Category Archives:

Left handed Fender guitars usually had the pole pieces reversed so they could be used in left handed models. While visiting the NAMM show in Nashville, my sales manager Tom Waters and I visited George Gruhn’s Guitar Shop and spotted a beautiful left handed ’57 sunburst Fender Stratocaster. We photographed the guitar with reverse staggered…

The majority of Fender pickups that are dated are the ones made of light and dark gray vulcanized fiber during the mid 60s on. They used a pencil and then an ink stamp. I’ve seen mid 60s black bottom bobbins stamped with yellow ink and mostly on Fender Mustang and Duo sonic pickups. The best…

If you ever look at the early Stratocasters you can see the coils are wound quite full when wound with 42 Formvar. The coils on the pickups are wound by hand as the insulated magnet wire is guided back and forth on the bobbin. Hand winding can make for fatter coils as each turn is…

The bridge pickups on Telecasters and Stratocasters are slanted to expand the range of the pickup. The treble strings will have more bite and the bass strings will have more depth. The bridge pickup usually lacks output and fullness as compared to the neck or middle pickups. Slanting the bridge pickup gave it a little…

I find several things that make the early Fenders different from the CBS pickups made after 1965. The early Fender pickups had much more hand work and unique sounds. The bobbin was mostly black Vulcanized fibre flatwork. The magnets were a larger diameter (.197″) and the CBS pickups used a (.187″) diameter magnet. The magnets…

Many of the pickups designed at Fender were designed by Leo Fender and I’m sure suggestions were issued by players and employees. The same goes for the many models designed at Gibson by Walt Fuller, Guy Hart and especially for Gibson’s most successful pickup, designed by Seth E. Lover, the “Patent Applied For” humbucker. Seth…

I have general information about the ES-150 Gibson pickup nick-named “The Charlie Christian” pickup. There are several models with different specifications that I am currently researching. There are bobbins fabricated in different shapes, different blades, various cobalt steel magnets used and several coil specifications to be evaluated. The ES (Electric Spanish) models and EH (Electric…

This can be quite involved if you’re not an experienced collector or have knowledge with regards to the history of various models. There have been many changes throughout the history of Gibson pickups. There are many styles and models of Gibson pickups and I would suggest having an experienced collector look at your instrument. I’ve…

Often guitar companies design pickups in house and use engineers to design and work on projects. At times the owner of the company will use his name as the inventor even though they didn’t design the pickup. Often times a pickup design may be used with no patent on the design and later be patented…

Probably the first commercially that used an electromagnetic pickup was Rickenbacker with the Frying Pan guitar with horseshoe magnet pickup. Dobro and National instruments started becoming electrified even thought the demand was not that great. Around 1935 while working at Gibson, Walt Fuller started making the ES-150 Pickup (Charlie Christian as it is called) and…