Fender Custom Shop '69

Passive single coil PUPs hand wound by Abigail Ybarra for over 50 years.

Put them in all 3 positions of a 2008 MIM Strat, replacing stock ceramic PUPs

Fairly low output PUPs that I use with a Hot Rod Deluxe amp, and an MXR Classic Distortion & Metal Muff rig. Balanced tone with great highs and thumping lows. the term "string articulation" jumps out at you while playing. I play hard-edged blues rock and a bit of metal. Perfect tone for what I wanted.

I've been playing for a couple of years (12 total, but only 2 years seriously). I also own a Highway One Strat HSS, American Strat HSS, Gibson LP, and a Highway One Tele. I have owned other Strats & Teles.
Compared to my other Strats I would say:
1. The H1 HSS Sounds Very Good, Hot & Crunchy
2. The Am Std Strat HSS sounds Very Good for a variety of tones
3. The MIM Strat with these PUPs is Outrageously Good (sacriligious!)
The only thing that might bug some folks is that the middle PUP is not RW/RP so they are a bit noisy, but it's a classic Strat sound!

If you bought these pickups so you can sound like hendrix you might as well give up cause you aint gonna sound like hendrix cause no one sounds like hendrix... thats why he is hendrix. if you want to have the classic rock strat tone that makes ears feel a pleasure they have never felt, and stonners think the walls are melting... you went to the right place

installed them in my 84 mij strat. i replaced some old dizmarios that i wanted for my les paul but thats another story. i play alot of classic rock and blues and these pickups make me a happy hippy.

i use a jcm 800 a metal zone a crybaby and a spring king reverb. its heaven... ps the feedback is amazimg when playing live i can control it to do some cool poop

have you ever tried to distroy a strat i have surfed on the damn thing. and these pickups seem to have the same i want to get the crap kicked out of me attitude

Set of 3 bridge, neck, mid. None reverse polarity so no noise cancelling in any position

2003 MIA standard strat(ash body/maple neck). Was using them to replace hot gold Lace sensors which replaced the stock pups. I wasn't happy with the Sensors. they are quiet by kind of dull.

I was mixed at first. They have two characteristics. Low volume they tend to be a bit bright. But the louder you play them the better the get. Great lows, highs and mids. Very well balanced. They also sound great with distortion or overdrive. More so than the stock pups and the vintage fender pups for that matter. They are very versatile pickups. They do hum and I'll probably swap them for noisless but it will be tough as I know I'll be sacrificing some sweet single coil sound.

Texas Specails are great but IMHO they are tonally limited - these can do it all pretty well. Heads and tails above the stock MIA pups.

If I can't find decent noisless pups (Kinman/Dimarzio) I might go back to these and try for some sort of noise cancelling system like the Shure backplate. But a strat is a strat and these are true to that classic tone. Some pups try TOO much to be strat pups. these don't. They give you a great strat sound that does well clean or with some dirt added and plenty of quack to boot.

I have MIM Strat (a good one!). I only replaced the middle and neck pu with the 69's because on bridge position I had put a Seymour Duncan Screaming Demon (great pu btw).

I'm using a Peavey Classic 30 amp and various pedals and multifx (Boss GT-6, Xotic AC Preamp, Fulltone OCD).

The sound is as described by some reviewers below: "glassy" and bell-like with a lot of attack. Yes, it's Hendrix tone!

I mostly play alternative rock (Radiohead, Placebo, Madrugada, Archive). They are good for this style, but not great!

The thing I didn't like about them, was the sound in neck position. I would like something warmer. Fortunately, they have a very good respone at the Tone knobs of my guitar

I play guitar for 10 years, mostly alternative rock but also some classic rock and blues.
With these pu's, I love their attack and bell-like tone. What I hate is the "thin" sound on neck position.

Am I satisfied? well... yes, but only after some tweaking on my amp and pedal knobs.

