Pure Vintage '52 Telecaster Pickups, Nickel

I got these for a Tele partscaster project I just completed. I considered probably about ten different sets of pickups for this guitar. One of the sets that intrigued me most was the Pure Vintage '58 set, but disappointingly Fender no longer offers them. I came very close to ordering a Bill Lawrence Keystone set, and I considered a Ron Ellis set, as well. Bill Lawrence passed away years ago (his wife continues making the pickups to spec, apparently), and the wait time for a Ron Ellis set is notoriously long. I even considered the special Brad Paisley La Brea set offered by Seymour Duncan, but the premium price turned me off. In the end, I gravitated more toward a Fender set, as I wanted a classic Telecaster sound. I also considered Fender Tex-Mex Tele pickups. I have sets of Tex-Mex pickups in a couple of my Strats. While I like the pickups, I felt getting that set for this Tele would give me a sound I was already familiar with. I wanted something different, maybe older school. That's where these pickups came in. I read some favorable comments about them on TDPRI. Unfortunately there are only a few good demos of these pickups available on YT, and interestingly it was a very short, 30-second Fender demo that sold me on these. The sound was clean, but they handled gain very well. The price was also pretty much unbeatable. I halfway expected the output of these pickups to be less than 6k, but was surprised to find both pickups tested on my multimeter at more than 7k--the bridge at 7.07 and the neck at 7.28. That's more than adequate for what I wanted. The pickups have waxed vintage cloth wire, and I had no trouble getting them connected and mounted. With the amp set clean, the pickups are chimey with that distinctive Tele sparkle in all positions. With moderate gain, the pickups provide enough spank from the bridge, a nice mix in the middle position, and a somewhat Strat-like sound at the neck. So far they are very noise-free on my Blackstar Fly 3 (I have not tried the guitar on my tube amps yet), and I have not yet encountered the dreaded 60 cycle hum. I am very pleased with how usable they are in all positions and with a variety of tones and volumes. I highly recommend these if you're looking for classic Tele sounds. To wrap this up, I want to reach out to Fender with a request. The branding of these pickups needs to be more consistent and less scatterbrained. I have seen these pickups referred to variously as 'Original Vintage,' 'Pure Vintage Reissue,' '52 Reissue,' and other phrases. Even on this listing here on Amazon, the box says 'Original Vintage' but the description says 'Pure Vintage Reissue.' The box my pickups arrived in is marked 'Original Telecaster Pickup Set.' And on the side of the box, the sticker with the UPC symbol is marked 'AM VINT 52 TELE' aka 'American Vintage 52 Telecaster.' Even now, I'm not certain how to refer to these pickups if someone were to ask me what pickups I have in my Tele. I'm tempted to go with the name on the sticker and call them American Vintage '52s. In any case, I would consider these the standard American-made Telecaster pickups, and I think they deserve to be called one name.

First, I want to clarify what was, to me, a little confusing prior to placing my order. The description of the product in the listing, at least as of 2020-Aug, doesn't make it clear exactly which set of Fender pickups this is. Part of the confusion is also that Fender has changed the names for this and its related products. The pickups I received are Fender model number 0992119000. What I received are labelled "Original Telecaster Pickups" and "American Vintage 52 Tele" (see photos). Fender's website lists this product (same model number) as "Original Vintage Tele Pickups." This is different from what Fender calls their "Pure Vintage '64 Telecaster Pickups," which have a different model number. The Pure Vintage '64 pickups are a little hotter than the '52 pickups that I'm reviewing here. So, simply put, I love these pickups! They are low output pickups, which is exactly what I wanted. Generally they sound exactly like you'd expect tele pickups to sound, singly and in combination. So no surprises there. Within the broad range of "what a tele sounds like," these pickups (neck, bridge, and both in combination) are very bright, not mid-heavy, not overly bassy. I would describe the sound as "glassy" with a very sparkly top end. With chords, each note is very articulate with the whole sound having a lovely shimmery top end. In contrast, hotter (more "modern") pickups, like presumably the Pure Vintage '64 pickups, would have a bit less high end sparkle and more mid-range growl. I play several different styles -- traditional jazz/bebop, jazz chord/melody, rockabilly, early country, bluegrass, and occasionally some classic rock or punk. These pickups work wonderfully for all of those styles. The neck pickup is not at all muddy, but again very sparkly and glassy. For jazz, simply turn the tone down a bit to warm up the sound, but the notes still retain plenty of articulation -- good attack on picked notes, nice piano-like ringing with fingerstyle. With the tone full up, the neck pickup twangs wonderfully! The neck and bridge pickups together capture a great rockabilly or early country / roots music sound. Plenty of spank...a sound only a tele can make. The bridge is very bright and twang-y. Apply a compressor and chicken pick country tunes for days! To be fair, folks that don't like the sound of tele bridge pickups might call this icepick-y; my preference is to err on the side of having more top end than I might need and just use the tone knobs (on the guitar or on the amp) to sculpt the tone I want. Roll the tone off slightly and it'll do a fair imitation of a humbucker. The pickups aren't hot enough to aggressively push an amplifier front end much beyond moderate breakup, but that's what boost/drive/distortion pedals are for. And again, if a more aggressive pickup is what you're looking for, something with a hotter (more "modern") design is probably a better option. When I play my telecaster with these pickups, the sorts of sounds I'm reminded of are -- lots of Steve Cropper (Booker T & the MGs), Hollies Long Cool Woman, early funk by the Meters, plenty of surf and early 60s country, James Bond theme song, the guitar riff in They Might Be Giants Don't Let's Start, In terms of hardware bits...the bridge pickup has a steel baseplate with copper plating; the magnets are alnico 3 (according to the packaging and Fender's website); both pickups have two wires coming out of them both of which had cloth (as opposed to plastic) insulation. Inside the packaging was a wiring diagram, a set of screws (2 for the neck pickup and 3 for the bridge pickup) and five short pieces of surgical tubing to act as "springs" inside the mountings. I personally would prefer actual metal springs than rubber surgical tubing, but that's a trivial complaint.

