“Some of the best Red Special copies out there from the likes of Dansan guitars use Kent Armstrong Trisonics, they're very close to the original Burns Trisonic pickups. I purchased two standard wound and one reverse wound/reverse polarity Kent Armstrong Trisonics. For the Brian May sound you put the reverse wound one in the bridge, the other two in neck and middle. If you feel competent, to get even closer, remove the baseplate from the neck pickup, this can be done with a sharp knife through the solder, a little bit of heat and persuasion and it will come off. Remove all the wax from the magnet and coils (they're protected with a band of plastic.) Cut the lugs off the baseplate with a hacksaw, then half fill in the pickup with epoxy. Allow it to almost dry, then just before it's dry stick the lugs in in the correct position for the pickup screws, this allows them to stay put and not be pulled in towards the magnet. Then fill in the rest of the pickup with epoxy and give it time to set. This reduces the inductance of the pickup, and gives it a warmer rounder sound. Any epoxy will do, I just used gorilla epoxy.
These will go in a Brian May Guitars (BMG) red special relativity easily, they are slightly bigger than the stock pickups so you'll need to enlarge the pickup holes, a sharp penknife and fine sandpaper does the job. The sound is very much an improvement over the stock Brian May pickups, which seem to have a higher output and inductance, and a harsher tone. These Kent Armstrong pickups are a real improvement, you'll want to change the pots and capacitor with these pickups to 250k pots (or in my case I went for 300k) and a .022 capacitor (orange drop will do or better a vintage style oil and paper.)
These even look better with the proper Burns logo and Trisonic stamped on.
The only problem is that these aren't produced anymore, so once they're gone, they're gone. Aside from these, Adeson pickups Trisonics is probably the best way to go. Creamery pickups in Manchester also makes strat sized Trisonics which are truly incredible pickups.”
