vintage jag and JM pickups versus modern alternatives

[tamerofbantha]

hello OSG members

i was speaking to a gentleman from a vintage shop on the west coast recently and he seemed to believe quite strongly that there are no current production pickups that accurately capture the old sounds of actual vintage Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar pickups.

i was wondering what the forum consensus on this issue is. it's hard for me to discern what special qualities the vintage pickups may have just by hearing them on youtube, and i have never played a real older offset model from the 50s or 60s. a couple of the vids that Agnesi did with Norms' rare guitars had what i would call a very low output quality. i did read something that suggested Fender is winding the 65 Jag and JM pure vintage pickups hotter than what would have been put in the vintage guitars. maybe this is what the vintage shop dude was referring to?

also, what would you consider to be a fair price on a set of vintage (not rewound) set of Jazzmaster pickups from the 60s? and do you think these are easily faked or otherwise unsafe to buy for a n00b?

thanks all

[Embenny]

If he's trying to sell you a pair of vintage pickups, of course he'd say that.

There's no real magic to vintage pickups. I'd pay for them if you were restoring a vintage guitar or assembling a vintage parts guitar, otherwise there are just too many options out there to justify the money IMO.

I own a few vintage Fenders and some newer ones too. Each one sounds different. If someone took a random guitar of mine and plugged it into their own setup and sent me recordings, I would not be able to pick out the vintage guitars. There are way too many variables to ever be able to identify the "vintageness" of a pickup's tone.

I like having original pickups in vintage guitars..it's part of the appeal. But I've gotten over the idea that they have some intangible quality that no other pickup can match.

[jvin248]

.

You can push around the tone of pickups with carefully measuring and selecting pots and caps.
Pot alone have a 20% tolerance range, and it matters which end of the spec you get. Some like the brighter end some like the darker end.

.

[gishuk]

I agree with mbene on this, the vintage pickups are cool but so are good modern ones.

I have a 62 JM with original pickups and a 61 JM with modern pickups from thepickupwizard, they sound different but not in a way that you'd ever say that the modern pickups don't sound like a 'real Jazzmaster'.

Admittedly those aren't production pickups, but any good aftermarket pickups would have the same results I think and I'm sure the USA Fender pickups aren't far off either.

[bterry]

Vintage pickups certainly sound different than modern ones, this is usually down to a few factors like the differences in production and materials between then and now.

However, this doesn’t mean vintage pickups sound better in all guitars. Lots of factors to take into account.

[JVG]

The idea of vintage pickups being untouchable is wrong. We are currently many pickup makers making products every bit as good as “the best” vintage pickups, with a lot more consistency. However, there remains a lot of variability between manufacturers. Most modern builders will base their pickup sound on a particular set of vintage ones. For example, the builder may have a 1963 Jazzmaster that he loves the sound of, so he will build pickups to match the sound of that particular guitar. Another builder may have a 59 Jazzmaster that his pickups are trying to emulate. Both builders may arrive at ‘legitimate vintage’ sounds, but they will sound quite different.

[bterry]

^^ you’re just replacing one myth with another, here. Also some of the stuff you’re saying about vintage pickups is just bizarre and anecdotal at best.

Plenty of vintage pickups sound absolutely incredible and plenty of modern boutique pickups sound like dog shit. Vice versa as well. Honestly, you’re probably fine with a good set of either - maybe spend your time and money searching for the amp that will shape your sound? Amps have a much greater effect on your sound than the minute details of pickup differences...

[sookwinder]

I have four vintage (1960s) Jaguars, a sort of modern (if you call 20 years old modern) 1999 AV Jag and have used modern available Fender PUPs in builds I have done for people.

There is no doubt in my mind that modern Jaguar PUPs sound slightly different to vintage Jaguar PUPS.
Now I am not saying vintage is better than modern in fact some of the best sounding Jaguar tracks we have laid down in the recordings I am involved in were when the 1999 AV jaguar was used. But there is a difference between the two types. There is also a difference between the black bobbin and the grey bobbin vintage PUPs.

The pickup winding wire used by Fender and Gibson (and most likely many other guitar manufacturers) in the 50s and 60s was not as rigorously manufactured as the wire that is manufactured these days. When, for example, 45 gauge wire is manufactured today … it is 45 gauge. Back in the day it maybe slightly thicker or slightly thinner. The way the wire affects the sound is via the magnetic fields produced via the windings. These fields are a function of the magnets used , the design, the pole pieces (whether they are magnetic or only steel) and the thickness of the wire and the number of turns on the bobbin.

The same pickup with the same number of turns will sound different to another pickup that has everything the same except the gauge of the wire.

