£399 for pickups?

[Toe-Knee]

Hmm I find this hilarious as quite frankly BKPS are way overpriced now. I would only consider buying them second hand nowadays. I refuse to pay more than £80 for a pickup.

It baffles me how every other company has managed to maintain steady prices over the last decade yet BKPs have shot up by £30+ per pickup

So yeah what im saying is I agree £399 is ridiculous.

I agree with pretty much everything Toe-Knee just said. Love my BKPs but the cost of some wire and a magnet is getting too high.

Yep it's getting a bit out of hand. I do love BKPs but i feel the quality to cost ratio isn't really justifiable especially when there are so many other great pickups out there also.

[Philly Q]

I wouldn't pay that kind of money for pickups, but then again many people seem quite happy to pay hundreds of pounds for flavour-of-the-month boutique pedals which - it seems to me - are a far less fundamental part of their tone than their guitar's pickups.

[Dave Sloven]

I wouldn't pay that kind of money for pickups, but then again many people seem quite happy to pay hundreds of pounds for flavour-of-the-month boutique pedals which - it seems to me - are a far less fundamental part of their tone than their guitar's pickups.

I agree with this - I mean how much better is a T-Rex Mudhoney II over one of those cheap Asian pedals?  I can understand a recording studio buying things like that, but in a gig context you'd never know.

Pickups on the other hand make a big difference.  There are huge differences between the 498T, A-Bomb, and Cold Sweat that I've had in the bridge position of my SG.  That said I could have made big differences by using cheaper Di Marzio or Seymour Duncan pickups too if those appealed to me.

[littleredguitars2]

personally, i dont mind spending a little bit extra if it gets me what i want. plus awesome customer service and a lot of customizable options make it worth it to me.

[Twinfan]

Don't knock Throbaks until you've tried them  ;)  They're my favourite PAF-style pickups.

The guy has done some serious research, and invested heavily in his business (old Leesona winder, sourcing proper US made parts etc) so they aren't going to come cheap.

BKP, Lollar, Throbak etc are companies trying to make a profit so price their products accordingly.  Fair play to them for giving us all a choice!

[Toe-Knee]

Don't knock Throbaks until you've tried them  ;)  They're my favourite PAF-style pickups.

The guy has done some serious research, and invested heavily in his business (old Leesona winder, sourcing proper US made parts etc) so they aren't going to come cheap.

BKP, Lollar, Throbak etc are companies trying to make a profit so price their products accordingly.  Fair play to them for giving us all a choice!

So you are saying that all the other pickup manufacturers don't make a profit?

[MDV]

Hmm I find this hilarious as quite frankly BKPS are way overpriced now. I would only consider buying them second hand nowadays. I refuse to pay more than £80 for a pickup.

It baffles me how every other company has managed to maintain steady prices over the last decade yet BKPs have shot up by £30+ per pickup

So yeah what im saying is I agree £399 is ridiculous.

I agree with pretty much everything Toe-Knee just said. Love my BKPs but the cost of some wire and a magnet is getting too high.

Yes, to both of you.

They arent that complicated.

People pay what they think something is worth, but when a set of pickups costs as much as a laptop, and one is a few dumb chunks of metal and plastic with some wire and a magnet, and the 'on' button alone for the other is more complex, I'm afraid there is no rationalisation based on materials or technologies that can square away that dissonance.

[Alex]

Ok... the brutal truth is...

The guys from Throbak, Lollar, Amber, Haeussel and BKP have all done their research and they all make good pickups. Obviously Tim and Harry (from Haeussel) are much better at bookkeeping and running a business efficiently, because they manage to sell the pickups at a much lower price and still make a profit!!!

I bet Lollar has some horribly high labour costs and a very low output. That's probably where the problem lies. The parts and machines costs more or less the same what they cost any other pickup manufacturer. Even if they are higher, the effect isn't that huge, because in the long run fixed costs approach 0.
If Lollar managed to exand and increase his output, he could probably sell them cheaper.

But no one should really claim that a product is higher quality or better because it is more expensive, when most likely the extra money you're paying is mostly simply for the fact that it is made by a very small company which cannot make the savings of a bigger one, by a guy who loves what he's doing but doesn't really have a lot of business knowledge behind it. £399 for a set of pickups strongly suggests that!

