Pickup Tattoos
7th January 2021
Truly one-of-a-kind finishes
If you follow our social media accounts, you will have no doubt seen some of the custom etched designs that we have done for many of our customers. We always get great comments about how awesome they look and the best news is that you can add this feature to pretty much any order of our standard range humbuckers. Simply provide us with your design and we can apply it using our laser etcher to create your own, personalised, one-of-a-kind humbucker. We have a couple of techniques that we use, depending on the finish of the cover that we are working on: For black covers, we use the laser to cut through the black powder-coat, to reveal the the raw nickel metal underneath, which creates an awesome, textured monochrome finish (check out the Kraken etch on the cover image of this article!). For our other covers, including all of our metallic covers such as chrome or gold, as well as our camo and tyger finishes, we use the laser to bond a ceramic coating onto the surface of the cover, leaving a matte black / graphite finish to your design, with the colours of the cover as the background (check out some of our burnt chrome etches for examples of how bold that can look!)
We can accept almost any format of image for your design, with only a couple of limitations: Firstly, because of the techniques that we are using, we are unable to etch specific colours or shading. This means that your design needs to be black on white, or white on black for a perfect result. Obviously, you can use the finish of the cover itself to provide colour, so we can definitely create some awesome looks! Secondly, the design needs to be of a suitable size and resolution to work on something the size of a humbucker. We can etch pretty accurately, so you can definitely get some fine detail, but very fiddly designs don't really come out so well on such a small canvas. Likewise, any image that is overly small or pixellated isn't going to produce a clean, clear result.
To order a custom etch, the best way to begin is to email us your design and overall idea for the look. This should include both the design itself, and also a sketch of how you would like the design scaled and positioned on the pickup. We can then check that everything is going to work before you go ahead and order. After that, you can just build up the pickups how you would like them on our pickup builder feature as normal then just add the custom etching charge to your basket along with them, which you can find HERE (one charge per pickup to be etched). We'll then build up your set from the ground with your own customised design and all that's left is for you to prepare to be the envy of all your guitar buddies!
As always, please feel free to drop us a line any time if you have any further questions or queries about custom etches, or anything else about pickups [email protected]
