Vintage Guitar - February 2018 - 119
POLE POSITION The Rivet '63/'64 Pickup Set R ivet Pickups founder David Petschulat made the first locking vibrato with fine tuners for the EVH company, and worked stints at Kahler and Gibson. With Rivet, Petschulat has developed a unique pickup design with two mini-coils that, once connected to their base, allow a variety of tonal options via various wiring cards. Rivet pickups are the same size as standard humbuckers but have a very unique ap- Price: $329 Info: www.rivetpickups.com pearance thanks to their arrangement and number of polepieces. The '63 is designed as a neck pickup and has a row of six pole pieces alongside a mini-coil of three poles; the bridge-position '64 has a row of six poles with POWER STATION The Strymon Zuma A re you tripping over a spiderweb of effects power cords? Have a pedalboard that requires an advanced degree in electrical engineering to operate? Or are you just confounded by your home setup of a few pedals patched together with a mish-mash of cords that mysteriously become a rat's nest when you're not looking? Strymon's Zuma power supply might be your answer. This beautiful blue box is the highest horsepower, most tech-savvy supply of its kind - and at a reasonable price. The Zuma provides nine high-current, isolated circuits, each with its own custom transformer and dedicated regulator. The nine channels all deliver 9 volts via the provided short or long cords. Two channels are switchable between 9-, 12-, or 18-volt output. This is ideal for most regular or even higher-power effects - and if you have a 9-volt stompbox that provides more headroom or output at higher voltages, you've got options. Each output delivers a whopping 500 milliamps of juice. If you don't speak fluent electronics, all you need to know is that the Zuma is never going to let your stompboxes down. Each output is also topped by a small operating light to let you know when your connection is made. Zuma engineers were also thinking ahead to your future world tour, even if you weren't: the power-in options include any variation from 100 to 240 volts with the IEC cable supplied. The Zuma is also amazingly quiet. Some pedals designed to work with batteries can churn out background static, but the Zuma's dual isolation stages eliminate ground-loop a nd AC-l i ne noises. So you re a l l y on l y hear your pedals working, not complaining. February 2018 119 a four-pole mini-coil. The pickups connect to a card base with slip-on connectors; the base, in turn, has a slot for an interchangeable card. The unit tested with the Crunch 108 card allowed for a hotter output when the push/pull pot is in the down position. Other available cards include a Glass model, designed to give a more Tele-like tone from the set. But where Rivet pickups really outshine other passive pickup designs is in their unique use of mini-coils to produce a clearer-sounding neck tone and a fatter-sounding bridge tone thanks to the arrangements of the mini-coils. For example, when the neck position is chosen, various amounts of the bridge's mini-coils, positioned under the high strings, are added in to create a clearer and wider overall "neck" tone. Conversely, in the bridge position, the neck mini-coils positioned under the bass strings are mixed in to fatten things up. The Rivet system is a highly idealized and extremely versatile set of pickups. Thanks to the ingenuity of founder David Petschulat, the '63/'64 set offers a wider variety of tones and output levels than traditional humbuckers via it's card system and imaginative use of mini-coils. - Zac Childs If the Zuma's more juice than you need, Strymon also offers scaled-down Ojai models. The basic Ojai has five 9-volt outputs, whereas the Ojai R30 offers two selectable outputs for 12- or 18-volt units. And they can be daisychained together to expand your system. The Zuma and its little siblings are lightweight, rock-solid, simple to operate (even for guitarists), and downright cool looking. - Michael Dregni VINTAGE GUITAR Price: $249 Info: www.strymon.net