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Ren wouldn't divulge his secret on HRWs. But I have talked about it with him and with his long-time co-workers. He would only smile when asked about what he did to Schallers. My guess is that they took a bath in liquid nitrogen. I highly doubt he did a partial uncoiling for several reasons. The first is the lack of any hum. The second is that a cryo treatment is an established way to modify a pickup. The third is that cryo treating is clean and relatively easy. Why did Heritage promote the HRW? The best answer I can come up with is because they could, especially is the process is secret. Here is what I got from AI. Cryogenic treatment for guitar pickups involves deep-freezing the components (typically to around or ) to permanently improve their molecular grain structure. Proponents claim this process relieves internal stresses in the metal parts, such as magnets and copper wire, resulting in enhanced clarity, smoother frequency response, and increased output. ProjectGuitar.com +4 Claimed Benefits While controversial in the guitar community, those who offer cryo-treated pickups cite several specific tonal and physical improvements: Enhanced Clarity & Definition: Treating materials like copper and silver is said to improve string definition and provide "faster" transients. Smoother Overtones: The process aims to align the molecular structure to be more uniform, which some makers claim makes overdriven tones smoother and more "in tune" by reducing dissonant overtones. Increased Output: Some manufacturers report measurable increases in output (up to 18%) because the treatment potentially lowers electrical resistance and improves conductivity. "Turbo-Aging": For hardware and magnets, cryo-treatment is often marketed as a way to replicate the "relaxed" feel of vintage parts that have naturally settled over decades. Brands & Services Several high-end and boutique brands incorporate cryogenic treatment into their products: Seymour Duncan: Offers the Zephyr Silver series, which uses cryogenically treated silver wire and magnets for maximum expression and detail. Lindy Fralin / Callaham: Features the Callaham Cryogenic Fralin pickups. Callaham has also been known to offer treatment services for customer-supplied parts. V.I.P. Pickups: Uses a "cryo-tuning" process for their LOVERS PAF-style humbuckers to achieve a more transparent, vintage sound. Faber Guitar: Provides cryogenic treatment for various guitar hardware and components to minimize "bad" overtones. Nitrofreeze: An industrial service provider often used by boutique builders to treat electronic and musical components. Scientific & Practical Considerations Skepticism: Critics often point to a lack of peer-reviewed data supporting tonal claims, suggesting that perceived improvements may be due to psychological factors or "marketing hype". Risk of Damage: Extreme cooling can sometimes cause plastic parts (like bobbins) or adhesives to crack if the process isn't carefully controlled. Metal vs. Wood: While the effect on ferrous metals (steel) is well-documented in industrial settings for hardening, its effect on non-ferrous metals like copper is more debated in the audio world.

Depends on the fuzz. I don’t care for Muffs or Fuzz Faces with humbuckers much. And higher output pickups are a no go. The overload the front end too much. Tone Benders? I’ve got a EQD Park Fuzz and I love it with singles, P90s, HBs and Filter’trons. The tone control is very powerful on that and it works great. It’s based off a Mk3 Tone Bender. I do want to try a MK2 Bender eventually. Might grab an EQD Barrows. If you want to use a Muff with HBs you can always put a SD-1 or TS in front of the Muff set to clean boost (volume up, gain at 0, tone to taste). I prefer an SD-1 because it cuts more lows and really tightens up the pedal. Muffs also can be put anywhere in the chain so it’s not as important to have them be first to see the pickups. Fuzz Faces and Tone Benders should be first before anything. I’ve tried them in other spots and this just works. Rats are more distortion boxes than fuzz per se but they can get pretty fuzzy. Catalinbread’s Katzenkönig is set up like a Mk 2 Bender but with the added EQ section of a Rat. I really like this one because it doesn’t cut as much lows as a Rat does and can get pretty fuzzy and raunchy at higher settings. Also has an input knob to balance the pedals input impedance against your pickups or wherever it’s at in the chain. Makes it buffer friendly. Lastly, but certainly not least, is Octave Fuzz. There’s a few variations out there but the mains are stuff based off the Ace Tone Fuzzmaster and the Octavia. My experience is with variations of the Ace Tone Fuzzmaster. EQD does a variation called the Fuzz Master General which takes the Fuzz Master circuit and adds a tone knob (originals had a tone switch) to go from scooped to mid heavy and anywhere in between. I love this pedal. It also has clipping options. Ge transistors, Si, or none for a cleaner boost and just the octave. The octave overtones only come into play on the neck pickup above the 12th fret with the tone rolled way back on the guitar. It’s a glitchy gnarly sound and with the mids up it cuts well. The Catalinbread Octapussy is closer to a Octavia in design but is still more mid forward and less scooped. Great with just about anything.

My Gibson R0 with CustomBucker 3 humbuckers have unbalanced coils (per Gibson) and they have a noticeable amount of hum pickup that other Gibson p'ups do not. (and just for fun, I recently yanked out the alnico 3 magnets and replaced them with alnico 2 magnets, which so far I'm happier with) My 2001 H535 with HRW's exhibits no hum, so I don't think the coils are unbalanced. I pulled out the Gauss meter and measured the magnetic field strength and polarization. One of the unusual things about Schaller pickups is the screws are "north" and the slugs are "south" which is the opposite of Gibson and most other humbuckers. The bridge and neck read about the same in terms of strength, and I'd estimate they are alnico 5 and strongly charged, with excellent field strength. Not the highest I've ever seen, but a bit more than most I've measured. The HRW's are definitely made from Schaller components, from the base plates to the covers and bobbin spacing, even the screw threads. But, Schaller could have simply supplied Heritage with the raw components, right down to empty bobbins for Heritage to wind themselves, and loose parts for them to assemble as they see fit. Or they may have supplied them wound or in any other state of partial assembly. I did check the electrical characteristics, the bridge is pretty hot, much higher wind than the neck. I wrote down the inductance and capacitance of the coils and If I didn't like the HRW's so much, I'd open them up. Schaller pickups are very well made. I'm working on several at the moment for a friend doing some restorations on 80's and 90's pointy shredder guitars. I just had one apart to replace the wire with a 5-conductor cable. I had them completely disassembled to clean up the baseplate and solder the ground shield. One characteristic that I've found is they are consistently wound, with very little variance pickup to pickup, and usually have low capacitance windings, so even hotter winds are nice and bright. I tend to wonder if Schaller built their own winders. They were certainly capable of that. If curious, maybe I can snap a picture of a Schaller pickup disassembled for repair.

Here's an H-140 25th Anniversary that was sold on Reverb a while back. https://reverb.com/item/91740095-heritage-h-140-cm-25th-anniversary-with-case-in-excellent-condition

Dude this H137 is sick, I would absolutely kill for a single humbucker H137DC.