£1k for Fender Pickups?

ICBM

Haych said:

Should see some of the prices that early PRS pickups are going for.  Original Treble and Bass sometimes fetch stupid money.  It's not as if they even sounded that good.

That’s because *everyone* took them out of the guitars, so now before you sell one it’s worth paying whatever it takes to make the guitar ‘original’ again and maximise its value.

... so the new owner can have all the fun of replacing them for themselves.

Haych

ICBM said:

Haych said:

Should see some of the prices that early PRS pickups are going for.  Original Treble and Bass sometimes fetch stupid money.  It's not as if they even sounded that good.

That’s because *everyone* took them out of the guitars, so now before you sell one it’s worth paying whatever it takes to make the guitar ‘original’ again and maximise its value.

... so the new owner can have all the fun of replacing them for themselves.

Nail, head, dead on. Oh the irony, eh?

imalrightjack

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

sawyer

Unicorn jizz

Haych

imalrightjack said:

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

This is an interesting question. At the end of the day pickups are very simple things. How much better can copper wire wrapped round a magnet by Ex Fender Custom Shop employees be than some independent guy making pickups in his spare time. 

I get that there are nuances in the details and that the question is impossible to answer as it will always be subjective. 

But really, what can the actual difference be?

Ossyrocks

I don't get the fuss about Abigail Ybarra pickups. I had a set in a Ltd Ed Relic Strat and thought they were dreadful. A weaker, thinner sounding pickup you could not have found.

I sold them for £250 on ebay and dropped a set of Fralin Blues Specials in it. The improvement was dramatic.

Rob.

fretmeister

I am no longer surprised at the prices of anything in guitar land.

I remember seeing a pickup ring from a 59 les paul get $10,000. Just a pickup ring.

Presumably someone with a 59 had a damaged one and wanted to replace it like-for-like. Madness.

guitars4you

imalrightjack said:

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

better is harder to answer than personal preference - Abby herself wired different pick-ups with enamel or formvar with different magnets (alnico 11, 111 or V) - So not a case of 'one fits all'

Without trying to sound sexist,ageist or racists, but don't tell me that an old Mexican lady is the only one who knows how to wrap a wire around a magnet - Yet the finer nuances of any good pick-up is about materials and knowledge

I dare say we can have a similar chat about original PAF's etc etc - And as @Haych commented earlier, other pick-ups can command silly prices - If the market exists then sellers will climb on board and buyers will respond accordingly - As for me I just don't like those early PRS pick-ups and ditto for the original Dragon p/ups, so with you on that @Haych ;

Bottom line is that if you have the history, mojo and reputation then you can certainly ask more than if you don't - Certainly any hype helps

impmann

Yes thats a daft sum of money... and nobody will pay it, unless they are clinically stupid.

But in a similar vein... have you seen the prices Jap Strat, especially Tokai, pickups fetch? The reason Seymour Duncan has the business he has today is those bloody awful things - and now folks are returning them to stock? FFS, now that is a retrograde step. 

thegummy

guitars4you said:

imalrightjack said:

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

better is harder to answer than personal preference - Abby herself wired different pick-ups with enamel or formvar with different magnets (alnico 11, 111 or V) - So not a case of 'one fits all'

Without trying to sound sexist,ageist or racists, but don't tell me that an old Mexican lady is the only one who knows how to wrap a wire around a magnet - Yet the finer nuances of any good pick-up is about materials and knowledge

I dare say we can have a similar chat about original PAF's etc etc - And as @Haych commented earlier, other pick-ups can command silly prices - If the market exists then sellers will climb on board and buyers will respond accordingly - As for me I just don't like those early PRS pick-ups and ditto for the original Dragon p/ups, so with you on that @Haych ;

Bottom line is that if you have the history, mojo and reputation then you can certainly ask more than if you don't - Certainly any hype helps

It won't be the case that anyone is the only person to know how to make a good pickup but do you think a young man of a different nationality would be more likely to?

impmann

thegummy said:

guitars4you said:

imalrightjack said:

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

better is harder to answer than personal preference - Abby herself wired different pick-ups with enamel or formvar with different magnets (alnico 11, 111 or V) - So not a case of 'one fits all'

