Hmm...Okay I'll bite-here it goes:
While this kind of drama is fun for some, the easiest way I can characterize Eddie's pickup history is to repeat what's been said many times. Although he's used countless pickups over the decades, there are two "main" styles. The first is an overwound P.A.F. style with a few tricks. When someone wants that kind of sound, we refer them to the '78, which matches a wire/wind/tension/traverse/magnet/magic recipe Seymour originated back at that time. There are many pickup companies now who seem to have attempted to reverse engineer that style of pickup. I can't count the times I've seen "brown" and "1978" in other people's ads, including those selling imported pickups!" I'm sure they are all nice pickups, but Seymour MJ, and Derek happen to work for us, not them. The only place you'll find them is in our Custom Shop. Therefore, the only place you'll find the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop '78 is right here. Like all copies, some are good, some are not.
The second style of pickup is a higher output pickup, again with a few tricks. The three days Eddie spent here in Santa Barbara yielded many great stories, but also some revelations, and today we have a pickup in the Frankenstein guitar that is not available anywhere else. There could come a day when Eddie himself makes that pickup available to the general public. For now, it is not.
To suggest that someone has "nailed" that pickup when it is only available in a $25k guitar seems a bit silly. Did someone let you take the pickup out of their $25k guitar and inspect it? Did you see what the wire gauge/coating/coating thickness was? What was the winding tension? Is it a butyrate bobbin? Is there a Maple spacer in there or a plastic one? Is it potted? At what temperature? Is it "fully" potted? (hmm, what does that mean?) What's the gauss reading? Does it have normal P.A.F. slugs? I could go on and on.
Seymour, MJ, and Derek understand what that pickup is, and although I know many things about it, even I couldn't duplicate it based on what I know. To suggest that someone (who is NOT Seymour) listened to the pickup and perhaps took a resistance reading (which tells you nearly nothing by the way) has magically made a replica sounds pretty sophmoric. The pickup may be wonderful. Many boutique pickup makers in garage shops make good sounding pickups. I made good sounding pickups in my garage too. But I never would be so arrogant as to consider anything I did on par with the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop.
Everything else in this thread I can deal with, but frankentone-Don't ask MJ to tell you "more about" the IM1. It seems disingenuous. If you want one, call her and order one. You will probably like it. Until then, if you want to tell us how great Motor City copies of our pickups are (like other "user names" before you) then we'll let the public decide if they are interested in hearing about it, because that's what we do here. I wish you luck. Everyone else-please be respectful, or let the thread die.
:argh::chairshot