I wish I could. There are only a few rare/obscure places where a former employee disclosed the information, until that changes I still consider it information Duncan can be responsible for.
Honestly I don’t see a downside from a marketing perspective either way. If they reveal they’re the same coils, it would prove that Seymour struck on a wind so amazing, so perfect over 40 years ago, that it became not 1, not 2, but 3 of the most iconic “boosted” pickup designs associated with a wide variety of players, playing styles, and tunings, perpetually, without any real era where either of them ever fell out of favor. On the contrary, if they say the winds are slightly tweaked between the 3 models, it shows that they experimented a little and came up with subtle tweaks to optimize each one.
Either way, I don’t think the marketplace is going to have a negative reaction to whichever answer is revealed. But on the con side, if you went looking for negatives, if they’re the same coils and the DIY community has some rogues who have flip flopped magnets between them and still heard differences, it points out how there are tolerance variations in wire-wound coils that are big enough to make you think one pickup is or isn’t the other, and vice versa. But that’s a normal, widely accepted notion already. There’s a 5-10% tolerance range in DCR for most production coils, so one made this Thursday can sound different from one made in 2014.
Anyway as more time passes, maybe some former employees without NDA’s will chime in, or Duncan will do a reveal. Until then I’ll just keep doing what I do, which is to just correct fallacies, provide general education, and make jokes.