[Twinfan]

You guys are missing a couple of key things here.  We're not talking about loaves of bread from Warburtons or Hovis, we're talking about boutique items:

1)  Luxury goods:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_goods
2)  Veblen goods:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

How you price your product in relation to your competitors is a key part of your brand image.  It's got nothing to do with the cost of raw materials or production but how you want your brand to be seen.

There's something for everyone in the PAF marketplace - choose your personal price point and buy what you like the sound of!

[Toe-Knee]

But no one should really claim that a product is higher quality or better because it is more expensive, when most likely the extra money you're paying is mostly simply for the fact that it is made by a very small company which cannot make the savings of a bigger one, by a guy who loves what he's doing but doesn't really have a lot of business knowledge behind it. £399 for a set of pickups strongly suggests that!

In some cases this is correct but in other cases it isn't such as Bulldog Pickups. That's a one man operation £80 per pickup or £150 for a pair. Lifetime warranty + free rewinds and customisation if it's not quite right for you right up until it is right. His prices haven't changed since he started and the products have just kept on improving such as the hybrid pickup he did back at the beginning of 2012 and all the other models that he gradually refines over time.

[Dmoney]

I cant believe that companies like SD and Dimarzio don't do 'research'.

If we are talking about PAF replicas, then the materials and methods at the time were inconsistent in a way that surely means there must be a pretty wide range of tones available from original PAF's of what should be the same spec. So what anyone is paying for with these types of pickups is the builders own take on a quality PAF tone. 100% vintage correct parts and construction would probably make an inconsistent product (Same as back in the day) and that is bore out by the 'research'. The winding machines ran inconsistently by design and over tension spec which deformed bobbins and put in odd turns, they were setup inconsistently after making different spec pups, the metal had different properties from one batch the next, the magnets also. That is what i've learned from reading what Throbak has to say about it. Does every PAF sound like the last? Do they all sound the same? I don't think so. Therefore the goal is to get as close as possible to a vintage PAF using whatever methods you can while making a consistent product that sounds good. Hence the ballpark seems like it should be pretty big to me so £399 doesn't make the pickup 'better' at all, and the investment in the winding machines and research although interesting doesn't mean a better sounding pickup at the end of the process. It's just the price put on one guys "opinion". Would I pay that to hear that guys opinion, No. Some other would. Just like some people would spend £32K on guitar made of some super rare wood. People hear things in those £'s. Must suck if later on down the line they find out the wire in the pups isn't as special as they thought, or that Botswanian ultra rare dark maple neck is actually just mahogany.

[Toe-Knee]

Just like some people would spend £32K on guitar made of some super rare wood. People hear things in those £'s. Must suck if later on down the line they find out the wire in the pups isn't as special as they thought, or that Botswanian ultra rare dark maple neck is actually just mahogany.

That must be gutting. I bet it's just like the moment where the fragile harmonics and crystal lattices shatter.

[Philly Q]

I bet Lollar has some horribly high labour costs and a very low output. That's probably where the problem lies. The parts and machines costs more or less the same what they cost any other pickup manufacturer. Even if they are higher, the effect isn't that huge, because in the long run fixed costs approach 0.
If Lollar managed to exand and increase his output, he could probably sell them cheaper.

I don't think Lollars are any more expensive than BKP, to be honest, unless of course you're in Europe and therefore having to pay import charges on them.

And, to be fair, they've invested in the tooling to make a number of "non-standard" pickups like Jazzmasters, Wide Range humbuckers, mini-humbuckers, Charlie Christian pickups.... all those costs have to be recovered somehow.

[Toe-Knee]

I bet Lollar has some horribly high labour costs and a very low output. That's probably where the problem lies. The parts and machines costs more or less the same what they cost any other pickup manufacturer. Even if they are higher, the effect isn't that huge, because in the long run fixed costs approach 0.
If Lollar managed to exand and increase his output, he could probably sell them cheaper.

I don't think Lollars are any more expensive than BKP, to be honest, unless of course you're in Europe and therefore having to pay import charges on them.

And, to be fair, they've invested in the tooling to make a number of "non-standard" pickups like Jazzmasters, Wide Range humbuckers, mini-humbuckers, Charlie Christian pickups.... all those costs have to be recovered somehow.

That is a very good point!

[Twinfan]

Just like some people would spend £32K on guitar made of some super rare wood. People hear things in those £'s. Must suck if later on down the line they find out the wire in the pups isn't as special as they thought, or that Botswanian ultra rare dark maple neck is actually just mahogany.

Is that a thinly veiled dig at me perchance, Dmoney?