SRV PE WIRE.

[David Schwab]

They are wound with Plain Enamel wire & now they are made in Mexico

Try China:

Artemis Pickups

[DoctorX]

So kind of Artemis to post nice, large, clear pictures of how their pickups are made....

[David Schwab]

So kind of Artemis to post nice, large, clear pictures of how their pickups are made....

They look like they are made well enough.

They also sell parts, they sent me an email.

[copperheadroads]

Try China:

Artemis Pickups

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14327[/ATTACH]

Where does it say ,they make fenders custom shop pickup's
I should throw this in the strat forum

[David Schwab]

Where does it say ,they make fenders custom shop pickup's
I should throw this in the strat forum

It doesn't say anything about their custom shop pickups, but it says they make Fender's Texas Special pickups. They state Fender by name in that picture.

If you go to their about page they state:

As a professional pickups manufacturer, we work with many world leading guitar brands in their OEM projects across the globe, including F brand from America, W brand from Germany, I brand from Japan...

So that would imply they make pickups for Fender, Warwick and Ibanez. I see no reason to not believe that.

[DoctorX]

They look like they are made well enough.

They also sell parts, they sent me an email.

I enjoy looking through other manufacturer's pictures and I save those photos, etc., for closer examination offline. Every so often, someone posts a photo that illustrates how some step or procedure was done, or reveals some other bit of intel.

[LtKojak]

What's the link to the Artemis site?

[David Schwab]

What's the link to the Artemis site?

In post #46

Artemis Pickups

[copperheadroads]

So then i started this
Texas Specials -Made in China - Fender Stratocaster Guitar Forum

[DoctorX]

So....Artemis does not make pickups for Fender. What a surprise.

If you look closely at the pictures on the Artemis website, you will see where they "cut come corners" in manufacturing because of shortcomings in other areas, which they also were happy to illustrate.

[David Schwab]

I think we still don't have the final answer. The guy from Fender said "and as far as I know"... Not every employee, even managers knows what goes on. But who knows? They certainly look like better made pickups than the Mexican Fender stuff.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I had my doubts - Fender likes keeping things very Fenderish, and those pickups just didn't look right. I wouldn't be surprised if they made stuff for Squiers, or maybe got their humbuckers (which have never been all that great) from them, but the Texas Specials... that is just a tad weird. Besides, if Fender has a factory set up in Mexico to make pickups already, why would they close it down and send it to China? The Mexico plant has been best of both worlds for Fender in a lot of ways - it is close to their California plant and they can keep an eye on it, but it is still way cheaper than doing it in the states.

I don't see anything special about these pickups. The bobbins look funny, (especially the humbuckers) it seems like they are wound with a very high TPL which tells me the CNC is probably just programmed for a basic traverse. I could be wrong, but if they are making pickups like that, they probably are just trying to get wire on the bobbin and get it out the door instead of having a finely tuned product.

The other thing that makes me say they don't make Texas Specials is that plain enamel wire can't be seen in any of the pictures on the site. It isn't definitive proof, but it does make one suspicious.

[David Schwab]

I could be wrong, but if they are making pickups like that, they probably are just trying to get wire on the bobbin and get it out the door instead of having a finely tuned product.

Isn't that what Fender does? Look at the reissue pickups for the Jazzmasters. They pretty much stuck Strat pickups under those covers. The Jaguars don't have the real pickups. The Tele Wide Range humbucker is a cheap looking Gibson clone under the cover.

Then there's all the plastic bobbin/ceramic magnet pickups. Some of the P bass reissues also have weird plastic bobbins that are too tall and don't sound like a P bass. For a while the Mexican Jazz basses had two neck pickups and didn't hum cancel when both on. All this points to them just wanting to get pickups on the instruments as cheaply as possible and not really caring about what they sound like. Now you take the Squire guitars. Those pickups are even cheesier. Those are some of the weakest ceramic magnets I have ever seen.

One thing I thought about when looking at the photos of the pickups being made was they taped the magnets on the single coils. I just read a post at TalkBass where some guy's Fender Noisless Jazz pickups had shorted to the magnets, since fender still doesn't see this as a necessary step. That has nothing to do with tone or fine tuning anything, they just don't want to spend more money on a pickup than they have to.

