FenderCustom Shop Fat '50s Stratocaster® Pickups, (3)

For quite a while I had been procrastinating over the purchase of Fender custom shop Fat 50's and I finally decided to decided to purchase them from Amazon as they had the best price. I was all excited when my parcel arrived and eagerly opend it up to examine my purchase. To say I was gutted when I set eyes on them is an understatement. I had researched these pickups for some time , I had looked at many pictures of them but when I saw what I had been sent I was devestated for what was inside the Fender packaging was clearly NOT Fat 50s. The ones I received had thin pvc covered wires in various colours including blue ! They were not the chunky traditional waxy cloth covered white and black of the bridge and neck pickups and the yellow and black of the middle ,also the build and construction was clearly inferior and no fender custom shop stickers underneath.. I contacted Amazon immediately with my concerns and for a short while I was extermely anxious about the situation but credit to them they arranged another shipment for me and I was able to send back the fakes. For good measure I made an package opening video just in case the same were to happen but thankfully the second set were legit.You don't normally expect this type of issue with items sold directly by Amazon but clearly they have an issue autheticating their stock. Somehow, fake/substitute items have been creeping into their stock.Now the good news I finally recieved the correct items and the difference in construction can clearly be seen so if you buy these know what you should be getting.As for the Fat 50s ....all the hype is justified for if you long for that quintessential sound that the Strat is famous for then these deliver in spades, their clarity and sweetness in my opinion just make them sound 'right'.Yes nowadays you can get all manner of pickup types including ceramic but to me they are not what I believe a strat should sound like you may as well get a different guitar.IMHO Fat 50s are wonderful.

They are great best single coils I ever installed...

So with my first set, after an hour of installing, stripping, checking and re-checking, it turned out that the neck pickup was utterly dead. Annoyingly so was my mutli-meter so I couldn't actually check them before putting them in. Mildly annoyed that this can happen in a brand like Fender at this price point, but I guess there are probably a lot of factors that can affect how they perform long after they've left the factory.Anyhow, one extremely easy return later, my replacement set arrived, and are absolute perfection (was able to test them first this time!). These Custom 69s have really blown me away if I'm honest. Bright and loud, but not overpoweringly so like the Texas specials. With a basic Strat set-up, every position was pretty much dead on for me and I was so impressed with the versatility of sound across the five switch positions. You can totally nail that authentic Hendrix/Knopfler/Cray/Clapton Strat sound with absolute ease. The neck position gives you that lovely richer tone, down to the amazing twang of the bridge and combinations in between to give you just about every nuance of vintage Strat sound you could want.So aside from highly recommending these, my advice when buying any new pickups based on my experience here is that a small multi-meter is invaluable! So if you don’t have one, well worth getting. Basically an MM will enable you to check the function of each pickup before you start trimming wires, soldering and installing. It’s so simple to do and will save you a massive headache with poorly wired, or plain dud pick-ups.Basically, switch your multi-meter to read Ohms (and the 20k setting if it supports separate values) and then with each pickup: hold one probe to the earth wire (black) and one to the hot/live wire (white) and you’ll get a reading. The pick-up box should tell you the expected resistance reading of the pick-ups on the back (Custom 69 is about 5.8K from memory) so you want this reading to:1. Be somewhere within near the reported resistance (don’t worry about being dead on, as there are many factors influencing the reading, including temperature and your multi-meter). A tolerance of up to about 200 either way should be fine.2. Remain steady. Small fluctuations in the lesser digits are fine, but if you have a pick up where the reading is fluctuating more wildly, it’s a bad pick up.If these two things look good, you’re looking at a good pick-up, so get installing and enjoy!

Fender Pick Ups ! - Enough Said !!

These were advertised as "used" through Amazon Warehouse, but still quite expensive. When they arrived the box was a bit damaged, but not seriously, and it still had the factory seal on it, so they'd never been opened. Also, there was no solder on the wire tips, so definitely not used - just a damaged box in the warehouse. I thought I'd got a bargain.But when I opened the box an tested the pickups, the neck one didn't work at all and I could see a bit of coil winding dangling from the casing (see picture 2). When I pulled the cap off I could see that there was clearly too much wire on coils and it stood proud of the bobbin. The cap looked like it had been rammed on by a trainee chimp and the plastic sticky tape around the coil was rucked up along with the top layer of the coil wires. The middle pickup had exactly the same problem with sticky tape and half the coil windings having been pushed downwards with force. Astonishingly though it was showing a circuit.The neck pickup, which is supposed to be hotter, so presumably with more windings, actually had less, and the coil was sitting well below the edge of the bobbin, so out of interest I installed it in the guitar. But is sounded terrible. Really thin and lacking in tone.The other thing that concerned me was that they just felt cheap. I can't put my finger on it, but the plastic, the weight, the feel of them just shouted cheap and nasty.Either Fender have hit rock bottom with their manufacturing and quality control or these are cheap Chinese fakes. I returned them and bought some Seymour Duncans instead. The difference in build and sound quality is astonishing.