Thanks.
Mr Wagner seems not to offer rewinding as a service anymore.
The review of the 2000 Starfire IV is great, both entertaining and informative. You write extremely well and have a lovely, effortless-to-read prose style.
Your Starfire IV, itself, is gorgeous. Drool.
I very much like the sound of your rewound pickups. I would be interested to hear them used in a Jazz style.
I have never picked up an "FB-1" equipped Corona Guild that I could find fault with except that Fender's HB-1s are not immediately inspiring, not bad, just ... sort of indeterminate.
They can be made to work with technique, amp tone controls, and the right strings - not ideal but better, much, much better.
I have found that they open up and breath quite a bit when fed
very heavy gauge strings. I use D'Addario 13-56 1/2 rounds with mine - nice tonal balance for me. They also work with D'Addario 12-54 round wounds, but these are too bright, too Rockabilly/Duane Eddy, for me. They also work quite well with heavier Rotosounds, but these are also too bright for me. However, they don't work well with all heavy gauge strings. To my ears, they sound like crap with flat wounds, even the heaviest going - they just seem to collapse into a sea of mud.
I have large and fairly strong hands, and i like the stability of intonation of notes with heavy strings (little unintended micro-vibrato, not much interference with string vibration from the pickups). So the Fender HB-1s sort of work for me.
I do not own anything with original HB-1s or with SD-1s. (And I have never played anything with the new Cordoba HB-1s.) But I have gone to friends' houses and tried the originals and the Seymour Duncans in comparison to the Fender HB-1s. I do not like the SD-1s so much, only because they are not best suited to how I play, but then I was not able to restring or re-set up the guitar which they were in to my liking, and then they were not in a hollow body or chambered guitar. The original HB-1s, however, I do adore.
