Magneto Design Lab Pickups Review - The Installation

This week on The Pick I'm checking out a couple of pickups from Magneto Design Labs (MDL). This is a very exciting first for The Pick, and what a great two pickups to start with! The pickups I'm checking out today are the Power90 humbucker sized P90 style pickup and the Tru-Tone '59 late '50s style humbucker. 

Starting at the very beginning, these pickups arrived in a very attractive box and were packaged very well. Having been shipped to the UK from North Carolina in the US I was pleased to see these pickups were in perfect condition when they arrived thanks to the ample packaging material. 

I had decided when talking to Lee from MDL that I would try to install these pickups myself - with very little soldering experience and having never changed pickups before I was slightly daunted by the task ahead, but Lee was very helpful and provided me with pickup-appropriate circuit diagrams which I used throughout the process. Because I was installing the pickups in my Epiphone Les Paul, Lee also suggested that I write the Volume and Tone pots "50s style" by moving the capacitor so it connects the middle lug of the volume pot to the left lug of the tone pot, however for the time being I've kept the volume and tone wiring as it was.

Removing the stock Epiphone pickups was very simple and took very little time after locating the correct cables to unsolder. I then disconnected the mounting rings from the Epiphone pickups and used the supplied screws and springs to attach them to my new MDL pickups. Both pickups fit nicely into the Epiphone mounting rings and now sit nicely in the Les Paul's arched top. The supplied mounting ring screws were a nice touch as they are aged in a similar way to the pickups themselves, adding to the overall aesthetic.

To attach the cables of the MDL pickups you must unwind some of the outer wire mesh and solder that to ground. This part of the installation could've been easier, as when I attempted to unwind enough of the wire mesh to give an amateur solderer (myself!) enough room to work with, the thin wire strands felt very delicate and frail. Once I had unwound enough of the outer mesh, I was left with two layers of cloth - one black, one white - which easily pulled back exposing plenty of the inside wire core to solder to the volume pot. It took a couple of attempts to correctly solder each wire to the appropriate place and get a secure connection, however this is a reflection of my soldering ability rather than the quality of the product!

Once the pickups were installed it was time to put them to the test. To find out about how they sound and see a video demonstration, check back in to The Pick at the same time next week!

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