Valentina Humbucker

Beautiful like the name. This is our flagship vintage vibe neck humbucker. Influenced by select PAF, T-Top and Super 70s style pickups. This is meant to balance with our bridge pickups, and never overpower. Coil tap option unlocks extreme versatility, as it sounds like a rounded single coil, not a tapped humbucker. Valentina also plays well with overdrive, cutting through the mix without being an icepicky. Making it an extremely versatile pickup.

Valentina. And platform bending. Stylebending. (Awaiting legit approval from Mr. Adesanya)

Valentina is truly a design of my instincts. I created it long before I really researched bridge humbuckers that have revolutionized the perception of clarity in the elite club of discerning players and advising tone hunters to not change this like others.

It was scouring through those “starving musician bargain bin pickups” that happened to be PAFs and Patent Number pickups.
Eventually performing metallurgical analysis, happy like a puppy to share on a corksniffing forum. I get the post taken down and suspended. Then another thread comes up. My alt account sees what's said.
Little did they know a former Defense Engineer, who mixed in years of apprenticeships in Luthiery/Vintage amplifier repair, Jumping to ESP for A List Artist builds, Mods. restorations. While hands in product development/production management of the ESP/LTD line.
Oh and a highly covert yet decorated Session player/Educator since teenage years.

They didn't realize the good intentions behind it. Then, realizing who they were dealing with.
Never judge a book by its cover.
We all should learn from eachother, all have something unique to bring to the table.
And I did.

Banned. Threatened. Criticized by others who were aimless arrows about the "mystique being ruined"
1. They weren't Scatterwound
2. They weren't hand wound
3. Talking to an elderly lady in Spanish, she told me the machine was set to stop at 5000, and never did.
Apparently guru John Gundry who bought those lessona machines,
Found they were uncalibrated beyond.

Well I made sure my one paper posted was not there. Port 80, 2011, and server was on an old OS.
Easy whew. Nothing else was touched.

Then curiosity sparked. What did he find?
And "friends" poured in. I confirmed this. It's all lead benzene and beryllium. That's the tone. ROHS yanked that stuff out and the wire became brighter, unfortunately some companies didn't adapt well by compensating or offsetting that brightness.

Their models just remained ice pick bright.
Anything with NOS wire was warmer. Upon unplated alloys of certain grades.
That's the tip of what I found.
It confirmed that what I had created was different, had a nod to the vintage but a total correction to the same boomy neck PAF replicas. Y'all got that right. Thin bridge too. Nobody pushed the envelope and I did creating Valentina!

This is actually my first bucker for the neck, that I landed right the first time, and never looked back. All before the metallurgical analysis on the vintage focus of all.

I sought for my own modern classic to share with the world.

Designated neck.
Never thought of a bridge version until the vintage guys started throwing money at me like I was a wishing well. Or a dancer, dancing that vintage tone in one ear out the other.
As you're staring at your 4th R9 and trying to find a finish flaw that affects the tone.
Valentina will expose you. Because it's Made for players by the player.

The right offset of turns/wire gauges just worked.
Unlike anything else.
No path followed only references.

Alnico 4 took away the boomy lows of A5 and shifts them to the mids.
A3 (the right mixture) gave it a more vintage vibe.
A2 is warm Spongey.
Paired with a 9.3k ohm bridge It has an Appetite for destruction.

Nickel/copper plate/cover.
Exact plates were replicated and stamped.
No brass here (though superior on the bridge, nut, tuners, for transfer, but prone to feedback on covers.
And alloys, 1010, 1011, 1015, 1018 1022, 1215 (a favorite amongst the experienced winders)

For bite and detail, plated was a no brainer.
For those that were warmer, no explanation why, magnet reads fine, composition seems determined? Keeper bar a different material?

I found through my PAF and TTOP research when Fil of Solo Dallas (article with him and how we created the Solo 71 TTOP which was made to pair with boosters).
I found a detail missed by majority. The pickups with the playing worn off were warmer. And not overly bright in the bridge causing an ice pick in the ear!

Like horsepower it's the little things that count.

Resolution/Corrections made to the common boomy vintage vibe pickups. I just felt that anything over 7.5-7.6 was a bit much but perfect for my Stoney Rock players, needing extra oomph with the signature HomeWrecker clarity to have a neck that DICES through fuzzes. (.2 ohm raise in DCR tolerance because of heat)
But 5000/5000 needed some trimming. 7.6-7.8 since they used a very cheap polyurethane now prized for its composition. Modern poly is a corner cutter unless you have a specific type, researched on your winder and design platform. Respect right there.

