I am now making the Tonealigner pickups designed by Jim Pitman. Jim designed these pickups as a recreation of the famous and now unavailable Danny Shield’s Crap Traps. They are dual coil humbucking pickups with adjustable pole pieces. The output of each string can be individually balanced to the players taste and technique. Both coils are wound simultaneously with careful attention being paid to the tension of the windings. This makes for a uniquely open and responsive sound not usually associated with humbuckers. They are used by many studio and touring steel players including:

JayDee Maness
Lonnie Bennet
Jon Graboff
Greg Leisz
Doug Livingston
Michael Johnstone




These pickups are hand made by me when I have the time so availability can be limited. I currently only have 10st pickups available in 2 basic windings.

Wound to JayDee’s specs right around 18.5 K And wound to Gary Carpenter’s specs right around 17.8 K

Until I redesign the bobbins (sometime this summer) the pickups will not fit into Carter steels or any long mount pickups cavities (Sho Bud)

When ordering include a note about which model you want. Get in touch with any special winding requests.

Go to order page | Instructions