Without trying to sound sexist,ageist or racists, but don't tell me that an old Mexican lady is the only one who knows how to wrap a wire around a magnet - Yet the finer nuances of any good pick-up is about materials and knowledge

I dare say we can have a similar chat about original PAF's etc etc - And as @Haych commented earlier, other pick-ups can command silly prices - If the market exists then sellers will climb on board and buyers will respond accordingly - As for me I just don't like those early PRS pick-ups and ditto for the original Dragon p/ups, so with you on that @Haych ;;

Bottom line is that if you have the history, mojo and reputation then you can certainly ask more than if you don't - Certainly any hype helps

It won't be the case that anyone is the only person to know how to make a good pickup but do you think a young man of a different nationality would be more likely to?

Honestly... after replacing a set of Abby's in my Strat...

I'd say that Mojo make better sounding pickups, unquestionably.

ten77guitar

It’s all hype in my opinion.

thegummy

I think some people just really want to believe there's a mysticism to it all and there could be this special factory worker who had the magic touch and for unknowable reasons just managed to make the best pickups of all time.

Logic would suggest that any of the boutique style pickup makers who try out and test all the different magnets, methods, procedures etc. and work out what makes good pickups that way are more likely to make better pickups.

I'm sure the ones who believe in the magic and the mojo do get a psychosomatic pleasure when they plug their guitar in with its pickups that have been blessed by saint Abby and really are taken away by the complex depth of the sound of the scales they go up and down in their man cave.

Not so sure many of them make records that other people hear and think sound better than any other record made with guitars that have pickups made by other factory workers or pickup companies.

FelineGuitars

ten77guitar said:

roberty said:

ten77guitar said:

Nothing would surprise me on there but most likely the seller has sold to someone off eBay and has bumped up the price so they can let the listing run to the end without having to end it early and arouse the suspicion of the eBay police.

Thanks for the tip! Lol

Yeah apparently that’s what some people do. So I hear, honest guv...  

or they did it because they know that all over the country people on guitar forums will be now taking a close look at his or her eBay shop, which we wouldn't do normally, in much the same way that some of us will have looked at what Essex recording Studios has listed because of the "controversy"

guitars4you

impmann said:

thegummy said:

guitars4you said:

imalrightjack said:

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

better is harder to answer than personal preference - Abby herself wired different pick-ups with enamel or formvar with different magnets (alnico 11, 111 or V) - So not a case of 'one fits all'

Without trying to sound sexist,ageist or racists, but don't tell me that an old Mexican lady is the only one who knows how to wrap a wire around a magnet - Yet the finer nuances of any good pick-up is about materials and knowledge

I dare say we can have a similar chat about original PAF's etc etc - And as @Haych commented earlier, other pick-ups can command silly prices - If the market exists then sellers will climb on board and buyers will respond accordingly - As for me I just don't like those early PRS pick-ups and ditto for the original Dragon p/ups, so with you on that @Haych ;;

Bottom line is that if you have the history, mojo and reputation then you can certainly ask more than if you don't - Certainly any hype helps

It won't be the case that anyone is the only person to know how to make a good pickup but do you think a young man of a different nationality would be more likely to?

Honestly... after replacing a set of Abby's in my Strat...

I'd say that Mojo make better sounding pickups, unquestionably.

Nothing is definitive or set in stone, as we have different needs and taste buds -  But I often quote and/or like the phrase that Jason Lollar states - 'Whatever magic is in  some of those old pick-ups is an accident as it is not in them all' - ie They don't all have it, for whatever reason - I'm sure that Ash at @OilCityPickups can add much more to such topics - But they analysis many pick-ups, to find what magic is in A but not in B - Then build around the one(s) that does it for them 

ICBM

Bear in mind Abigail Ybarra was not a pickup designer, she was a production line worker who was given a spec for winding wire onto pickup bobbins... that’s all. She worked there for a long time and no doubt got very good at winding wire onto bobbins, and then had her name used by the marketing department as a tagline.

guitars4you

ICBM said:

Bear in mind Abigail Ybarra was not a pickup designer, she was a production line worker who was given a spec for winding wire onto pickup bobbins... that’s all. She worked there for a long time and no doubt got very good at winding wire onto bobbins, and then had her name used by the marketing department as a tagline.

