How To Identify Fender Pickups
This is a seriously endless quest but it is becoming clearer. Fender often “relabeled” pickups such as Humbuckers, Same model, different name. But to keep you guess they also release special “one off” pickups such as beefing up the winds in the single coil pickups associated with an HSS guitar.
I found a GREAT original source is to find Fender Catalogs and match them up to the guitar. If you only have a pickup. Then the following checklist is helpful.
PICKUPS
- POLES
- Are they Rounded (Beveled) or are they cut off?.
- Are the flat or staggered (different heights)?
- How are their heights different?
- Wires
- What color are the wires? If you have all 3 pickups, what color scheme to they usually use.
- What type of wires? Cloth covering, plastic covering, etc.
- Bottom
- What does the bottom look like? Does it have 2 magnets (MIM, some imports)
- Does it have screws in it?
- What does it Physically look like? Some pickups like the later noiseless and SCN have very distinctive bottom looks.
- Measurement of DCR (DC resistance)
- This is a little help, but don’t forget, this measurement seems to vary with some pickups but usually within 10%
- What is the measurements of all 3? Are they typical for what you think they might be?
- What Model and Year Stratocaster did they come on?
- This can be very helpful IF you have that info. You can do a catalog lookup or even a web search if you have that info.
- Was the guitar American or Mexican made? (painted/assembled in Mexico or MIM)
Humbuckers
This is going to be a work in progress here. But this is a strong start. Fender didn’t actually make that many humbuckers but they were all quite good. They had runs on their Stratocasters using Seymour Duncan also.
Diamond Back
- Output Rating (Bass/Middle/Treble) 6/4/6
- DCR Resistance 8.4k ohms
- Inductance 3.4 henries
- Anico 2
- Retail $179
Twin Head
Output Rating (Bass/Middle/Treble)
- Twin Head Modern (Alnico 5 15.2 kOhm bridge, Ceramic 10.0 kOhm neck) Neck: 8/4/6 Bridge: 6/4/6 – Henries 5.1 neck, 8.6 bridge
- Twin Head Vintage (Alnico 5 10.5 kOhm bridge, Alnico 2 7.3 kOhm neck)
DH1 (Aka Atomic)
DH-1 (Atomic) – Anico 5 – Discontinued in 2003
005-3758-000, DH-1 Humbucking Bridge Pickup, White Coils
005-3689-000, DH-1 Humbucking Bridge Pickup, Chrome Cover
005-4036-000,DH-1 Humbucking Bridge Pickup,Aged White
005-3717-000,Atomic Humbucking Bridge Pickup, Black/White Coils – 16.3K
Shawbuckers
Shawbucker 2 has a high output than Shawbucker 1 – Shawbucker 1 is recommended for HSS and Shawbucker 2 is recommended for HH configurations
- Shawbucker 1 (2015 ish?)
- Anico 2
- 7.6K, 4.0 Henries
- Mated with Fat 50’s single coil
- Used stacked pots 250k/500K
- Requires 500K for Shawbucker
- Shawbucker 2
- Requires 500kΩ potentiometer
- Anico 2
- High Output
- 7.8K – 4.5 Henries.
Side Winder (Enforcer) 24k – Ceramic Bridge
American Standard – Tex Mex until 2013 then replaced with Fat 50’s
Wide Range Humbucker (70)
No data available at this time except this is a 1970-1979 Fender Humbucker – Designed by Seth Lover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fender_Wide_Range
Fender Noiseless
I have a page dedicated to these
https://stratocasterdesign.com/index.php/fender-noiseless-pickup-types/
Here’s a great summary of pickup basics (and a brief overview of pickup properties)
Hopefully this will help you search. I’ll post an article later giving more details on specific pickups. I have a really good noiseless pickup page on my website.