The ShadowMusic Web Community

Are Fender Vintage 57/62 Stratocaster Pickups good for Marvin sound?
I want to try them in my '89 Strat plus.
Or is there a better set?

I have no experience of the 57/62’s, but I understand that Hank uses the Impersonator ‘54 V5 these days.
Dave

negninegaw wrote:Are Fender Vintage 57/62 Stratocaster Pickups good for Marvin sound?
I want to try them in my '89 Strat plus.
Or is there a better set?

I understand that they are the ones used in Fender's 1957 and 1962 Vintage Reissue Stratocasters, and those sound great. I have two of the 1962 Reissues.

They have been one of the sets often used to get That Sound .

Christian who designed and uses the VST system for his sound demos often has used the 57/62 PU's in a strat strung with 10's and has a remarkably close Shadows recorded sound. Others have done it with CS 54's eg TVS crew. They used a strat strung with 13's.

A lot can be done with eq to finish the sound in the studio.

Gruntfuttock wrote:I have no experience of the 57/62’s, but I understand that Hank uses the Impersonator ‘54 V5 these days.
Dave

TVS Paul Rossiter said Hank used CS54 initially and Hank said they were close to his original sound. Hank may well be opting for the Kinmans impersonator 54s now.

I've original 57, 58 and 2x60 pickup sets and a bunch of 57/62 sets on guitars...they lack all the correct magnet length for the 34346 sound.
I use a set of ToneSpinner '59 specials pu's handmade by a Dutch friend of mine and they are/sound the biz....(sound demo on website).
He's re-building his website in English, but at the moment he's helping his daughter leaving house to study at the Leiden University...so the website has to wait.
But he's still making pu's and you can order...last week a other Dutch shadfan visit him and my friend replaced the Kinman pu's in that guy's custom shop strat. The shadfan phoned him and shouted on the phone....this is the old Hank sound in spades...

Cheers Rob

I've had several sets of 57/62 Fender pickups and they sounded very close. I've also had Custom shop 54s and found them to tinny.
The best after market for me were some Sliders Vintage 50s, I have two sets of those.
My favourite and most accurate Fender pickups for the early sound are on my '62 AVRI, the one used by Colin in The Rapiers.
Having said all of that, I have quite a few that sound as good, Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro ll, Amalfitano Vintage, Tone Rider Vintage, Fender Custom Shop 69s and even Fender Noiseless & Kinmans (The AVn set) that all sound great since I figured out that it's the amp set up where the secret lay.

There are numberers vintage " correct" single coils sets who claimed to have the sound of that period.
So far so good, but the famous old maple neck red strat aka 34346 has a not so common pu set.
The pole magnets are not standard length as on all those vintage sets.
The G pole is as short as the high E pole, so you get a total different volume balance when you strike the strings.
So you get a softer sound on the G string and strange enough a relative louder response on the B and high E.
If you listen closely to Apache you can hear that specific balance...

So if you want the same balance in sound response of Apache and other hits as close as possible...you have to use a set with that specific magnets.
The set I named in my previous reply has those and they are cheaper then a set of Fender 57/62 or SD SSL-1 etc and they are hand-build with the same materials as back then... A set cost € 159,-

Cheers Rob

Thanks for your interesting information. I replaced the original pickups of my '89 Strat plus with '57/62 ones and the sound is better.
Only thing is: I have to turn the volume much higher than with the previous pickups, which were also about
6 Ohms. I used to gig with the volume of my Deluxe reverb reissue on 4, now it seems that volume on 7 is necessary. Is this something familiar?
If not what could cause this?

dave robinson wrote:I've had several sets of 57/62 Fender pickups and they sounded very close. I've also had Custom shop 54s and found them to tinny.
The best after market for me were some Sliders Vintage 50s, I have two sets of those.
My favourite and most accurate Fender pickups for the early sound are on my '62 AVRI, the one used by Colin in The Rapiers.
Having said all of that, I have quite a few that sound as good, Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro ll, Amalfitano Vintage, Tone Rider Vintage, Fender Custom Shop 69s and even Fender Noiseless & Kinmans (The AVn set) that all sound great since I figured out that it's the amp set up where the secret lay.

Dave, I thought the 57 AVRI and 62 AVRI were the guitars that Fender did the 57/62 pickups for and were stock on those models. I had the 57 AVRI and it was fitted on that guitar. So did you change the pickups for another set ?

Incidently I bought a Fender Classic Player 50s Strat a few months back and it has 57 / 62 pus fitted as standard. Reminds me of the 57AVRI in sounds and looks , but has several modern improvements that was part of the Custom Shop design on those models.