Huge mids – meet classic crunch! The Birmingham takes the best of your favourite 70s tones and slams them into one great humbucker set. Think Angus, Jimmy, Tony and the rest!
The bridge pickup is overwound by 5% to just under 9k, giving plenty of power, a prominent midrange, all while retaining chimey, detailed highs. When split to a single coil or run in parallel, this pickup excels at single coil tones, without the massive volume drop that plague some humbuckers.
The neck pickup is underwound by 5% to just over 7k, offering great clarity, and ensuring this set has two distinct neck and bridge sounds. The neck split sound is full, round and sustains well.
OPTIONS & SPACING
Covers: Available in black or zebra open coils, or with highly-polished gold or silver nickel covers.
Neck Polepiece Spacing: 50mm spacing is standard, as measured from the center of the low E to the centre of the high E pole pieces: .
Bridge Polepiece Spacing: Black, White, Nickel and Zebra Birmingham Bridge pickups are available in 50mm and 52.4mm spacings (F-spaced). Gold covered pickups are only available in 50mm spacing.
Baseplates: All Tonerider humbuckers are built with medium-length 9mm baseplate legs for easy installation in a wide variety of instruments.
Dimensions
Regular-Spaced Covered Humbucker (Metric)
Regular-Spaced Uncovered Humbucker (Metric)
F-Spaced Uncovered Humbucker (Metric)
Regular-Spaced Covered Humbucker (Imperial)
Regular-Spaced Uncovered Humbucker (Imperial)
F-Spaced Uncovered Humbucker (Imperial)
Wiring
2 Humbuckers / 1 Vol / 1 Tone / 3-Way Toggle
2 Humbuckers / 1 Vol / 1 Tone / 3-Way Toggle / Push-Pull Coil Split (Vol)
2 Humbuckers / 1 Vol / 1 Tone / 3-Way Toggle / Push-Pull Coil Split (Tone)
2 Humbuckers / 2 Vol / 2 Tone / 3-Way Toggle
2 Humbuckers / 2 Vol / 2 Tone / 3-Way Toggle / Push-Pull Coil Split
Bob –
very nice for blues and classic Rock.
decent pups at a good price.
Garjill (verified owner) –
Suono bellissimo! Ottima qualità! Prezzo onesto! Grazie!
JJ (verified owner) –
I put these pickups in a Harley Benton Fusion T because I couldn’t dial in a good tone with the original pick ups. The Birminghams are really great, with clarity. Clean, crunch and they even make a great high gain sound.
Miguel –
Very nice sound: clear and bright. I love them. Awesome pickups and price. So Happy!
Dirk Kober –
I put these Pickups in a FGN DC10. The Sound is more open, brighter and crispi. More AC/DC 😉
Perfect Pickup for this Guitar.
Todd Winger –
Have a set of these in my Jackson Soloist. Beautiful clarity when rolled off and a full fat southern punch when driven!! These would be my signature set!!
John odonovan (verified owner) –
Bought these pickups for a project telecaster I built and also converted to hh configuration. The finished product was astounding playing clean produces some really bright warm tones but these pickups really sing when you crank up the gain. I would definitely recommend these pickups to anyone wanting to improve the sound and tone of their guitar.
Andrea Ongaro –
I bought this Humbucker for the telecaster I built at home. Extraordinary value for money! It has a dynamic and a crazy definition, it is a scream! I’m really happy I chose Tone Rider once again, I’m really happy!
Danny B –
Great sounding pickups! One of the things i liked about these pickups was their versatility. For instance when you set your amp up with some gain, and then roll back the volumeknob on the guitar a bit. About 6-8. Then you get a great clean sound with just a bit of dirt in it. By hitting the strings harder you get a nice crunchy sound. An then when you crank up your volume knob you get a really nice distortion. I’m definitely going to try some of the other pickups as well!
Jamie (verified owner) –
Tonerider’s blurb implies their Birmingham pickups are suitable for SG-type guitars, the choice of Angus Young and Tony Iommi. Though the pickups in my Epiphone SG sounded fine, I took a gamble that swapping them out for a pair of the Toneriders would be worth the £90 investment. The clean tone is now far more detailed, while activating an Ibanez mini-Tube Screamer at a low overdrive setting, and set to push the front of the amp a little, results in the classic SG ‘weaponised musical instrument’ rock guitar sound guaranteed to frighten the neighbours. I now have Tonerider P90 (Vintage 90, Hot 90 and Rebel 90), humbucking (Alnico IV and now Birmingham) and Telecaster (Classic Tele) pickups in half a dozen guitars and my take on the brand is this: their pickups have upgraded the tonality of all my mid-price guitars so much that one can’t afford NOT to install them.
rblievanos (verified owner) –
I expected a little more output from the bridge pickup. Bought it to convert my SSS Strat to HSS but it didn’t seem to work. I gave it to a friend that loves it and in his guitar i have to admit that it sounds very good. YMMV, i guess.
ossi –
I bought them to replace the dull, muddy and boring sounding Roswell Pickups that came with my Harley Benton Fusion-T. A really fine guitar with one of the best necks I ever played, but the Pickups were the last crap. Now it is a dream guitar.
The Birminghams are incredible good, clear, bright and warm sounding – and not only “for the price”!
Alberto –
Fantastic set if you are looking for that 70s rock sound, look no further! Very pronounced mids that screams “gimme a Marshall”
Han (verified owner) –
I changed the Gibson 498t bridge pickup in my Les Paul for a Tonerider Birmingham and was amazed by the improvement in tone and clarity. Recently someone persuaded me to try a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates, but I only lasted a week before putting the Birmingham back in. In my opinion, not just the best pickups for the money but actually the best pickups you can buy.
Craig Fitzgerald –
Just replaced a set of Seymour Duncan “Dark Winter” humbuckers in a PRS SE that I bought a while back. Not personally into Norwegian Death Metal so, wanted to change them out. I put a set of these Birminghams in it (Along with upgrading the electronics) I put a CTS coil split pot in it and I can’t tell you how happy I now am with the guitar. Tone goes on forever. Split the coils and it’s just gorgeous; clean clear sounds; unsplit them and it goes heavier with just enough distortion. (Running through a couple of Blackfaces.)
Using a 3 way switch and between the different settings (Split/ unsplit, tone, Bridge Neck, volume, picking, etc.) I have what seems like endless tones to work with. (The “Dark Winter” pickups were just insipid; I guess it all depended on the amp and distortion to get your sound because the pickups themselves were just boring. Not these. Can’t say enough good about them.) Looking forward to upgrading a Squier Strat I’m getting with some vintage Tonerider single coils. So glad that I ran across this company.
Wolfgang Froehlich (verified owner) –
Well Tone Tonerider!
Now my 3rd HB set. Firstly Zebra Rocksongs went into a HSH Strat, secondly Generators upgraded my beloved PRS SE Santana, where the original HB were just crap. Now the usable split sound and the full fat HB sound are a real joy.
Topped now by the Birminghams which awaked my classic LP to sing with Plexi voice. I´v already upgraded the vol pots with no treble loss caps (220 pF capacitors soldered in parallel) which helped the LP by turning down the volume a bit to really sound like a SG. In split mode a great joy – not the classic Strat sound because of the fat LP body – but very usable.
150% recommended, TRY!!
tonytuckley (verified owner) –
Ok… So I chose the Birmingham Humbucker as the description and reviews fulfilled what I was looking for and as I live about 10 miles outside of Birmingham (U.K).
They look fantastic with the nickel cover and with the 4 wire design are excellent for coil splitting.
Nice.