Newbie question about Seymourized Pickups

[François34]

Hi everyone,

I'm French and have recently acquired a superb brandless custom telecaster from Japan (very nice chocolate color or 2 tone sunburst, ebony fretboard), from the features, this guitar seems to me to be a custom order, and the cherry on the cake is that it came equipped with 2 seymourized pickups that sound gorgeous and punchy. The bridge pickup bearing the serial number 0010, unfortunately i have no reading on it but it fully works.

From what i read and understood, Seymourized pickups existed when Seymour Duncan rewound some pickups, even degaussing some magnets in some cases did i read, i know nothing more.

Can anyone help date these pickups ? decode that mysterious 0010 ? any additional infos welcome, i love the pickups

Merci les gars

François

 

[beaubrummels]

My understanding is Seymourized with those old blue stickers are repairs or rewinds, so unless there is an original manufacturer marking, there's no way to know what they were originally. But measuring them might hint at what Duncan rewound them to. They might even have records of the repair and could tell you what they were when they came in.

 

[freefrog]

Hello François34,

Another French here (with "François" among his four first names. LOL). Welcome onboard / Bienvenue sur ce forum.

You should see the same oval silver/blue sticker in my avatar... and recognize the capital "S" letter of this sticker in the original Duncan logo, as illustrated in the ads that I'll share below.

I've got the same oval stickers under a handful of pickups, inherited from a French luthier who founded Apex guitars (those sold as original models in a shop named "Nashville" in Paris, France, in the early 80's).

From what I know and understand, pickups with these stickers were either rewound units, either simply the very first Duncan pickups, wound by Seymour himself, before the effective foundation of "Seymour Duncan" as a brand.

Those that I evoke above, for example, were not rewound pickups: some had for instance a square inked sticker mentioning "SH1" and featured parts that I've never found in any other product (like butyrate bobbins with inner structural "redans"' to avoid bobbin warping: to me, this clever design came directly from Seymour). Most of these pickups had the same oval stickers than under your single coils.

On this basis, I'd tend to believe that your pickups are "prehistoric" Duncan Tele PU's. Either the "Vintage Tele", either the "Hot Tele" set mentioned in the ads.

"0010" looks like a serial number to me: if it was the reference of a model, it should be "10", IMHO, since SD had not a thousand of pickup models in his original catalog. ;-)

BTW, when you say about the bridge pickup that you have "no reading on it", is it because you've not tested it, or because a multimeter reads no DCR on it? The answer has more importance than it seems, for reasons that I'll explain later if needed.

FWIW. HTH.

 

[freefrog]

... and I'd be curious to know the resistance of your pickups, of course.

 

[solspirit]

WOW. . . Awesome info. Thanks TF!