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The ‘57 Stratocasters seem to be the desired model among collectors. Is there a basic difference between ‘57 pickups and ‘59 pickups? I’m referring to the standard pickups, not the unusual ones on 34346 (which appear to be a manufacturing fluke).

Many thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy,

Here you can read what the avarice difference is between 57 and 59.

Cheers Rob

1954 to 1967 Fender Stratocaster Pickup Specs

Year Ohms Wire OD Insulation Turns WD MP Wound
1954 5.76k .0030" Formvar 7956 TL/TG North Hand
1955 5.89k .0029" Formvar 7844 TL/TG North Hand
1956 5.98k .0029" Formvar 8012 TL/TG North Hand
1957 6.02k .0029" Formvar 8105 TL/TG North Hand
1958 6.20k .0028" Formvar 8350 TL/TG North Hand
1959 5.95k .0030" Formvar 7925 TL/TG North Hand
1960 6.33k .0028" Formvar 8293 TL/TG South Hand
1961 6.19k .0029" Formvar 8119 TL/TG South Hand
1962 6.22k .0028" Formvar 8220 TL/TG South Hand
1963 6.37k .0028" Formvar 8319 TL/TG South Hand
1964 6.25k .0027" Formvar/Enamel 7980 TL/TG South Hand
January 4, 1965, CBS bought Fender Musical Instruments.
1965 5.80k .0026" Plain Enamel 7626 TL/TG South Machine
1966 5.76k .0026" Plain Enamel 7630 TL/TG South Machine
1967 5.88k .0027" Plain Enamel 7656 TL/TG South Machine

Wow, thanks, Rob! That answers a lot of questions.

Keep well, and best regards,

Andy

What difference can you hear?

They say that 57 was the year it all came together for the Strat and I guess that s why collectors go for them

There was a wonderful interview with Trevor Wilkinson on ToneTalk YouTube recently where he referred to the complete lack of quality control during this vintage era. Girls were employed to hand wind the Stratocaster pickups, which were then only checked for continuity and not graded by DC Resistance, that is equivalent effectively to number of turns wound for a given wire gauge. They then went into boxes and were forwarded to the assembly point. There the guitar assembler just picked out 3 pickups at random for Neck, Middle and Bridge positions. Now assuming there was quite a lot of scatter (sic) in the number of windings on these pickups you could end up with a Bridge pickup having less turns than a Neck pickup, which of course is the wrong way round. So all this vintage magic is pure nostalgia - you either got them with the pickups in the right ball park or you didn't. We know a lot more about how electric guitars function now than back then and to be honest modern guitars, even so called cheap ones, have far more build quality than many of those vintage instruments. Some sound great others don't. Tooling has got better and better especially in the accuracy of routing where modern CNC machines are so accurate. So in summary the figures you see quoted for pickup winding and DC resistance were in the main put together by Seymour Duncan when he was researching for his business.
Hope this helps in finding the "magical" combination everyone is looking for. Perhaps there should be more checking of exactly what we have in place before purchasing a different set. Then of course pickup heights are critical!
I recently threw out my 1994 year Fender tremolo and fitted a Wilkinson 5+1 tremolo bridge and the difference in tuning stability and also sound just amazed me.
Steve

Wilkinson stuff is excellent.
As for which pickups etc etc, it's all bxxxxxxs , it's down to the player .

One can imagine the girls winding the pick ups by hand losing the will to live counting the windings. More likely they wound the wire onto the bobbins till they looked about right by eye !

Appreciating they were hand wound, surely they would have had some sort of revolution
counter to verify a set number of winding turns required on individual pickups?

Mike

Hi Roger,

Girls counting windings.....Is this a serious remark or are you joking
Did you ever see how fast these machines turned???
There are still several original windings machines at Fender and Throwback pu's has purchased a original used by Gibson winding machine.
Fender used a counter, and at the time the pre- set up windings reached the right amount, the machine was stopped by hand and also automatic later on in the 50's.
Gibson machine was equipped with a clock-timer, when the bell ringed....it had to be stopped by hand, so when a operator was to quick or to slow....less or more windings are the outcome....
That's why the PAF pickups are so irregular in tone and strength!!!

Cheers Rob