Magma Plume Plus - Full sized Wide Range humbucker

Fender's Wide Range humbucker was designed and introduced in 1971. It was designed by Seth Lover (the designer of the Gibson humbucker) to help Fender compete with the ever-growing fandom of Gibson's humless pickups. It was designed to essentially recreate the single coil tone in a humless package, and was featured on Telecaster deluxes.

It was short lived, however, because it didn't end up sounding a whole lot like an authentic single coil. The Fender fan club had already fallen in love with their single coils - in the sense of tone, and the look of them. Wide Range humbuckers were discontinued in 1979, but have recently been seeing a huge resurgence in popularity. 

The Wide Range humbucker, despite following the same electronic principle as a humbucker to achieve the humlessness, sounds vastly different. This is due to the significant construction differences. The coils of the Wide Range humbucker are much larger than those of a Gibson humbucker. This means more turns of wire, more output, and a larger string sensing window (more harmonic content). They're wound with the same gauge of wire, so we can do a direct comparison when comparing the two - Wide Range humbuckers have a wind count around 30% higher than a standard Gibson humbucker. 

The method of magnetising the strings is also significantly different. Gibson humbuckers use a bar magnet and steel slugs and screws, Wide Range humbuckers use magnet pole pieces (CuNiFe in vintage Wide Ranges and FeCrCo in ours due to CuNiFe's modern lack of availability). Magnet pole pieces are much stronger than their steel charged by a bar magnet alternatives, magnetising the strings to a much higher saturation. This increases the output and gives the pickups a much more spanky, bright and aggressive tone.

Resistance (Ohms): 10.4k/10.4k

Magnet: FeCrCo magnet screws

Lead wire: 4 conductor + shield

Baseplate: short legged nickel silver

Wax potted

Supplied with mounting screws & springs