Rather than give a review in each category I'm just going to give the big picture on these. There seems to be a lot of differing opinions on the pickups but I'll try to give you all you need to go on here.
These are good pickups and do re-create a Hendrix sound, but not on their own. Firstly you have to be able to play. secondly you have to have a good amp, Thirdly you have to have the right pedals, fourthly you have to have decent electronics in your guitar, fifthly you need to have your guitar set-up right.
1)If you've ever heard Hendrix play an acoustic guitar he still sounds like Hendrix. The talk you've heard about tone being in your fingers is pretty true. Go on youtube and listen to hendrix playing 'Hear my train a comin'
2)Hendrix used many amps and still had 'his' sound. I don't necessarily think you need a Marshall - unless you want to mimic his live sound. His recording used a number of guitars, amp and effect combos to get a certain sound - good luck trying to replicate all of them exactly with a strat, marshall and fuzz pedal.
3)A good fuzz pedal is the main ingredient here. Hendrix also used a univibe and octavia but a fuzz is the main part of his sound. Most of the mass produced recreations are okay but not going nail it completely. MJM's London Fuzz is the closest I've come across.
4)Put cr@p pots and capacitors in and you'll most definitely negatively impact on your sound. A .047 capacitor (with 250k pots) is what you'll need with these pickups. Hovland musicaps are the best you will find.I also recommend using a treble bleed kit on the volume pot. If you turn down the volume control you'll lose a lot of the 'cluck' and bell tones Hendrix had without one. The best I've found for these pickups is a .0012 capacitor and 180k resistor.
5)Setting up your guitar correctly will have a huge impact on your sound and playability. Pickup height will most noticeably change your sound. Adjusting the pickups to get them right will take a while and will need to be done by a good ear. Plan on spending some time sitting down and making adjustments up and down til they are right and balanced from position to position.
You will notice even 1/4 turn can change the tonality of the pickup greatly. I aim for a balance between keeping them sounding as full as possible but keeping enough attack. Start by having the neck pickup lower on the bass side and quite close on the treble side. the middle should be a little more level. The bridge should be higher on the bass side. Use this as a starting point only. Adjust the bass side until the top 3 strings sound about right, then do the other side, then check overall. This will take a while until you are happy.
THE PICKUPS THEMSELVES:
Listening to Hendrix recordings you can hear songs played in different pickup positions. ie. 'Hey Joe' and 'Manic depression' you will most closely replicate in the neck position, middle position for 'Are you experienced'. For 'Purple Haze' and 'Voodoo Child' use the bridge with fuzz. I think a lot of people think Hendrix used mainly the neck but watch him live and he is nearly always on the bridge. You will also find that with a fuzz pedal in the positions other than the bridge will probably over distort and start f@rting. I think this is one of the reasons that the bridge pickup seems quite thin, it helps when you're fully cranked on the fuzz. However, I've put a bassplate on the bridge pickup and it's 10 times the pickup and far more useable for general use with this on.
Not sure what else to say. If you do all I've said you should get pretty close. I can pretty much replicate most Hendrix songs fairly closely with these pickups. I've not had any of the problems that some people have indicated on here. I'm not sure how they have set-up their guitars or what other equipment they use. But once these are set-up correctly they should get you as close to hendrix as any other pickup. I give these a 9, mainly because the bridge pickup needs a bassplate.

pickups demonstrated a fat bottom, edgy bright top end, strong fundamental tone. Unfortunately these pickups caused loss of : overtones, neck tone, 'singing' quality, vowel like sounds. I swapped the original ceramic stock MIM strat pickups back in. Besides a harsher, edgier tone, the '69 pickups caused some intontation problems with the magnets interfering with the waveforms of the pure tones of the guitar. These pickups came highly recommended. Whether the '69 pickups are a bad fit with the mexican strat, or generally damp overtones, and neck tone, is a matter of conjecture. To me the '69 pickups are a writeoff, a learning experience.

I had bought a mexican strat, had bought the '69 pickups a few months earlier on the advice of a friend who was using them in 2 different MIA strats. He raved about them. I thought I would see how they sounded in my MIM strat, the thinking being that the "cheapo" mexican strat would be improved by these pickups. I couldn't have been more wrong! I would never buy these pickups for ANY guitar, I strongly dislike the way the pickups destroyed body,neck tones and diminished overtones and overall warmth. These pickups are anything but vintage sounding, at least as far as my interpretation of what 'vintage' is supposed to mean.

output average level, unsuitable for anything requiring neck or body tone, lousy match for blues. Tone is definitely edgy, too bright, bordering on harsh, top end sound more offensive than bottom which is definitely fatter sounding than the stock MIM ceramic pickups, but at the cost of loss of warmth.

would never buy these again.

