Re: What's the thing with "vintage" pickups?
Partly because so much of our favourite music was played on gear made in the 50s and 60s, so people look for that when they're shopping for guitars, amps, or pups. In the 70s, everyone was into brass and beginning to get into replacement pups (Super D, anyone?). In the 80s, it was active pups, Floyd Rose etc., the stuff you find on shredder guitars. In the 90s and up to now, retro is back.
It's all dictated by people's musical wants. Back when electric guitars began, there were a lot of hoops to jump through to get things 'right'; now we've been riding a plateau because our technical needs as musicians can be easily met without the requirement for such drastic innovations. Plus, the whole idea of the guitar hero (the guy who's tone you're chasing) has changed - people look back, not so much around themselves. The way media have changed (internet) has also made an impact in the way we consume information and thereby inform our choices about gear.
Sometimes it's due to cost, like SD's Zephyr pups, which you may argue are innovative on the basis of their use of silver wire. It's expensive stuff, and also no new EVH or Hendrix has come along and changed guitar playing using these pups.
There is innovation happening, but it's more of a fringe thing now, where small builders experiment with ideas and put them into guitars, and only adventurous players seek them out. I'm thinking of a luthier like Teuffel. There's a five part doco about him on the Gourmet Guitar channel on YouTube, where he talks about this and his view of his guitars as a blank canvas, as they're not burdened with certain socio-cultural associations, which people who buy his guitars find to be one point of attraction.
In the end 'vintage' is just a word - a pup is a pup regardless. It's all about the context in which the object has gained particular meaning.
