Tonerider Apex Plus

Recording a guitar fitted with single‑coil pickups can lead to noise issues, especially where high‑gain distortion or overdrive is in use. That’s why some companies developed so‑called ‘stacked humbuckers’, which are made to fit into the existing pickup aperture. The thing is, some of these are more effective than others when it comes to preserving the essential tonality of their single‑coil counterparts, and the more successful ones tend to be quite expensive.

British manufacturers Tonerider design their pickups in the UK and then have them built in China, to keep costs down, and it’s a formula that has worked well to date — their existing range of replacement pickups strikes a very good balance between performance and price, and they come with a five‑year warranty. Now, after some years in development, Tonerider have turned their attention to hum‑cancelling, stacked‑coil pickups, and the Apex Plus set that’s reviewed here are designed for the Fender Stratocaster. There’s also a Classic version of the Apex pickups, but the Plus version produces a slightly overwound sound that might be better suited to some blues and rock players. (An HSS set is also available for those wanting an even hotter bridge pickup sound.)

Just 3mm deeper than a standard single‑coil Strat pickup, the Apex Plus set is built around alnico V rod magnets, with a slight bevel, and its scatter‑wound coils are wax potted so as to reduce microphony. Scatter winding lowers the self‑capacitance of the pickup windings, so should also help preserve high end. Apparently, computer‑controlled machines are used for winding the pickups, so even the scatter‑winding pattern is consistent. The published DC...