Monty's OverSpun '69 Stratocaster Pickup

For Monty’s one of the pinnacles of electric guitar is Jimi’s live album Band of Gypsys. You, as a person of good taste and judgment, which is obvious from simply browsing Monty’s website, clearly must feel the same about one of the most revolutionary tomes of tone and pure musicality.

Jimi used white and black ‘68/’69 Strats in this period and from years of nerding over tones and fiddling with vintage Strats we feel we have found the key to that elusive late sixties fatter than normal tone.

Many Strat pickups from this era were hotter than the average bear, with a punchy midrange and relative snarl, but what they had gained in balls they lost in bite.

Monty’s being Monty’s we had to fix this, we have taken the pristine clarity and beautiful glassy top end of our original ’69 Strat set and fattened the slightly scooped midrange and upped the output so they can huff and puff and kick your amps balls while still being clear, vibrant and a breath of sonic fresh air.

To achieve this, we simply didn’t just up the wind count, simply adding more copper to the coil will just give you a mid hump which masks the high end with mud, which is what we find in ‘overwound’ pickups, the OverSpun ‘69s have been rebalanced to allow the tones of the original set to shine through and at the same time add a real depth of fatness. We changed the wind pattern and the coil tension to be able to add the extra wire and still keep the full frequency range under your finger tips.

Just like the originals, these pickups are lacquer potted. This means that, rather than being dipped in wax, the coil is sealed with a very thin layer of lacquer. This keeps all but the very outside layers of the coil free to breathe, resulting in an incredibly dynamic, responsive pickup.

We’ve made this set available with an option of a nickel plated steel baseplate on the bridge pickup. Steel baseplates, which are traditionally used on telecaster bridge pickups, subtly alter the magnetic field of the pickup, it boosts the low mids without rolling off the highs. Many people like to use these on Strat bridge pickups, so we’ve made it available as an option. As a plus, it also provides a little bit more shielding, reducing the hum inherent to single-coil designs.

Hand wound here in our cosy little workshop, in an unassuming west country industrial estate using period-correct 42-gauge Plain Enamel wire, vintage spec alnico 5 magnets and vintage correct grey bottom flatwork.