N/A

Fender USA Voodoo Stratocaster. I have different setups but for this guitar its Teese RMC3 with true bypass turned off, Fulltone Octavia, 69, 70 and original 60's Univibe (occasionally a single stage of gain in my Bad Cat 2-Tone) and then into the "clean" channel of a 100 Watt Marshall Vintage Modern amp.

Haha. I have to laugh at the review below. I have a bigger problem because my stagger is the opposite way round.

I basically echo what has been said below. The magnets have huge pull. If you can live with the wolves then the output is great.

My guess is that if you don't venture too close to the 12th fret you wont have any problems. I do and to compound matters I have a 9.5 inch radius so yes the G string is a little out of control if the pickup is at a normal height.

They do have a zing that other Strat pickups don't have and they work very well when controlling all of those effects from the guitar volume control so I do get a very convincing Hendrix sound. I just wish I could get rid of the wolves!

If I had to replace them I would sacrifice authenticity and go for a high output pickup with less of a stagger and a more uniform one.

Personally I think staggers are a huge pain in the bum and if it were up to me all Strat pickups would have adjustable magnets!

MIM Std Strat, late 90's, maple neck, alder body, wilkinson bridge/trem block added (recommended).

I tried really hard to like these pickups. I had these in my Strat for over a year and tried endlessly to find a setup that really worked. Mine were made in 2005.

They do yield a bit of the Hendrix strat vibe, especially in the neck position.

However, the pole piece stagger causes significant string balance problems and the extremely strong magnets caused no end of "strat-itis" above 12th fret (G string at 10th fret!)unless I lowered the pickups almost to the pick guard... at which point the output was very low, the tone rather thin and the signal to noise very poor... and the &#^%ing G string was still unplayable at 15th fret!! The high G string pole piece is completely at odds with modern unwound G's. Impossible to get decent tone on the one hand and freedom from wolf tones on the other. B and high e string were always weak (I play 11's).

This is just silly.

There are plenty of "69" pickups out there that get this sound without the problems. A cheap, reliable option which happens to be noise canceling would be the billlawrence.com L-280. Purists insisting on true single coils might try Fralin, which sound even better imo.

Given weaker magnets I think I would like the Fender CS 69s. As is, I found them unsatisfactory. These simply cannot have been an authentic re-issue.

Gets a "3" only beacause the pickups did sound nice for open chords and did have the 69 Strat tone. Unsuitable for lead playing.

Single Coil

Fender USA Standard Strat

Really glassy clean sound. I replaced the original standard pick ups as they sounded a bit 'muddy' especially the bridge pup.

These sound great but having said that new strings after installment helped. Good upgrade and just the sound I wanted. Not high output but just a classic strat sound

If destroyed? I'd buy some more!Check out ebay

Single coils, I won't bother typing out the rest, if you are looking at this thread you'll know about this product.

Innitialled by Abigail Ybarra for a touch of MOJO.

I give them a 10 in this category. All the features you expect.

My set is in a custom built strat, Alder Body and one piece Birdseye Maple neck.

These are a little less powerful than standard pups, but don't let that fool you. They have bags of tone and then some.

I love the sound of these pups, vintage and pure Fender, they are a little noisy but that is how real single coils are. Noiseless pups lose some of the chharacteristics associated with Fender tone.

Clean amp - they are nicely balanced and ring like a bell.

Overdriven amp - This is where these pups impress the most. Think Hendrix.

I have a 62 reissue usa strat with the 62/57 pups which I like a great deal too. But if I were to build another custom strat a set of these would be my first choice.

Tone is a very personal thing, what suits one player will not suit another.

If you want Fender vintage sound with a bit of bite these are the solution.

I am experiencing sounds similar to those from players like Hendrix, David Gilmour and George Harrison. The are 69's after all.