In effect the 50s and 60s PUPs were often created with winding wire that was out of specifications, because that was what was only on the shelf or that is what was available in the ex military disposal stores (selling electronic items dating back to WW2). Trying to reproduce that in modern times when it is virtually impossible to purchaser out of spec wire is near impossible. To achieve the same sounds as vintage PUPs , builders sometimes have to use different numbers of windings , but then that adds different tonal colour to the sound as well.

For me the best sounding Jaguar PUPs are the black bobbin which were manufactured up until April/May 1964. They have a woody almost 50s sound to them. But then again as I mentioned above, the "go to" guitar when we just cannot get a sound that seems to work is the 1999 Fiesta red AV Jaguar.

[JVG]

Plenty of vintage pickups sound absolutely incredible and plenty of modern boutique pickups sound like dog shit. Vice versa as well.

Agree 100%. I didn’t mean to imply that modern ones were better. It’s a mixed bag.

[buddyboy]

He's right - the old p/u's sound better. They just do, in my book.

[Embenny]

He's right - the old p/u's sound better. They just do, in my book.

There's a funny story where John Frusciante bought his 50's strat in the 90s, and everyone agreed it was one of the best sounding vintage strats they ever heard.

Several years later, his tech had to open it up to do a bit of work, and they discovered it had a set of Seymour Duncans in it.

You really can't tell a vintage pickup by ear. They differ as much from each other as they do from modern vintage-spec winds.

[boss302bass]

Being a bass player mainly, of 40 plus years, I have never found a recently manufactured set of pickups that sound as good as the originals from the Fender factory pre-1979. As sookwinder eloquently described, wire specs were different back then and hand-winding (well, hand-feeding the wire onto the spooling machine spinning the bobbin) made virtually every pickup unique.
Yes, boutique winders are doing things in a similar fashion, and are producing a range of great sounding pickups...but there's something about that combo of crappily cast magnets and very out of spec wire and possibly often vague attention span of the winders producing a wonderful array of what is now recognized as classic vintage tone. That variation is the joy and the uniqueness of older basses and guitars.

Having said that...I have had a couple of guys wind me Telecaster bass spec pickups for scratch builds of mine the last few years, and two out of six of those pickups are absolute sonic nuclear bombs. I have two 68 Telecaster Basses and a scratch-built 55 P bass with a rosewood neck and morado fretboard, and the pickup in that - wound by Slider in Sydney, Australia absolutely blows both those 68 T Basses away (technically) for vintage killer tone and actual volume. But those two original pickups are stunningly beautiful and woody and mellow in their own right. Can't even remember what Rod at Sliders did with this particular pickup but it's just beautiful. Combo of woods I used in the build plus Rod's expertise in hand-winding and mag selection plus the choice of plain enamel wire over formvar? Who knows...
My Jazzmaster Bass VI build has 1978 NOS Fender JM pickups in it and is as sweet as anything I've got. My 1972 P Bass has original pickups in it, sounds as good as a 63...I've bought and binned many SD pickups, gotten rid of plenty of Fralins that I've inherited in various basses, but rarely have I had an old Fender bass or guitar with original pickups that I didn't love. But Lindy re-wound the bridge pickup in my 66 JM, and he nailed it. Go figure. I have no definitive answers, just emotive, subjective ones. But I do know that generally, the old 60's and 70's pickups were and are still superior tone-wise.
But my mate has a 65 Jazz bass that had crap DiMarzios in it so he bought a pair of SD vintage style pickups and wow does it ssound good!
In the end, whether you're John Frusciante or Dave in the local sludge doom band thrashing a hacked up MIM Mascis Jazzmaster with GOdknowswhat pickups in it - if you like the sound, that's half the battle.

[patski]

Sounds like overly precious cork sniffing from a dude who wants to sell you something.

I read a while back that vintage pups sound the way they do because higher frequencies roll off over time and due to aging...I don't know if that's true, but *shrug*

[Johno]

He's right - the old p/u's sound better. They just do, in my book.

There's a funny story where John Frusciante bought his 50's strat in the 90s, and everyone agreed it was one of the best sounding vintage strats they ever heard.

Several years later, his tech had to open it up to do a bit of work, and they discovered it had a set of Seymour Duncans in it.

You really can't tell a vintage pickup by ear. They differ as much from each other as they do from modern vintage-spec winds.

I read that article years back , SD Antiquities weren't they?

[Embenny]

I read that article years back , SD Antiquities weren't they?

To be honest, I thought that predated Antiquities being a thing. I'm 100% sure they were SSL-1, the vintage stagger "California 50's", they were just old (those were some of the first pickups he started making).

I heard a rumour that he started using Antiquities some time later, but the original ones in the 50's strat he bought were SSL-1.