I'm a bit skeptical. Designed and assembled in California sounds like some guy in designed the pickup, got the parts sent in from China and put the magnet in with the prewound bobbins. Technically speaking if I flew down to California from Canada for Namm, designed a pickup using parts from one of the Chinese vendors had the pickup and the magnet shipped to my buddy's place in San Diego so that his stay at home wife can put the magnet in and ship it from their house. I technically have a pickup that was designed and assembled in California.
If it was actually completely made in California, it would say something like Made in California or Crafted in California. It wouldn't make sense for me personally to order them in as $35 USD is about $45 CAD and before shipping and everything. By the time it gets here it'll be closer to $80 or even higher if they decided to ship it via UPS/FedEx and I get dinged with the $40 brokerage fee.
If you're in the US, it's really a decision of either getting one of these or a used DiMarzio/Duncan. I honestly don't see the value in these pickups right now.
This makes sense, yeah. I made the topic to ask since the company has obviously alluded their pickups are manufactured in USA, well assembled. Anyway, I've read some internet views and people that bought the pickups seem to have the opinion that they're American made as well.
I also believe they aren't made in USA and are probably Artec (based upon some Artec standard offerings are very similar in both looks and specs, even despite Artec does custom winds), but few of the online reviews I've found stated they aren't. So that definitely made me curious.
Another thing is, how can they legally state they're assembled in USA if they aren't? Let's say these are actually Artec pickups (which means they aren't bad pickups, just not as good as DiMarzios), which of course means it wasn't produced in USA, Artec doesn't sell pickup
parts, they sell pre-made pickups, which are obviously made in the asia. They cannot thus be assembled in USA, and they sure as hell ain't made in USA either. Isn't it illegal to state the wrong country of product origin?
As far as materials coming from china to USA and then being "assembled" there, well if you'd buy a plastic bobbin from China, plain enamel 42gauge wire from some chinese company, some indonesian alnico5 magnet, some chinese polepieceis, some cheap lead wire.. and winded it into a pickup here in the states...wouldn't that mean you have an Made in USA pickup? There's that gray area between "made in" and "assembled in". Peavey uses some chinese parts for their amps, yet they do Made in USA on their amps no problem, Marshall's been packing most of their PCB boards by importing chinese parts, they even use relabeled Shuguang tubes, yet they still do Made in UK. As far as I know, DiMarzio's supplier of the plastic bobbins is asian company as well. My point is, when you're in that gray area, when is "made in" the right thing to use and when is "assembled in"?
Or a better question yet, can these people be sued for stating they're creating an USA product that it isn't?
Sadly no one seems to be roaming around here that had firsthand experience, this is all just guessing on our part for now.
Sounds like something made in China to me.
As far as I know, over 90% of pickups in the world are created by three companies - Artec (Artec Sound), G&B and SAMSHIN (Tesla). Afaik, all three companies are Korean, but Artec and G&B have Indonesian factories as well. Chinese pickups make up about 1% of pickups in the world. I have yet to find an 35$ chinese pickup (I usually find them original OEM sale sold online for few bucks per pickup). Even most of Chinese-made guitars from big manufacturers use one of the three Korean companies to produce the pickups for their models. I don't think they're Chinese.
Anyone tried them that can chime in?
