I ordered a set of Tonerider pickups to be sent to Australia, but on their journey they disappeared into the black hole known as “customs clearance”. After waiting a month I contacted Tonerider service and within 24 hours I had a reply offering to either send another set or issue a refund. I didn’t want to risk another loss so went for the refund, which was again sent within 24 hours.
I haven’t had such prompt and diligent service from a company for a very long time. I’m really impressed.
I’ve got an Alnico II Classic set in one guitar, and a mix of a RockSong in the neck position and a Generator in the bridge position in the other. Both sets sound absolutely fantastic and, in my opinion Tonerider pickups are in no way inferior to other, much more expensive products of more reputable manufacturers.
Which begs the question, what type of tracking software does tonerider use that didnt flag to them that the package didn’t arrive in a month . Why did you have to tell them?
It was sent Royal Mail to Australia, but once it is in customs it is out of their control. Australia Post is supposed to pick it up once it leaves customs. They did have “awaiting customs clearance” on their tracking site but they’ve told me that until customs actually hands it over they can do nothing. As I said, it’s a black hole.
Great stuff. I’ve had wonderful customer service from Zoom - the company that makes the recorders and audio gear and terrible customer service from Hercules - the mic stand people. A great way to tell how a company is on customer service is to have a problem and see how they handle it.
Good to hear! Always nice to hear about positive experiences given how often we hear about bad ones these days. Too bad you didn’t get your pickups, though! Hope you found an alternative.
It’s a pity you didn’t get your pickups. I have a pair of the Alnico 2 blues in a Squier tele and they have a very nice tone. I’m very pleased with them. I also put a set of classic blues in my Strat build and I’m also very happy with them. Yes Tonerider’s service is good. I had several questions for them about their different pickups before ordering and they were very helpful.
I don’t know anything about the MFD pickups and how they sound but the Toneriders are very clean pickups. They won’t drive your amp much into breakup territory - they are quite low output (I think the MFDs are high output?) - but they give a beautiful clean sound. If it’s clean sounds you are after they are great. However if you want some more breakup in the tone you will probably need to use a pedal. With my blues driver, I have to say the distorted tones are quite underwhelming. I recently got a Valeton Gp5 multi effects pedal and with the copies of a tube screamer or RAT distortion pedal and some compression, the sound really comes alive.
I swapped the stock Squier affinity telecaster ceramic pickups (which must be very cheap pickups) for the toneriders and the tone was significantly better for me - although I realise that pickup tones are very subjective and it depends a lot on what sort of music you want to play.
Actually, although I have several nice and more expensive guitars the Squier tele with the tonerider Alnico 2 blues is the guitar I pick up the most. But I do mostly play with a clean sound.
Excellent. Thanks for that info. Clean sound is all I am interested in. I recently bought a Roland Jazz Chorus (JC-22) - it is a clean amp and I love it. Looks like I need to get myself some of these to try. I think low output is probably going to be a better option for me.
. Why did you have to tell them?