The Retro Wind Firebird is our slightly tweaked take on a vintage Firebird pickup, designed to recreate classic Firebird tone with just a tad more fullness and grunt. Whilst vintage firebird pickups can be absolutely great, they can also be a little weak and/or thin sounding. This is particularly true of the bridge pickup, which often gets unusably bright. We’ve rectified this in the Retro Wind Firebirds, using a slightly overwound coil (based on the coil wind we use for our mini-humbuckers) for a beefier tone that has all the gnarly twang of a good Firebird pickup, while never being at risk of getting ear shatteringly bright. For anyone wondering the difference between a mini-humbucker and a firebird pickup essentially lies in the magnets. A mini-humbucker is essentially a shrunk down version of a regular humbucker, with a single magnet underneath two coils. A firebird pickup, on the other hand, has two bar magnets in place of the polepiece and slug configuration. This gives the firebird pickup a noticeably different magnetic field shape, resulting in a brighter sound. As a result, Firebirds are sometimes said to be the perfect marriage of Gibson playability with Fender tone. Our Retro Wind Firebirds come with four-conductor wire as standard. Scatterwound using 42-gauge plain enamel wire: Neck- Alnico V, 7.7k Bridge- Alnico V, 7.8k
