Testimonials

Several of us have installed your Black Rose pickups set in our guitars.

1.)    The packaging is terrific!  What a great presentation!  The box is high quality and printing is very professional.  Having each pickup in its own cloth bag makes an impressive statement.
2.)    The quality of your materials used on the pickups is superior.  We are all tinkerers and modify our guitars on a regular basis.  We’ve experienced a lot of pickups.  Your pickup materials and manufacturing appear to be of the same quality as Lollar or Lindy Fralin pickups.  Your base plate, wiring, and winding reminded me of Lollar pickups.  Lollar has a great reputation!
3.)    The sound of your pickups is solid.  They certainly sound better than standard single coil pickups that Fender is using.  For me, your pickups have a vintage sound (similar to Lindy Fralin vintage pickups), with more clarity (similar to Lollar pickups).  The pickups in my current Strat have more mid-boost, but I had them made that way on purpose.
4.)    Overall, I think this set of pickups would appeal to customers who value high quality, superior craftsmanship, and clear sound that is better than “vintage” and probably what Fender wished they had in modern guitars.

You really do make a great pickup with terrific packaging. We would enjoy hearing about your success.

Cary Campen
Guitar Player and Sales Manager at Warmoth USA
WA, USA

A singer has to breath. If he or she wants to be able to produce the right sounds and sing them all night long then they certainly have  to be able to breath freely.

Breathing makes them achieve their task and proper breathing keeps them up to par, all night.

In the case of  guitar playing ,the instrument  is the singer its self.And funny as it sounds,the instrument and the player  breath together. A guitar player coordinates his breathing according to his instrument’s sounds,breathing in and out in perfect sync with the tempo,holding his breath during long sustained notes and breathing totally out at breaks ,stops or intervals.

It s a one to one situation. A face to face relation,a hand by hand ride.The instrument and the player become one and the same body,breathing and producing sounds together.
Guitar pickups represent the microphone, the “mouth” of the guitar cause they produce the sound. The guitar talks through them. And the more this “mouth” breaths air ,the more the guitar player feels oxygen, air running through his ears,brain and veins. The way the sound comes out of the instrument, through the pickups, tunes the guitar player’s breathing and sense of oxygen and air. Oxygen gives energy and this energy goes back to the instrument in an endless give and take procedure. The more breathing comes out of the instrument the more energy it produces back through the player’s reaction. When this relation becomes unique, it is then that magic is produced, by magic meaning all the beauty and essence we all have admired when listening to extraordinary players and their extraordinary sounds. Sounds we have all envied at some point sooner or later and have been our influences, trying to imitate and reproduce them.
As a player, I have been totally aware of the fact, that this relation and unique feel of breathing through the instrument is so, but so much rare to find. You can only realize and acknowledge it when it’s happening, present while you play. You can search for years and years through technical specs ,theories and practices,amps ,pedals and instruments and any kind of product or merchandise you could possibly find on your way and then, one day, all of a sudden, out of nowhere it’s right there in your hands. You don’t have to search for anything more, it is right there in your sound and you suddenly feel that you breath together with your instrument and you really don’t need to do anything more, you just don’t want to change it. That’s when you stop thinking. There is nothing to think or worry about. You don’t turn around to fix knobs on your amp or tweak your pedals. You just don’t need to do a thing, you close your eyes and you play.
And that’s when the magic gets you.

This is exactly the way i felt when i first played the Nick Silver Pickups. From note one, I didn’t have to turn around and tweak anything. I was hearing all the sounds i wanted to hear from my trusty, all beat up Strat and I didn’t have to worry about a thing. All the oxygen was there. I enjoyed all the sounds to the greatest extend. A unique and rare situation. Some call it headroom or dynamics or liveliness or sparkle, twang or whatever you want to call it. I call it breathing and breathing gives life. Exactly what Nick’s pickups gave to my guitar.

Thank you for  sharing your talent with us, Nick. I believe I will enjoy all your products from now on.

