The First Wife Stratocaster Set

Sometimes, not every week, only on a special occasion, I like to open the locked cupboard in my garden shed and retrieve my special clothes. You know the ones. No, not my well-worn, arseless, Teletubby suit, my other outfit. The slightly more respectable one. My flat-top hat and cowboy boots, the ones that only really make sense to wear when hunched over a Stratocaster.

The Strat comes off the wall, the Tube Screamer gets stepped on, the old valve amps begin humming in anticipation, and the neighbours start wondering if a thunderstorm is rolling in. I then unleash some blues. Not just any blues... Texas blues. Really, really loud Texas blues.

Sadly, it turns out that no amount of poncho wearing or vintage amplifier abuse got me close enough to the Stevie Ray Vaughan tone, and believe me, I've tried.

I needed to take the next step. So, when not re-evaluating my life choices, I've been doing something productive: painstakingly recreating one of the most iconic and instantly recognisable Stratocaster tones ever recorded. The sound of SRV's legendary Number One. Because while none of us are Stevie Ray Vaughan, we can at least start with the right ingredients.

Welcome to the Monty's First Wife Stratocaster Set.

Our tribute to the pickups in Stevie Ray Vaughan's Number One Strat. We have obsessed over every detail to capture the unmistakable authority, glassy sparkle and muscularity that made his tone legendary.

We're often asked which of our Strat sets does the SRV thing, and we always point people towards our '62s. Although the First Wife shares much of the same DNA and will get you close, they are quite different pickups. The First Wife set has a more pronounced midrange scoop and, even though they measure lower, they have a noticeably fatter sound. They retain all the clarity and dynamics of a great vintage Strat pickup but with the weight, authority and vocal quality that made Stevie's tone so unmistakable.

The neck pickup has that huge, piano-like low end without becoming woolly. The in-between positions have the hollow cluck you'd expect from a great early-'60s Strat, while the bridge remains bright enough to cut without becoming thin or making you wince. Dig in and the notes develop a satisfying growl, back off and they clean up beautifully, retaining all the sparkle, dynamics and touch sensitivity that define a truly great vintage Stratocaster.

There is a lot going on with this set, more than you would expect. They are deceptively detailed pickups, and we had to wade through a lot of history to get to the bottom of the tone.

Over the years, many myths and theories have sprung up around this iconic guitar and its pickups. Were they '59s? Or were they '63s? Had they been rewound? When did they get wrapped in copper tape? Are the custom shop recreations exactly the same as the Original?

The answer to all of these is... we're not sure! There is a lot of information floating around, and most, if not all, of it is pure speculation, sprinkled facts, educated guesses and just plain mythology.

We do not believe there is currently a definitive answer, due to there being no publicly available information to confirm the truth. But we did our best to sort through all the hearsay and make an awesome set of pickups.

As you would expect we have carried out a large amount of research for this set; not only do we have an extensive library of vintage Strat pickup specifications, taken first hand from the hundreds of examples of Strats we have seen from this period. We have also had one of the custom shop recreations made in 2004 on the bench and have taken all the specs from that. We have even spoken to a couple of players who have shared a stage with Stevie and played the real thing.

Let's go through the big questions and see what's what.

Were they '59s? Or were they '63s?

This is one of the biggest questions surrounding No. 1. Was it a stock 1963 Strat, or was it a partscaster assembled from several vintage Fenders?

It could be either.

No.1 had a body marked '63, a neck marked '62 and pickups marked 59. It could simply have been a stock Strat from early 1963 with a leftover neck from late '62, which was very common at Fender during that period, and the pickup marking may have referred to a 5.9k reading rather than the year or just a random number.

Alternatively, if you take the pickup marking to mean 1959, then the pickups would have come from an earlier Stratocaster and then it could have been assembled from at least three Strats.

Or it was a '63 that had the pickups replaced… it's a total rabbit hole with no bottom.

The Fender Custom Shop team felt it was most likely all stock. If we had to put money on it, all the evidence points towards it being an early '63.

Had they been rewound?

Maybe, but there is no information to support this.

If they were, they would have been wound to the correct vintage spec, which was not always guaranteed in the seventies and eighties.

The only person who could have answered that definitively was SRV's tech, and as far as we can find, he never did; and if they were rewound by someone else, it has never come to light.

The only way to know this for sure is if we saw the original pickups, so our opinion is that they have not.

When did they get wrapped in copper tape?

From our research, they appear to have been wrapped around 1986. We believe this was done to help combat noise from increasingly large lighting rigs in bigger venues.

Whether that worked… we can't say for sure, but probably not.

But the copper shielding tape does affect the sound, increasing inductance and giving them a fuller bass response while gently softening the top end.

Are the custom shop recreations the same as the Original?

The main source of information about No. 1 comes from the day the Fender Custom Shop did a deep dive and measured every single facet of the guitar, including the pickups. They were prepping for a run of super accurate custom shop recreations that came out in 2004. The information they found that day has never been released and John Cruz then master built only 100 of these guitars in total.

We have been lucky enough to see one of these Strats in the flesh and took the specs of the pickups when it was on the bench.

We are not 100% sure they are the exact recreations that Fender purported to have made, and without the specs of the original to confirm we just can't be sure.

The recreations were wound by Abigail Ybarra, and from our inspection could have been a standard '63 wind wrapped in copper tape.

We chose to focus on the sound, using all the information at hand to get us in the ballpark technically and then followed our ears to the tone.

As with all our pickups every detail has been carefully considered. The magnets are the period correct grade of Alnico 5 and given a slight bevel by our own fair hands. The pickups feature a perfect recreation of the original magnet stagger. These subtle details play a significant role in the feel and balance of the set, contributing to its remarkably even string response and unmistakably vintage attack.

The set was wound with period correct 42-gauge heavy formvar wire, potted in black wax and has a non RWRP middle pickup.

Like all our Stratocaster pickups, and just like the original Fender pickups of the era, the First Wife set is wax potted using our vintage low-penetration technique. This leaves the centre of the coil wax-free for increased clarity, responsiveness and harmonic complexity. The result is the lively, dynamic character that makes the very best vintage Stratocasters so rewarding to play.

The set will be offered with or without shielding tape for the different SRV eras, one is pure Texas Flood and the other is totally In Step.

Whether you're chasing those huge, glassy clean tones or pushing a Tube Screamer into a cranked amplifier, the First Wife set was designed to capture the feel, response and unmistakable voice of one of the greatest Stratocaster tones ever recorded.