Through my restoration work I was able to touch some of the secrets of magic tone coming from vintage guitars. Pickups were big part of that. Here I would like to share some of the things that made sense to me.
Restoration requires careful touch and unconditional respect to the part you are about to take apart. Restoration is not simply replacing the part that is broken. It needs to be non-invasive. You need to go in, fix the problem and come out leaving minimum trace. In musical instrument restoration not only it needs to be cosmetically perfect but also you need to bring back the tone that has been lost.
Through music I was exposed to vintage tone early on. I did not know in the beginning but came to know later that every guitarist I liked was playing some kind of vintage guitar. Clapton, Green, Bloomfield on and on… (except Ritchie Blackmore…but his 70’s heavy ash body bullet truss rod Strat is now vintage.) First I did not know the difference between vintage and new, but as I dug deeper into playing I started to feel that there was something there. Something different…
So I started wondering why they sounded different. Sure, it is magic, but I wanted something more that that. I wanted to know what exactly made the difference in what way.
—to be continued—