Oil City are the best sounding pickups out there, and I’ll fight anyone that disagrees. Well that’s a lie because I’m a vegetarian hippy pacifist, but you really need to try them. Choose whichever nonsense adjective us musicians like to use to try to describe sounds: clarity, definition, articulation; Oil City definitely have something extra. They are handwound in London by a wizard called Ash, and are priced surprisingly low for a hand made pickup. You can get a humbucker for about £130 and a single coil for about £80, which is immense value considering that Bare Knuckle are nearly £400 a set now.
Dave Anderson from m o t i o n s now runs Oil City Blackbird Ulfberht in both his custom guitars, and I have the regular Blackbirds in two of my guitars. If you know your guitar history you’ll remember the Blackmachine weapons built by the legendary Doug Campbell. A thin bodied modern ash guitar first built in 2004, and as you might expect from a one-man luthiery there aren’t many in existence. They now change hands for £10-15k and played a key role in defining the 21st century modern metal guitar. The Oil City Blackbird was co-designed by Ash and Doug, and in my opinion is the best sounding humbucker out there. It can do a range of different gains and playing styles, so it’s not just a one-trick metal pickup.
If you’re interested in the Blackmachine style, they are now built by Feline guitars who did some of the luthiery in the latter days for Blackmachine before Doug stopped taking build orders some time ago. Feline are licensed to build exact copies.
A video of a pickup swap isn’t very exciting. But the music video for Permanent Ghost is.
Agrajag Guitars 