Pickups make a difference.

When I lived in London, I worked as a studio guitarist, but I also worked as a guitar technician for the Fender shop on Tottenham Court Road. I fixed a lot of pickups for rock stars who weren't satisfied with the standard sounds. I gave them extraordinary sounds by giving them pickups with custom coil windings, special magnets, and unusual wiring.

The pickup is the place where sound gets changed into electricity. It's where the signal starts. Special effects boxes can process the signal, but the signal has to come from a pickup. The internal construction determines what tones and frequencies it will respond best to.

The strength and shape of the magnetic field affects the pickup's sustain and harmonies and clarity. A pickup with only a few windings of wire would give only a weak signal -but it would be a very pure and accurate signal. A pickup with 10,000 feet of winding would punch a raw surge of electricity into the amp, but the signal would be distorted and not exactly reproduce the sound of the string.

The'59

One time I had the chance to examine the guitar Jeff Beck used on his "Truth" album. It was a stock 1959 Les Paul, and it had a sound elusively different than today's guitars. I took an ohm reading off the pickups and discovered that they were definitely hotter-had a higher output.

I wanted to reproduce that special vintage sound, so I patterned my SH-1 humbucker pickup after what I learned from Jeff Beck's Guitar. I call it the '59.