Anyone Have Any Experience with These Guys? (Matsumoku Evil Eye '60's SC's)

[Drak]

So, I have five of these pickups as pictured.
I had two guitars many, many years ago, one used three, the other two
These things have like, I swear, 15 different, separate parts per pickup.
All of mine have been sitting in a drawer for many years.
Completely disassembled, all parts labelled and closely accounted for.
I spent some time restoring them years ago, rehabbing the white outer covers and cleaning them all up.
You know how the corners get brittle and break. I fixed most of them.

So, I'm also a guitar builder, always starting a new project.
And I want to bring these old girls back from the 'drawer of the dead' and make them useful in a build.

I have several questions I'd like to ask of you guys.
I'm just tossing this out there today to get the interest going.
I'm going to load a bunch of my own detail pics up into Imgur and then post them here and then ask questions.
If you're just curious about these, be prepared to see them in excruciating detail, fully exposed.
Thanks in advance.

[epizootics]

You got the interest going! Pickups from that era are well worth studying, their very engineering tells many stories - what materials were easily available in the area they were produced, what techniques were used at a certain time, what the company thought people expected from guitar pickups, what they would do to cut down the costs, etc.

Please give us all the excruciating details and spare us nothing!

[Drak]

OK, here we go.
Basics: Both guitars I had were nearly identical, one was a 3-pickup Conrad, the other a 2-pickup Aria Pro 1202.
I'm guessing they weren't more than 2-3 years apart, they were (of course) nearly identical except for the different badging.
Both had the camelback or camelhump headstock, which tells me mid-late '60's for both.
You can see the differences in the pickup design from one to the other.
I'll split the pics up into 2 groups, the Aria first (seemed older to me) then the Conrad.

The Aria had the alnico magnets INSIDE the coils, the Conrad had the mags UNDER the coils.
Also, the Aria mags are of a different, lighter color than the darker under-coil Conrads.
Can't say if they're a different grade of alnico, but color is usually a sign.
The polepiece receiver bar for the Aria's sits up at the top with stubby short screws with the magnet IN the coil right underneath of it.
The Conrad has the receiver bar at the bottom of the coil with longer polepiece screws to contact the magnet sitting underneath.
Interesting. I do have some questions, but for now...

[Drak]

...And the Conrad.

[epizootics]

Woaw, thanks for the pictures and description. A lot of work went into those pickups! That's a lot of individual parts, and those are big magnets indeed. What's the story with the repair?

From what I heard snooping around Youtube, they sound pretty good too on the Conrad. Nice and fat without being muddy. The round attack, which I guess also comes from the hollow body, works well with those. How does the Aria compare?