Fender is a huge conglomerate that wants to make money. Making fine instruments is a secondary concern. They have become the new Gibson. To prove this point, look how both companies were trying to get their brand on the fake guitars that came with that Guitar Hero game.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Then there's all the plastic bobbin/ceramic magnet pickups. Some of the P bass reissues also have weird plastic bobbins that are too tall and don't sound like a P bass. For a while the Mexican Jazz basses had two neck pickups and didn't hum cancel when both on. All this points to them just wanting to get pickups on the instruments as cheaply as possible and not really caring about what they sound like. Now you take the Squire guitars. Those pickups are even cheesier. Those are some of the weakest ceramic magnets I have ever seen.

I agree entirely, but Artemis is claiming to be making the Texas Specials, which are in the upper tier of pickups. The wide range humbuckers only appear on Mexican made telecasters (except maybe the odd order Custom Shop piece), the ceramic magnet Tex-Mex pickups are for the Standard series, the base model of the Mexican strats and teles, and the J-bass you're talking about that had the two neck pickups (they stopped doing this in '05, I believe) was the Standard series as well. The Texas Specials were made for the Signature line, and while they have cheapened production of them a bit, everyone at Fender understands them to be a tier or two higher than the standard series pickups.

Yeah Squiers are cheesy, but find me a new guitar for under $200 new that is nearly as good! Squier would occasionally be eclipsed - Epiphone had its day, Ibanez has sometimes done well in that price point, Peavey has done well over the years - but at many points in time they've been one of if not the best for their price point. When the whole instrument shipped after retail markup costs about the same as a regular set of strat pickups from someone on here, I really don't think it is a worth while argument to roll our eyes about the quality of the pickups.

As for the authenticity of the P-bass reissues... not sure what to say, except it is unfortunately typical for bass players to get chumped. I'm also curious if you're thinking of the classic series or the american vintage series. The classic series tends to be more of a "loose interpretation" of the original and doesn't stand up to the scrutiny.

I suspect one thing that has kept some of the things cheesy at Fender is that they tend to be biased towards keeping things in house. They tend to set up their own factories in a given place instead of out-sourcing much of the time. Yeah, Samick has made plenty of instruments for Fender (and still do some last time I checked), but for better or worse, Fender tends to be determined to do things themselves. That sometimes makes them slower to certain things than competitors, since sometimes a competitor will figure out how to make something more loyal to the vintage version. This has been a big part of why they have been buying other companies. They love the idea of making them all part of this big Fender family and combining resources. There of course are a lot of arguments to be made against this methodology, but it is Fender's habit nonetheless.

Fender is by no means perfect, (I could certainly come up with my own laundry list of things that irritate me) but much of what we see is them trying to maintain a presence in every price point. They've never been a boutique company, and I think it is funny when the Custom Shop tries to make them seem like a boutique company. Honestly, I think the Custom Shop is the weakest link at Fender - all they really do that is worth while is make stuff for giveaways and catalog covers, as well as the celebrity instruments. As a retail product, they are pretty lack luster.

Artemis very well could be making stuff for Squier guitars - if not the affinities which are ceramic, perhaps the "vintage vibe" series or something.

Comparing them to Gibson... now THOSE are some harsh words!

[David Schwab]

Yeah, Artemis probably doesn't make the TS pickups. But Fender has no real reason to do any of the things they do to get pickups wrong because they aren't all that hard to make in the first place! Sure, a molded plastic bobbin is much faster to work with than making a fiber bobbin. I'll even say that if the geometry is the same between the two, you wont hear much of a difference. The fact that the magnets are insulated form the wire is a good thing, and in my experience that little gap doesn't hurt the sound.

But what they did was go through the trouble to make injection molded P bass bobbins that are nothing like the real thing! I have cheap Asian P bass pickups that are DiMarzio copies, and the bobbin is the same height as a real P bass. So what would make Fender so such a thing? You read about players replacing those pickups with Fender Custom Shop pickups, or Duncans. Maybe they engineered in some cheese so they could have upgrade sales? Or maybe they just bought cheap Chinese parts and had their name put on them.

Same thing with the Jazzmaster. How hard is it to make that pickup? Or the Wide Range HB. Jason can do it, and Fender is a much bigger company. I also hear horror stories about poor grounding and shielding in their basses. They put copper foil in the Jaguar basses and then didn't run a ground wire to it! Same thing in the Marcus Miller basses.

Yeah, the Custom shop walks down the hall and grabs a production guitar, changes a few things, and calls it boutique! They make correct spec pickups, and call them custom. ???

They are Gibson Jr. No integrity. But at least they didn't make the Firebird X.

But, that's good for us repair people and pickup makers.