Pickup lines
Maricela Juarez – aka MJ – of Seymour Duncan’s Custom Shop uncovers the hidden ageing of Tele pickups and the secrets of true vintage tone…
When it comes to choosing pickups, we’re spoilt for choice – but navigating the endless array of ‘vintage’ tones available can often leave us feeling lost. However, if you prefer to find a dependable source of expertise (and voice of reason), you won’t go far wrong seeking advice from Seymour Duncan veteran Maricela ‘MJ’ Juarez. And so, eager to find out more about the inner workings of vintage Tele pickups, that’s exactly what we did.
On the other end of the line MJ greets us: “Hello, Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. How may I help you?” That same voice since 1982. Remembering how her 35-yearlong career with California’s premier pickup pros began, she says: “It’s a funny story, but Seymour Duncan knocked on my door! One of my neighbours asked me for some help filling out an application for a job there, so I put my name as a reference and gave her a ride to the interview. Three hours later, I was back at home making flour tortillas and they called to ask if I would like to come and work for them! I was a brand-new mommy, but my mom was happy to babysit, so I took the job. I’m happy to be Seymour’s right hand – and left hand, right knee, left knee… [laughs]
“When I started, there was hardly anybody doing pickup repairs. You hear lots of hype about vintage pickups and everybody claims to make the best ones, but after so many years of repairing and recreating them, I think one of the most important things to consider is how they were stored. I have taken note of all the pickups I’ve done over the years. Some guitars were stored in the attic, some in the basement, and some right next to an amplifier speaker. You need to take everything into consideration, because the magnets will degauss differently depending on if it was hot, humid, dry, next to a speaker magnet, etc.
“A couple of years ago, I met a young boy who had a guitar he wanted to sell. He said, ‘I don’t play, but it used to be my greatgrandpa’s. I don’t want it; maybe you can buy it for about 100 bucks?’ He didn’t know it was an old, old Tele that he just found up in the attic! It was almost like new, because nobody played it, but he didn’t know it was super valuable. I told him to take it to a vintage store and get it valued properly!
“How the guitar was stored is going to age the pickup in a unique way. And when I’m talking about the ageing, I’m talking about the strength of the magnets. The DC resistance is going to stay kind of the same, but the strength of the magnets will vary. The demagnetisation is very, very important. Sometimes, when it’s humid, the magnets get kind of rusted, and if it’s a very humid place they might get ICPC, or ‘inner coil pole corrosion’. It depends if the guitar was played a lot, whether the player sweated a lot, if they smoked a lot, or were in smoke-filled rooms, if it was under a bed… All these things determine how the pickup will look inside. When the magnets start getting corroded or rusty, they can come into contact with the wire, and that’s when the pickup might start working intermittently, until it dies.
“Old pickups often fail and will normally need a complete rewind, but our priority at Seymour Duncan is to try and save the pickup and leave it as original as possible. We use the same bottom plate, lead wires and as much of the original parts as we can, and we try to find the break in the wire. If for any reason we can’t, I will get one of my old, old spools and use the original wire to rewind that pickup. I have pickup wire here that dates back to the 50s and 60s. Luckily, we had quite a lot of wire left to Seymour Duncan by a certain Mr Seth Lover.
“When it comes to old Broadcasters, people are requesting them to be wound around 10kohms. Customers love that kind of Broadcaster pickup – a little hotter and with a bit more gain. The old Broadcaster pickups were always hotter than the later Telecaster ones. Vintage Tele pickups are normally around 6.3k to 6.5kohms, and the Broadcaster was usually about 8.6k to 8.9kohms. The main difference between the two is the winds: a Tele bridge pickup is wound with 42-gauge wire [and the neck is wound with 43-gauge], but both the bridge and the neck pickups of a Broadcaster are wound with 43-gauge. 43-gauge wire is thinner than 42-gauge wire, so we can go ahead and add more turns and make it hotter.” http://customshop.seymourduncan.com