Nick Dounoussis
Nick and the Backbone.
Thessaloniki, Greece

The Django set will bring a smile on your face! I’m more than sure that you will experience the deepest meaning of the word awesome!
I’ve tried most everything, boutique, hand made, custom offerings from the cream of the crop of pickup winders.
All I can say is that Nick is up there with the best of them. Tone, responsiveness, craftsmanship, all top notch.
But good tone (and nice quality parts) is something many pups have in spades…there is a certain magical thing that I particular love about the Djangos.
In my opinion, Nick found a sweet spot between “airness” and “squeal resistance”.
Most vintage pups, sound warm and full, but they’re prone to “squealing”, in order to keep the real/pure tone tend to be microphonic.
This can be extremely annoying, especially to players like myself, when used with overdriven sounds and/or distortion pedals.
To find a sonic balance for a guitar pickup in a situation like this is no easy task. And becomes even harder at loud stage volumes.
When I play the Djangos, each and every note is “swimming” in harmonics, giving an absolutely great feeling to the guitarist, retaining all the qualities
of good tone, and at the same time, they don’t scream like a horny cat!! Control of feedback is amazing!
This, to me, is the most outstanding value that Nick brings to guitar pickup manufacturing world.
Thank you, is the least I can say.
Give SILVER a try, you can thank me later!

Elias Zaikos – BLUES WIRE
Thessaloniki, Greece

The Sweeney Todd Tele Bridge pickup, gave just the right amount of ‘oomph’ on my Tele bridge tone.
It can give enough bite to tear the flesh out of a white rhino, while it takes the characteristic ‘shrillness’ off the frame.
Can drive easily, sweetly and with a hot bottom end, cozy midrange and a more-than-cool presence and high end.
Mind you, it won’t take that characteristic”old lady nagging” trademark Tele bridge tone, away: It ‘ll just turn it into a “sweet lady nagging-but if you piss me off-i ‘ll howl and i ‘ll growl” thing. Oh, wait, that’s not an old lady, it’s Keef…

As for the Django neck pickup,

This is THE pickup to replace any stock & aftermarket tele neck pickup.
Sweet sounding, full bodied, balanced and full of vintage vibe.
Tight bass response, great “nasal” midrange character, sweet high end. Overall string-to-string balance is exceptional, while driving the beast, unveils the vagabond, lurking underneath that baby faced and sized pickup.
Not compressed at all, this pickup has enough air, to resemble a modest P-90 or, what the heck, a meaty “Goldfoil”.
Spot on!

Fanis Ploumis
Alfa Handcrafted Guitars.
Thessaloniki, Greece

Currently using the Black Rose pickups on the neck and middle positions.
All I can say is they have transformed my Strat, literally taken its sound to the next level!

Crystal clear, dynamically responsive, not to mention the delicious vintage “quack” on the 2 & 4 positions.

Love them!

Irene Ketikidi
London, UK / Athens, Greece

Changing the original pickups of my beautiful James Burton Telecaster was a challenge as so as an experiment. Nick proposed his BLACK ROSE Nick Silver Pickups, originally made for Stratocasters, but that’s the thing with my J.B Tele, it has three single lace sensor pickups. I realized the difference  by the first chord. What a sustain, man.  Attack as fast as it can please your ears. It sounded much more lively and vibrant. Round sound, smooth and alive.. Thank u Nick, this is an upgrade for sure.
I also played a standard Telecaster of his with the SWEENEY TODD pickups set. Powerful and fast action, balanced high freq.(not annoying at all). I just wanted to jump  on a stage in front of an arena full of people with this awesome Tele and play Who’s anthem ”Won’t get fooled again”. I finally didn’t but I really enjoyed jamming with an instrument that was so well set-up. Nick does excellent work, a worth-trusting good fella.

Alexis Ioannou – Burger Project
Athens, Greece

All I can say is that Nick Silver Pickups saved my Tele from being sold!

Yes that’s right. I have tried various pickup sets on my Fender Telebration series Empress Telecaster and none did the trick for me. So I had decided that the guitar is probably not a “player” and I was ready to sell it.

Then I decided to give it a last shot with Nikos’ pickups so we installed a Django on the neck and a Sweeny Todd on the bridge. That was it! I have never heard my tele sing like it does now. The guitar went from permanently locked in its case to being my first choice for the last 3-4 gigs.

We also installed a set of Purple Orchids on my ’96 American Standard strat after having tried a lot of other sets on that one as well. It just sounds awesome. Crystal clear, tons of character, vintage feel with just a tint of modern, exactly as I like it. Sounds amazing with overdrive/distortion also.

Spyros Hatziantoniou
Athens, Greece

Currently, I’ve got a set of Don Corleone’s on a custom telecaster i recently built.
I tried Nicks pickups a couple of months ago after putting this guitar together and the
sound and feel of the instrument has been hugely upgraded.

My first impression of the instrument was kinda disappointing, so i though I’d give those
pickups a try and I’m glad to say, i didn’t go wrong.

Warm tone, nice articulation and top notch quality. Planning on upgrading my strat as well at the same point.

Gregg Giarelis
Athens, Greece