The Fender Pickup – The Key to the Twang

What other factors make a great looking guitar sound good? The Fender pickup is an extremely important part of the guitar. Sure, there are other very important areas of a relic gem like the bridge, the saddle, the brand and gauge of the st rings and, of course, the main parts of the guitar like the body and neck. However, an aged guitar always has that really vintage sound as it has been put through its paces through the years.

So how do we get the vintage twang on a Fender relic guitar now? How do we get those years of rust on the pickup magnet’s pole pieces and the aging effect on a magnet to shine through? Yes, contrary to popular belief, the rust does play a role in that vintage sound and is not just a cosmetic effect.

Well, one way is to buy a custom shop Fender pickup or the varieties of the very popular brands of pickups available like Suhr, Voodoo, EMG, Seymour and Duncan, Dimarzio and my personal favorite; Lindy Fralins. The other way is just to buy relic pickup covers but we will cover relic covers in another post.

Today we will be talking about the custom shop Fender pickup that is stuck on a Fender relic guitar. Awesome as it may seem to have a Fender made pickup that is specifically built to the specifications that Leo Fender marked out all those years, guitarist are always looking for that special tone. Guitar and tone purist like the stock pickups that come with their guitars while others prefer to mix and match brands of pickups to get their ‘sound’. And some just like the noiseless pickups. Whichever suits your fancy.

These are the reasons why famous guitar players love a relic guitar so much. The Fender pickups are new, sometimes just cosmetically aged but at the end of the day a new pickup is a new pickup and they sound fantastic. It is nothing like the Fender twang coming out of a Fender guitar.

The body of a vintage instrument vibrates extremely differently to that of a new relic’d body. The stock pickup that Fender builds can capture accurately this unique change in vibe. Everything on the guitar plays a part in the sound and it is one of the main reasons why every guitar; even though it is the same model; have very different sonic characteristics; it will have a different feel and a different soul. Some musicians believe that because a tree is a living organism; the soul of the tree is still in that gem you are holding. The vibration of the live wood gives the guitar its unique tonal characteristics and the job of the pickup is to capture these unique tones as accurately as possible.

In future posts, we will be looking at how some important guitarists mix and match their sound with different pickups; the interesting look of a relic pickup cover as well as the popular replacements for the stock Fender pickup.

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