Leaderboard

I recently acquired a 2001 H535 with the HRW pickups in it. I was around then the HRW was introduced and it was the bee's knees, and nowdays not so much. I have test equipment, and I can actually measure and compare the magnetic properties and electrical properties of pickups, plot their overall response curves and characterize them objectively. The coil resistance really doesn't tell us anything about the pickup's performance. It has very little to do with the sound they make. Wht is important is the inductance and the loaded resonant frequency of the pickup. After comparing the properties I measured of the HRW's I have with many other pickups, I will say they are very close to the Seymour Duncan SH-2 Jazz pickup set. The inductance and capacitance of the coils, the magnetic field strengths and resonant frequency are very close, right around 5% within the same measurements. The magnet fields are a bit stronger on the HRW, but not all that much. Within the range of normal variance for pickups. The other part of the HRW package is the potentiometer values, the HRW's use 500k volume and 250k tone pots, with the same .022 capacitors that Heritage normally used. My friend has a 335 with a SH-2 Jazz neck and SH-4 (JB) bridge pickup, and the Jazz and HRW neck is quite similar sounding and output is right in the ballpark.