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Last Updated : May 26, 2022
I thought it would be interesting to show you two pickups that I own and that were part of a project that I had: making a replica of Ibanez Destroyer 75-76. However, this project is no longer up-to-date. These humbucker pickups fitted some Ibanez guitars in the 70’s, including some well-known models like Lawsuit Guitars.
These pickups were manufactured by Nisshin Onpa (Maxon pickup division) and they are Super 70. Today, these pickups are not very common on the market, especially in good condition and entirely originals. They are equipped with ferrite magnets and they can cause a fairly important feedback, like most humbuckers of the time that were not yet wax potted. It was another invention of Eddie Van Halen who was the first guitarist to wax pot his pickups, including the Maxon Super 70 of his Ibanez Destroyer!
These Made in Japan pickups are well known by Van Halen fan’s and other aficionados of his famous Brown Sound. In fact, the Super 70 pickups were part of the Ibanez Destroyer that Eddie Van Halen bought in 1975. Eddie used this guitar to record five tracks from Van Halen’s debut album. It is known as a fact that the label “Made in Japan” has largely contributed to shape the famous Master’s Eddie Van Halen’s Brown Sound, but that is a story that I will tell you in another article …
Maxon also made Greco guitar pickups. Seems that the Greco U-1000 pickups are the same as the Ibanez Super 70 pickups but I’m not sure about that…
4 Responses
pouvez vs me dire si le super 70 sont splitables ?
merci
Bonjour Hubert, non ils ne le sont pas. Cdt.
I recently restored a 1973 Epiphone EA-250 Riviera MIJ. It was literally a box of parts with all the original parts including two Maxon humbuckers. The body was actually in nearly primo shape as was the bolt on neck and tuners. The top had separated and cracked around the neck pocket requiring gluing and clamping and some intense finish repair where the red finish had chipped off. To be playable the neck was shimmed.
The original wiring harness was intact in one long string; 2 volume/2 tone pots, 3-way switch and jack all firmly wared hard all I had to do was solder on the two Maxon pickups and once I got the guitar put back together, WOW, sweetest sounding humbuckers I have ever played – warmth, sustain, resonance in spades.
Eddie didn’t invent wax potting it was common practice for decades already for for coiled sensors and even other types of electronics to be potted with various resins, waxes, even rubber compounds. He also didn’t invent boiling stirngs to clean them, he also failed to rewind his pickups so he asked Seymour Duncan to repair the poorly DIYed rewound PAF Ed botched (Eddie loosely wound it by hand and over heated everything as well). Duncan later took advantage of this to sell pickups under the EVH branding but Eddie wasn’t OK with that and didn’t endorse them, it’s only recently that EVH brand endorsed the “frankie” duncan made pickup.
Too many things are attributed to Eddie when it should just be his fabulous and inspiring compositions, playing & tone from the early albums & their live performances, not all the BS he spread intentionally in various interviews to keep the legions of wannabe copycats away from getting a clue about his his actual gear & setup.
Eddie became a sort of Edison V2, urban legends & misinformed journalists attribute to Eddie even the invention of the Floyd Rose (which is in fact due to Floyd Rose himself for the early protos & Geoffrey McCabe for some aspects) , going as far as claiming that Eddie “invented” the
fine tuners on the ulterior evolution of the floyd trem as we know it today: truth is Floyd Rose simply adapted violin bridge fine tuners which existed for a very long time and listened to feedback in terms of gameplay from Eddie as well as other players of the time who tested his prototypes all along.