Langcaster 6 and 8 pole pickups with brass bushes for fine adjustments and RF filter. The Blues set combination is the 11 pole patent pending neck pickup and two 6 pole pickups for mid and Bridge.

Kinman Avn Pickup are optional. Sustainiac Stealth Sustainer

Is Joh Lang of Langcaster Guitars, New Zealand the new guitar pickup Guru?
Well it certainly looks that way! It started 4 years ago when Joh wasn't satisfied with the quality of existing famous pickups which he used in his handcrafted guitars. So he started developing his own state of the art pickups. Within one year he introduced his noiseless single coil Langcaster pickups with integrated PC board base in a 6 and 8 pole configuration. The 8 pole pickup design eliminated signal loss with string bending where the string is usually pushed away from the magnet pole. His pickups were installed in the unique Langcaster Swamp Kauri guitars. Swamp Kauri is a 35,000-year-old native hardwood which is used for expensive furniture but it now appears to be an excellent material for guitars and basses. Langcaster instruments became an instant success in the USA and also in Europe since the end of 2003.

Now Joh is an innovator,and inventor. So he knew the drawbacks of high impedance pickups, even his own, having signal and frequency loss because of the cable between guitar and amplifier and winding capacitance. He also noted that most guitarists used stomp boxes to obtain their overdrive sound. Last year Mr. Lang decided to develop a solution for both problems. Signal losses from guitar cables can minimised with a low impedance buffer amplifier in the guitar. A transformer can do this too, but there are certain losses in transformers. So Langcaster started at the front end: the pickups.

After countless experiments with magnets, wire gauges and techniques, Joh Lang created his Langcaster Ultimate Lo pickups and these are truly revolutionary.
Not only do they have a low resistance of around 100 Ohms, but they can also be made as a completely noiseless humbucking pickup in a single coil housing. Normal coil resistances are around 7,000 ohms.

The inductance that those coils have is around 3 Henrys which is a very high impedance getting higher as the frequency rises. The new pickups have less than a hundredth of the inductance of the old high impedance ones. This extends the range of response and self-resonance is in the supersonic range at over 56 KHz. The result is a pure clear, crisp and open sound with no restriction or muddiness.

The next step was the development of an appropriate low noise preamplifier and a natural sounding overdrive circuit that would fit into the guitar cavity. After numerous and painstaking experiments, Joh Lang created an onboard overdrive, the Ultimate Drive, that is fully adjustable with the characteristics of a tube driven amp.

As a bonus Joh integrated a red LED, which flashes when strings are picked in overdrive mode. The brightness of this LED indicates the picking force. This preamp was designed for a maximum dynamic range with an output capability of 2.5 Volts RMS and with a very low current consumption of only 450 microamps for a long battery life. For example, a PROCELL Alkaline battery with a capacity of 580mAH should last at least 1000 hours of continuous playing time. The battery is only connected when a jack plug is in either output socket.

All these new innovations have been utilised in the latest Langcaster Cobra model guitar. The body shape is Tele like and (now also in the dark Kauri Strat shape) but the resemblance stops there. The neck is made of AAA grade maple with the company's usual extra reinforcement double action truss rod and Ebony fingerboard. The neck has the typical Langcaster shape with inlaid Jade or Paua, string trees and Schaller locking tuners and the Earvana nut in the Dark Kauri model with 35000 year old swamp Kauri wood.

The body is hand made of naturally seasoned 1000-year-old Kauri wood which adds a defined tone and sustain to the instrument. The model name is realised by a beautiful carved and sculptured Cobra surrounded by real Paua shell.

The fully adjustable fixed tail 3D-bridge is made by Schaller. The Cobra has two Ultimate Lo hum bucking pickups, a push/push switch for the overdrive, a tone control for both modes, a gain control for the overdrive sound and a three way pickup selector. The clean volume control has a loudness compensation network so that as the volume is reduced the sound does not lose its treble quality. The Cobra has two output jacks; one for the clean sound only and one for both the overdrive and clean sound, so you can play in stereo or send the clean signal to a mixer and send the overdrive output to an amplifier for stage amplification.

This Langcaster Cobra is a real giant in the guitar world. In the clean mode it outclasses all other guitars in volume, frequency range and clarity by far and with a flick of the switch you have a magnificent overdrive comparable to expensive boutique amps, eliminating the need for a Tube Screamer or similar effect. Because of its many outstanding features the Cobra can be used for any playing style from country to jazz and from blues to Heavy Metal.

The Cobra is not only a beautiful piece of art, it delivers more than anyone could wish for.

Kinman hum-canceling guitar pickups are also availeble in Langcasters

Guitar players all over the world who have a yearning for high quality and high performance and simply want to enjoy great tone and feel without the noise that ordinary pickups put out.

