What will Santa bring you?

A beautiful Dan MacPheson custom made instrument fitted with Oil City NightFighter pickups .... or a stunning Blackmachine B6 fitted with ASL Blackbird pickups ...

I'm happy to say those pickup sets both come from my design pen ... and my workshop. Nearly three years of building and my pickups are cropping up everywhere.

Long time no post!

First my apologies for taking forever to come up with a new blog post ... but so much has been happening that trying to find time to write any of it down has been problematic!

Oil City is going from strength to strength, with close to 1000 pickups made and sold to date and a constantly full order book. Oil City is selling well at home, throughout Europe ... and even further afield!

At the beginning of this year I was approached by Feline guitars in Croydon with a view to producing pickups both for their beautiful custom instruments, and also for retail, and since then I have been developing a whole new range of pickups that will be distributed by my authorized dealers Feline.
Pretty much all my Oil City Range was, and is based on benchmark designs I know well. Jonathan at Feline brought his encyclopedic knowledge of humbuckers to the party ...and the result was an extensive range spanning pretty much the whole history of rock music ... from classic PAF designs to metal shred beasts!

I researched, and tested materials ... wire grades and coatings, baseplate materials, magnet types and configurations ... becoming a bit of a workshop hermit in the process.Now the first deliveries of these pickups are on the shelves at Feline and things are all very exciting.

My Oil City range will still be the same ... and indeed will expand ... as I now have help in the form of Katie my workshop assistant to share some of the load. We are gearing up for the Christmas rush even now ...

Oh yes and the name on these new pickups? My own: Ash Scott-Lockyer

The Treatment and Oil City

9:39PM FlagThe first public outing of the new humbucker designed with Jonathan from Feline ... look in the single pickup LP The Treatment in full swing:

http://live.mytaratata.com/emission/taratata-n488/video/4794/the-treatment-highway-to-hell-2014-multicam

Renovating a 70s DiMarzio Super Distortion

I have a massively soft spot for the original Dimarzio Super Distortion ... this one came in on the Kawai Rock and Roll Star I bought a few months ago. A rather sad example, this on has been butchered, with an extra cable shoehorned through the baseplate to form a crude coil tap.
Both bobbins were loose and hanging apart as the 'shims' had been removed to allow the bodged cable to curl around the bobbins ... and hence everything sagged!

First job was to stabilise the coils by making a pair of wood (mahogany) shims to brace the unsupported ends of the bobbins.

I decided to junk the rather short remainder of the original twin core and shield hookup cable. Installing instead a length of my Oil City four conductor cable to enable series/parallel and coil tap switching.

Here we have the new cable neatly attached ... with shrink tube rather than old tape as before! I used DIMarzio's wiring code rather than my own out of respect for 'uncle Larry'.

And a wrap of tape ... and it's done.

Winterizers

Just got some nice comments about my Firebird Winterizers ... so in a burst trumpet self blowing here they are (grin).

I recently bought my Tokai Firebird new and although the finish and playability are superb, the original pickups were muddy and lacked the definition one would expect from a mini-humbucker. Ash was personally very helpful with my inquiry about the Oil City 'Winterizers', took the time to explain how Firebird pickups were supposed to be made and how Oil City could hand build these for me. The pickups arrived ahead of time and really look the part with their nickel finish and braided leads. Having now  tried the pickups through my Marshall valve amp, these pickups deliver. Clean tones are rich with good harmonic overtones. With gain applied they remain dynamic, each string still maintaining its definition. I cant wait to get out and gig my new 'Oil City Winterizer equipped Firebird. Thank you Ash.

Regards

John

Things have been busier than a busy thing at Oily Towers! Here's a small taster of a pickup that will soon be available ... no details yet ... but it promises to be quite special.

Another year over ... and a new one's just begun ...

Well another year has come and gone and Oil city pickups has weathered all , and gone from strength to strength. There is now a whole diverse range with a bit of something for everyone … from high output ‘metal’ pickups to Gretsch style Cow-T-Rons … and oodles of Telecaster pickups. Thanks to all those who’ve e mailed me with kind words about the pickups I’ve wound for you … and for all the piccies you’ve sent of your guitars … I’m just an old gear-head at heart, and as soon as I have time they’ll all find their way to the OCP ‘Customers’ Guitars page.

Since September I have been working flat out, seven days a week to meet increased demand, and then the Christmas rush … this has meant that development work on new models slowed a mite! Hopefully now I will be dusting off several new models that have been on the back burner, and putting the finishing touches to them ready for their launch. 

I'm allowing myself some time to start gigging (hopefully) ... and even song writing again ... so you may get some gig news and general shameless self promotion on here soon ... ignore me and I'll come play on your lawn! 

I've decided to start a FAQ and info section here: not only to answer pickup and wiring questions I get asked about my own products, but also to help demystify and cut some of misconceptions out of the whole pickup spec/choice thing.

I also want to cover the history of the electromagnetic guitar pickup in a series of articles; mostly  for your entertainment and information, ... but also to show how so many design choices we get nowadays are rooted in the very early days of pickup making.

Watch this space 

Ash