Put these (pure vintage reissue tele set) in my affinity tele along with a Graph Tech 42 mm nut. Being a cautious sort, I checked resistance in the pickups before I installed them. The neck was dead and it looked like a three year old on lsd soldered in the hookup wires. contacted amazon and they sent out a replacement before I even sent it back. Great service. Can't say the same about Fender q.c. Anyway they sound very authentic and vintage like. The alnico 3 polepeices I think, give them a less harsh tone, nice for jazz and mellow country picking which is my neighborhood. The wider 42mm nut (origional was on the shy side of 41 mm) helped my fat fingers out a lot. I topped off my rig with cts pots and orange drop cap with a treble bleed mod I picked up on at Stew mac. Oh, also I drilled 3 small holes in the back of the bridge plate and put in some nice brass compensted barrel segments aka the "billybob treatment". This is my "go to" guitar.

This is a review on the vintage original pickups. These are very nice. Neck has that nice, clear, not muffled, bell-like sound that you would expect. Bridge pickup is clear, not ice picky - they can get ice picky if set too high. But lower it a bit and it sounds as good to my ear as boutique pickups. These are amazing and I think compare very favorably to much more expensive pickups. I have had a lot of different pickups over the years. They are low output pickups, like the original ones, that sound very nice.

I got a dud in my set. Neck pickup works fine and sounds great but the bridge is dead couldn’t get any sound out of it.

These pickups do exactly what they're supposed to do: classic twang and 50s tele sounds, dirty up nicely at volume. If you want sheer blues grunt, get the nocasters or tex-mex - but for absolute torch and twang, these are the simplest, best priced answer on the market. I've compared them to my vintage Frailins and indeed they're different. These pickups aren't as loud, growly or rocky - but then their twang factor is unique. If you're working with a second tele or project, these are inexpensive and as authentic as they get.

Same as the original Fender Telecster. I decided to build my own vintage Telecaster and I wanted to achive the original Tele sound, these pickups were critical in achieving this goal. I purchased a swamp ash body from Rockaudio, and neck from Mightymite. Vintage Fender "ashtray" bridge and brass saddles, loaded control plate, vintage neck plate, Fender bone nut, and ferrules from Fender. I saved a few dollars and installed tuners from WD Music (they are great) and a pick guard 3 ply from Amplified Parts. Strung with Super Slinky 9-42 strings. The guitar coast about the same as a Fender made in Mexico Tele when adding up the parts and materials to finish the body. But the guitar is in my opinion a better guitar than the Mexico Tele. The pickups gave it the vintage sound I was after. Building your own guitar is fun, a learning experience and hard work. The reward is a one off guitar I will never trade or sale. Buy these pickups if you are after the vintage Tele sound upgrading or building a Tele.

I traded my "stock" pick ups in a Hard Luck Kings Southern Belle Telecaster model and so glad I purchased these pickups. I noticed a huge difference in them. Nice clean tone in all three settings and they were much "hotter" in the amp than the stock pickups. I love these things and haven't put my guitar down since!