Simply
-Balances with every BRIDGE humbucker model. From 9.3 To Our famous Money Shot at 17.5k DCR.
(7.3-7.3k DCR NOS plain enamel A4/A2 all day)
DCR will raise with heat and the accumulation of the alloys and select parts of the humbucker.

Another dealbreaker in necessity of design found in 90% of neck pickups.

-not a subwoofer
WILL NOT overpower the Bridge. In a superior Masculine/Feminine balance.

Other combinations outside of classic alnico. Valentina and others work well with ceramic for cumbia to stoner bumped to 7.4-5. Ceramic cuts low end but has quite the chime. Adjustments can be highly tailored. Or simply swap. The middle position if the other pickup is Alnico, this will be a FUNKY setting, coil tap if you want for a more S or T style tone. Get nerdy and have one slug and one screw side selected.
Dual screw is the business.

After making this. Then studying PAF’s and the standardized TTOP. Súper 70s 80s etc.
It made the model more convertible. In the sense of my discoveries on plated and NON-Plated screw/slug. HUGE difference.
Again, article on the TTOP and Solo-71 working with the great Ken Schaffer's SVDS unit. Designing a range that would be best to accept gain, "pressurized" by voltage boosts. Charge pumps.
Etc. Another article and rabbit hole I will sum up.

And to answer publicalluy, I found many holes in the current market of Alnico3 magnets available. I happen to have a 1950s printout of the correct mixture also what ratios were used states in a 1969/1970 Japanese Fender Magazine. Very interesting and very off from what I melted down from today. Correct Carrie's my transparent character but has a voice when really played and dig in to. Very danty when strummed lightly.
clear and articulate.
The rods show more teeth honestly.
But the wrong mix = dark murky. Especially on the bar magnets, as they get the worst of it.
It does not have cobalt! So the response is different.

Alnico3 makes one of the BEST sounding vintage vibe minding my own business style humbucker.
Blends in, shows a unique howl when provoked on a bend. And they take gain surprisingly well.
At least on my platform they do not drown in gain being the magnet with the lowest gauss reading upon saturation.

The Rod magnets, are more vocal, articulate, provide great projection, representation of the big tonal picture. Gtr, Pedals, Amp, Tube type, speakers / cabinet construction, and Wire used inside of cabinets which can totally deceive and derail our testing of pickups through real life situations, tour, travel, humidity, heat, cold, etc.
Article on speaker wire will be linked when added.
Speaker Type cabinet construction and wire are vital.

So bending the design platform.
PAF
if I use the NOS wire, Automatically Associated.
From there it’s cover type,
DC on neck stays or might go up 100 turns. 7.3-7.6max.
Now… if a bridge to match is involved.
Ifs pretty much a PAFish set.
I choose 8.5-8.8-9.1k.
Which.. now Valentina has a Bridge companion. (During MHD I named this NAFP / NAFPAF (not a freaking paf).

TTOP.
Bridge…. This is funny.
I still used offset turns.
A5 bumped it from 7.8 to 8.1 and 8.3 WITH Plain enamel wire originally.
Covered it up and it was praised by the gurus…..

I studied 1968-71 closely.
Since there was a lot of transition in that era.
Then tamed it with Slug
And Screw combinations that just made sense.

Gathered the 63 SG’s between 60s and 1974.
I will go in on how I balanced and reinvented this beast. On Blog.
Result was classic with another published accredited #VINTAGECORRECTION

The HomeWrecker side got more attention. Ultimate Guitar, and Premeire are blown away.
Which I wish those sets could be swapped between the two.

The other side (my old Coil Research project that’s been going for years)
Vintage side. Homewrecker is modern Vintage modern. This is PURE vintage spec.
Cashing in on that wire.

Valentina is truly a cross between research of the BEST PAF's, Super 70's, Super 80's, and its own ingredients to become the newest Modern Classic.

As there is a break in period. Your ears will adjust to the sonic excellence and research done. 8 years of touring in Latin America was the icing on the cake for all of these started in 1996-2001. Evolving from there. A flood of videos are on the way. Some just camera, mic and GO. No bs no verbiage soundclip.

NO EQ ever added to color the raw sound.
That would ruin the integrity of the raw signal mic'd, GoPro'd, Sony A7 evolving models.
Zoom boxes. Room mics.
You name it.
I see a lot of makers polishing their soundclips.
I will lightly mix if there are drums and bass. But post production from producers I do sessions for say I don't need much EQ at all.
See the testimonials!