GFS Crunchy Rails
I have to start out by saying I don’t believe that pickups contribute to tone anywhere near as much as the amp does. As far as I’m concerned I can live with two types of humbuckers, a PAF style and a hot “distortion” pickup. I think it’s a little overkill that a company like Seymour Duncan sells so many different kinds of humbuckers. PAF’s, Seth Lover, Pearly Gates, Duncan Custom etc…they all sound the same to me when I listen to the sound samples at seymour duncans site.
I had an old kramer Striker layin around without a pickup in it. I figured I would just throw a GFS PAF pickup into it. I have a GFS Lil Killer in a Strat and I really like it.
I couldn’t make up my mind between the GFS crunchy paf or the fat paf. I noticed the Crunchy Rails on the site. It is described as “Our Hottest- Modern Metal Power- The GFS Crunchy Rails are wound the hottest of any GFS humbucker”. GFS describes the tone as “relaxed midrange but not quite scooped”.
I’m not normally one for wicked high output pickups. When manufacturers start to add extra windings to a pickup more inductance and capacitance is added which usually sacrifices highs.
On a whim I decided to purchase the GFS Crunchy Rails.
I bought the Crunchy Rails an installed it into the Kramer Striker. I can’t say I was in love with the pickup at first. To me it sounded more like a JB than a duncan distortion. It seems to have the bite of a JB but not quite the shrillness a JB can sometimes have. The GFS Crunchy Rails also seems to have a bit of a lower end than the JB.
After playing it for a few weeks the crunch rails has really grown on me. It really excels at metal tones. It has a much hotter output than a regular PAF. It’s a natural for a modern high gain tone like a recto or 5150 type amp.
To my surprise the pickup is also quite musical and has some depth to it’s personality. It sounds great playing singing sustain like a Gary Moore song or maybe Journey.
This pickup is highly recommended especially for the $33 price tag.
Here is a little video I did to compare the GFS Crunchy Rails to the Duncan JB. The recording was into my behringer v-amp on the modern high gain setting. Ignore the sloppy playing.
