Kent Pickups/Pickup dilemma

[jtucci1991]

Hi everyone. Slightly off topic question but I think this is probably the best place to ask.

I'm building a guitar in a class I'm taking and I'm not sure what kind of pickups to put into it. I play a kent polaris II (labeled simply 2 pickup kent in the pictures section of this website) and love the way it sounds, very similar to an Airline. I would really like to get that sort of cheap vintage growl that comes out of guitars such as my kent, but obviously I can't just go to a guitar store and buy a set of vintage pickups. This probably isn't a very complicated issue, I'm just not very pickup savvy beyond tonal differences in single coils and humbuckers.

Any ideas?

[VintAxe]

Hey jtucci1991.

You may want to consider the reproduction Airline pickup that Eastwood Guitars is selling. They claim they sound like the old Airline single coils although I haven't heard them in person yet.

They sell them on eBay:


Scroll to the bottom of the auction to see Joey Leone demonstrate on slide.

If you want to hear some more, here is a webcast where Joey Leone plays a variety of Eastwood Airlines. Some of the links are dead now but you can still view some of the files:

[Spud1950]

Not exactly the same pickups, but some possible alternatives.Teisco pickups on eBay.

[jtucci1991]

I've seen the airlines. I'm getting a pair for my les paul as an experiment but I'm looking for traditional single coil size single coil.

As for the teiscos, I was thinking of that route if I can't find anything newer and/or more attractive (guitars should look cool too).

Thanks to both of you none the less.