Computers may have revolutionized home recording, but for the recording guitarist who prefers the sound of single-coil pickups, they have taken the age-old problem of radiated-field noise to a new level. Langcaster shielding and the new generation of Kinman pickups are a real solution without compromising the classic Fender sound. You will already know that computers and single-coil pickups don't make particularly good companions in the studio. If you attempt to use a single-coil pickup, especially with distortion or compression, anywhere near a computer and monitor, the radiated field is picked up by the coil at nearly the same level as the strings, making your guitar totally unusable!

"Sustainiac Stealth Stealth plus" sustainer driver

Or add on the "Sustainiac Stealth Stealth plus" sustainer driver to give you controllable reliable feedback sustain every time. Used by eg; Steve Vai, Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Adrian Belew & others.

The feedback sustain that you get with a Sustainiac Stealth Plus sustainer is much more intense and predictable than you get from your amplifier. What's more, you get this reliable feedback sustain at any volume setting, even with the amplifier volume turned down to zero, or when going "direct" into a mixer board in the studio. The intensity and harmonics of the sustained string vibration are adjustable with controls on the sustainers and you don't go deaf from your loud speakers.

The finest magnetic Stealth sustainer driver yet !.

Guitar players want sustain. In the hands of a skilled player, very creative solos can be played if certain sustain techniques are mastered.

SUSTAIN FROM SUSTAINERS: A sustainer is a relatively new type of effect. Sustainers make feedback sustain by putting vibration energy directly into your instrument strings. Because the sympathetic vibrations are done directly, several advantages are realized: Achieving feedback sustain becomes predictable and reliable. No more lost notes because of room acoustics. No more hearing loss because you can turn your amplifier to any volume, even down to zero. You can take control of the harmonic mode of string vibration, and change it at will to enhance solos.

Fake sustain methods: 1.Use a compressor. 2.Use a "distortion box" or turn up your amplifier gain to increase signal distortion.
Real sustain methods:1.Turn up amplifier volume to get feedback sustain. 2.Use a SUSTAINIAC sustainer to get predictable feedback sustain.

ABOUT SUSTAINERS: A sustainer is a unique effect. All other effects process your pickup signal (reverb, chorus, etc.). Then, you listen to that processed signal. Sustainers are different. A sustainer is the only effect that operates directly on the strings of the instrument. The actual string vibrations of the instrument are sustained indefinitely. They don't die out until you want them to, or until the power is turned off.

Sustainiac sustain systems are engineered to give you controllable, reliable feedback sustain every time. The feedback sustain that you get with a Sustainiac sustainer is much more intense and predictable than you get from your amplifier. What's more, you get this reliable feedback sustain at any volume setting, - even with the amplifier volume turned down to zero, or when going "direct" into a mixer board in the studio. The intensity and harmonics of the sustained string vibration are adjustable with controls on the sustainers.

SUSTAIN FROM AMP FEEDBACK: Many players achieve sustain by turning the amplifier up to a loud volume, and by holding their instrument near the amplifier speakers. Then, something exciting often happens: Intense sound energy coming from the amplifier speakers blasts the guitar body and strings (and your ears), making them "feed back". The notes can sustain for as long as you hold the guitar near the speakers. Sometimes, the notes break into cool-sounding harmonics, depending on how you position the instrument. A player can develop the skill of varying the harmonics of a sustained note by moving the instrument around to different positions in front of the amplifier. Adding compression and/or distortion to the instrument signal path can enhance this effect. The more gain you crank into the amp, the more feedback sustain you get.
What is happening with feedback sustain is called "sympathetic vibration" of the strings. It is said that the famous opera singer Caruso could sing loudly at the precise ringing pitch of a wine glass, and by inducing sympathetic vibrations into the glass, actually built up enough vibration energy in the glass from his incredible voice to crack it.

Normally, notes played on musical instrument strings die out after a short period of time, because the vibration energy in them is lost due to friction. When you hold an electric stringed instrument near its amplifier speakers, and turn the amplifier up loud, this lost vibration energy is restored by the energy coming out of the amplifier speakers. Since the vibrations that come from the speaker is exactly the same frequency that is being played, sympathetic vibration is relatively easy to achieve.

Don't fizzle your feedback! Making feedback from your amplifier doesn't always work, because of the physics of sound vibrations and the specific acoustic properties of particular locations. Depending on the acoustics of each particular stage or studio, and also on the acoustic properties of each instrument, getting feedback from your amplifier can be a flop. Sometimes you work out a great solo with awesome harmonic feedback accents, only to have it go bad during an important performance or session. Sometimes, instead of sustaining your instrument string vibrations, feedback can actually cause the note to come to a dead stop!

Don't go deaf! Of course, getting feedback sustain from your amplifier not only blasts your guitar with sound. It also blasts your ears, making you deaf at an accelerated rate, as the delicate bones of the inner ear wear away due to the prolonged intense vibration. Thousands of electric guitar players have lost part or most of their hearing from years of feedback blasting with loud amplifiers.

Listen to the sound samples on ore sound page.