With the S-Style pickups I really want to avoid having multitudes of models and confusion, most customers just want “a really cool vintage strat®” and they don’t want to wade thru a whole bunch of rubbish to find the right pickups.
If you are tired of all the hype and just want a vintage correct S-Style pickup, exactly like the best examples from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s then this is it … chime, shimmer, clean note decay with warmth and power and not a hint of thin, icy or brassy tones.
Here’s the basic blurb…
All my pickups use vintage correct materials, twineball scatter winding, real Formvar or PE wire, Forban, compressed fiber bobbins, cloth covered 22g “pushback” output wires and hand charged AlNiCo, produced via a special “sort and grind” process just for me.
Classic 57’s
The Classic 57′s are a re-creation of the classic mid 50’s spec, giving vintage chime, shimmer, bell tones and airy chord voicings. They are all built to the averaged 1957 spec with resistances of aprox 5.75kOhms (a little warmer in the bridge) with a north polarity and clockwise winding.
Vintage 59’s
The 59′s are exact re-productions of Fender pickups produced in the late 50’s.
Throughout this period Strat pickups were built from similar materials and to the same basic specification, variation was mainly due to the differing batches of AlNiCo, coil wire and most importantly the individual operator that actually hand built the particular set. Around this time magnetic polarity went to South but retained the clockwise winding
My 59′s re-creates this general specification. I use my specially “Vintage Charged” AlNiCo 5 to replicate the very important, lower powered AlNiCo blends of the 50’s and 60’s.
59/SRV
The “59/SRV” re-creations are the same period correct 1959 set but given selected power adjusted AlNiCo and a small (secret) ”over wind” to nail Stevie’s power and warm/bluesy tones.
My 59/SRV ‘s are still a classic vintage voiced pickup, just tweaked a little to hit that clarity, warm up the tone and really drive that amp!
’69 “Grey Bottoms”
The 69′s are an accurate re-creation of the late 60′s CBS Fender® pickups.
I use original spec Strat® “grey bottom” Forban bobbins and the correct dark burgundy color, 42g P/E wire for these ’69 “Woodstock” re-creation sets, that’s code for a Hendrix set!
As you may know the real late 60’s strat sets are quite sort after, the big deal on these is the low inductance, and DC resistance, the 69’s have some of the lowest output readings of all the vintage strats.
High resistance/inductance and poor quality wire kills off your top end treble response first. I scatterwind these with the correct, thin coat “single build” PE wire. The finished coil build is thinner in diameter and lower in “weight” to ensure the trebles are maintained, so on a good ‘69 you get the “glass-tone” highs and still have solid mids and the thumping bass.
All S-Style sets come with your choice of Modern or 50′s “Bakelite” style pickup covers, 6/32 UNC screws with amber rubber spacers.
At the end of the day all my pickups are totally vintage correct and as such, everything I make could have come from “back in the day”.
®Strat and Stratocaster and Fender are registered trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments, Inc.