A very valid comment ref the design element  - I know she wound some p/ups for the likes of John Cruz on an 'exclusive basis', yet they never had her name on them - As such they would be spec'd to JC's criteria - And that would apply to many other pick-ups she was involved with within the CS team - As we know there was not one specific vintage pick-up back in the day whereby one fits all - Many many variations

Back in the day, such variations just happened - Both on a day to day, build basis, plus as and when the likes of Leo and the team changed criteria, for what ever reason, be it supply of material or a cost/profit basis - There was no Apple style modern product launch on a set day, based on 'best tone ever' etc - Such pick up changes just evolved with no fuss - Today we micro analysis such changes and give them marketing tags accordingly and let the likes of Abby etc build them as required

OilCityPickups

guitars4you said:

impmann said:

thegummy said:

guitars4you said:

imalrightjack said:

Genuine question: does anybody believe these are better than The Creamery, Oil City, Mojo, etc.?  How good can a pickup get?

better is harder to answer than personal preference - Abby herself wired different pick-ups with enamel or formvar with different magnets (alnico 11, 111 or V) - So not a case of 'one fits all'

Without trying to sound sexist,ageist or racists, but don't tell me that an old Mexican lady is the only one who knows how to wrap a wire around a magnet - Yet the finer nuances of any good pick-up is about materials and knowledge

I dare say we can have a similar chat about original PAF's etc etc - And as @Haych commented earlier, other pick-ups can command silly prices - If the market exists then sellers will climb on board and buyers will respond accordingly - As for me I just don't like those early PRS pick-ups and ditto for the original Dragon p/ups, so with you on that @Haych ;;

Bottom line is that if you have the history, mojo and reputation then you can certainly ask more than if you don't - Certainly any hype helps

It won't be the case that anyone is the only person to know how to make a good pickup but do you think a young man of a different nationality would be more likely to?

Honestly... after replacing a set of Abby's in my Strat...

I'd say that Mojo make better sounding pickups, unquestionably.

Nothing is definitive or set in stone, as we have different needs and taste buds -  But I often quote and/or like the phrase that Jason Lollar states - 'Whatever magic is in  some of those old pick-ups is an accident as it is not in them all' - ie They don't all have it, for whatever reason - I'm sure that Ash at @OilCityPickups can add much more to such topics - But they analysis many pick-ups, to find what magic is in A but not in B - Then build around the one(s) that does it for them 

There is no magic in pickup making, just science and good practice. Hand winding is ferociously inconsistent, and some winders are less inconsistent than others. Abby's personally wound pickups are always in the top band of pattern consistency, which is why Fender continued to employ her for so long.Remember, she wouldn't have set the magnets, gaussed them or assembled the flat-work, she was part of a production line. I find it odd that she has been tasked in the past with winding repros of late sixties (post 65) pickups ... which in the day were all machine wound!

thegummy

I don't know the actual facts about Fender employees' records but I would guess that she is one of the longest serving employees who is most singularly responsible for a whole; i.e. a finished pickup can largely be attributed to be her work more so than a guy who would maybe sand the bodies or one who would make the initial cuts in the necks etc.

So, because a lot of Fender customers see older as being better, she is used in marketing as a link to the past. As in, the pickups in this are being made by the same person they were back when those vintage guitars that are so revered were made. I don't think it has anything to do with those pickups being great, I think it's purely a marketing link to the revered era.

I can't imagine someone who buys in to the legend of Abby getting a set of unmarked pickups, hooking them up and hearing them and thinking "my God, these are unmarked Abby pickups, I've got a bargain here!" They would rely on her signature being on them or some other markings that prove they were wound by her.

So if you can't tell that something is better just by it actually being better, it was never better at all.

soma1975

Earlier in the year I filmed something with Mark at OX4 pickups and he was chatting about the nature of 'magic' PAFs being factory workers having a chat or dunking a biscuit in a drink or losing concentration on the line and over/under/miswinding and messing with the guideline. Nobody was going to bother to start again if they had done a few hundred or too few winds or if it was a mess. 

Replicating that lack of attention to detail but quantifying and  consistently reproducing it is part of the art of vintage repro pickup making.