quality...

I just don't see how they can sell them for that price and account for labor costs. Maybe they have robots building them.

[J S Moore]

Guitarpartsusa = Korea. He says it right on his site. They're not handwound, not for those prices, not even in North Korea. It kind of irks me that people buy these and say "They're not bad for the money". Which is really a way of saying that they're not worth any more than $15.

There's another site ( I've forgotten which one) which has Korean pups on it. The guy claims he gets them made to his specs. For the $35.00 he charges for them I have always doubted that. It's more economical just to re-sell whatever they happen to have and make the claim. Who would know?

[Zhangliqun]

It could be a case of just getting them out there dirt cheap to make a name in a new market.

Or a case of plain ol' fashioned dumping to try to drive other winders out of business. But they'd have to be awfully good....

[Ruel]

Has anybody really tried them out? Why not order one to show the world the kind of crap they are? You know... how they sound as stacked up against a really good pickup, the materials used in the construction (magnets, wires, baseplates etc....etc ).

[Zhangliqun]

There's no point in it because there are so many of them. If we took the time to do this with every "E-bay winder", we wouldn't have any time to make our own pickups, plus for every one that we stomped on, 10 more would take his place.

If they're crap, customers will figure that out on their own pretty quick and word will get around.

[Spence]

I suppose they're pretty much like any generic pickup that come standard with cheap guitars. So who's going to buy them? that's what I can figure out. You wouldn't rip your generic stuff out to put more generic stuff in would you?

[David Schwab]

This takes the cake. $15 is the lowest price that I've seen for a humbucker... and double cream bobbins too.

Their Jazz bass pickup is $12 and they have single coils for $9.95! Boy they must be cheap to make with those profit margins! These are probably the same as Fender uses in their cheap lines. They even have the plastic molded strat bobbins.

[edit] When I actually took the time to read the page I see: "The largest producer of guitar pickups is the Samshin company of Korea. They supply the pickups to the Samick company which happens to be the largest producer of guitars in the world. Samick makes about 1,000 brands of guitars including the Epiphone..."

So these are the cheap pickups on cheap factory guitars.

[Spence]

Samshin, makes about 97% of all guitar and bass pickups. they also do a range of pickups wound with computer-mapped scatter patterns taken from genuine vintage pickups.

[Ruel]

The Chinese are selling cheaper pickups than the Koreans. Here in the Philippines, one can buy a Chinese made humbucker for US$ 7.30 and a Jazz bass pickup copy for US$ 4.40. I don't know which Chinese company makes them but there is the letter "A" printed on the bobbins.

Yes, you are right. They are crappy pickups with cheap components.

[Tonerider]

Samshin do not make 97% of Asian made pickups, its actually a very competitive market with a lot of factors at play. The old myth that Samsung make 50% of the worlds guitars is just nonsense - although it was close for a while in the 80s - and only true for electrics.

Current players include:
SEM and Samshin (China and Korean branch)
Mings (Korea and China, Wilkinson OEM)
Gotoh (Japan, Sound Garage)
Samsung (Korea, different to Samshin, often confused)
Artec, Korea and China (GFS)
Belcat (Korea and China)
WSC/Partsland (Source from all over)
Tonerider (what list would be complete without them)
Sky (Korea, Armstrong)
Tesla (Korea)
Rising (China)
Lingdian (China)
Billion/Jingyi (Taiwan, China)
and MANY more Chinese companies I cant be bothered to list, or dont even know about.

Note that no company is a pure Korea play anymore except Samsung. All the other have assembly or coil winding in China.

Asia is not like the US (where Microsoft can take 97% of a market). Unfettered, near perfect competition and risk taking is the name of the game! Capitalism at its finest.

[Spence]

So which one is the best?

[nicksorenson]

Anyone actually dealt with any of these suppliers/mfgs? It'd be nice to hear results also, finding some of the contacts to these would be great. I can't even find a website for half of those. I know Gotoh is from Hosco. There website is easy to find. I've considered buying my load of tuners direct (I build guitars) from them but the cash to make it worth while hasn't been there. Seems to make it worth the shipping costs ($600-1000 for 100 - 200lbs of parts via air freight) you'd have to order a huge amount of parts probably in the $4000-6000 range in just hardware. Maybe someone would be interested in splitting an order. Maybe a group buy?

Samshin do not make 97% of Asian made pickups, its actually a very competitive market with a lot of factors at play. The old myth that Samsung make 50% of the worlds guitars is just nonsense - although it was close for a while in the 80s - and only true for electrics.

Current players include:
SEM and Samshin (China and Korean branch)
Mings (Korea and China, Wilkinson OEM)
Gotoh (Japan, Sound Garage)
Samsung (Korea, different to Samshin, often confused)
Artec, Korea and China (GFS)
Belcat (Korea and China)
WSC/Partsland (Source from all over)
Tonerider (what list would be complete without them)
Sky (Korea, Armstrong)
Tesla (Korea)
Rising (China)
Lingdian (China)
Billion/Jingyi (Taiwan, China)
and MANY more Chinese companies I cant be bothered to list, or dont even know about.

Note that no company is a pure Korea play anymore except Samsung. All the other have assembly or coil winding in China.

Asia is not like the US (where Microsoft can take 97% of a market). Unfettered, near perfect competition and risk taking is the name of the game! Capitalism at its finest.