Vintage 50’s

(4 customer reviews)

LEAD TIME AS OF 2/4/24: 6 TO 8 WEEKS

$90.00

The Revel Vintage 50’s are inspired by the pickups featured in the first year of the Strat, 1954. Built with Alnico III magnets and wound with Heavy Formvar wire, the V-50’s are sweet, chimey, and glassy with a clear piano like tone, a full body, a beautiful bottom end, and mid-range that is wide and full with great natural sustain and dynamics. The Vintage 50’s are great pickups for surf, country and western, blues, pop, shoegaze, and any styles that benefit from clarity and sparkle. 

Bridge: 6.4k, Neck and Middle: 5.6k

A NOTE ABOUT SOUND CLIPS:

Corporate marketing hype has made it mostly necessary to include sound clips and resistance specifications. Both have very limited meaning and are, in many ways, lies. The best player can make the lousiest guitar loaded with the cheapest pickups played through the lamest amp sound downright amazing. For that reason I feel that clips are misleading. Clips let you hear almost everything except the pickup and primarily the amp in a controlled environment that’s not readily reproducible. Please take these thoughts into consideration.

DEMO DETAILS:

Guitar: American Strat – Alder body, Maple neck

Amp: Revel Custom ‘Lilman (1×12 super-light 5F6A)

Mic: SM57

Reverb: Fender Standalone Unit

Revel Strat pickups are constructed true to vintage methods. There’s obviously something special about the best of these classic pickups and we feel it’s worth preserving. 

Every magnet is weighed for consistency and, if the pickup uses a beveled magnet, they are hand-beveled. The magnets are then individually pressed into the flat work and the assembly cleaned. The assembled bobbin is then dipped in lacquer and left to dry. This dipping bonds the magnets and flat work together and helps to protect the pickup for many years of use. 

The magnets are then wrapped with a special paper tape to further protect the assembly and assure its longevity. We build our pickups to last forever. Then the pickup is scatterwound/hand-wound with a particular wire of particular gauge chosen to produce the exact tone of the pickup in question. All of our Stratocaster replacement pickups are wound by hand. 

The leads are then attached and the resistance and inductance are measured and the pickup is potted in pure paraffin wax. This is the one slight difference between the vintage method and ours. Simple paraffin is better and so we use it exclusively. The pickups is then measured again and the coil wrapped in tape for further protection. Finally the pickup is put into a test guitar to qualify it. 

What is scatter winding?
What is scatter winding?

4 reviews for Vintage 50’s

  1. Steve Bailey

    These are great sounding pickups! They replaced the lace sensors in my “92” clapton strat and couldn’t be happier. The have the beautiful chime that is right in the pocket. They sound great through both my Swart space tone jr and my old Blues jr.

  2. Curtis McKusick

    These pickups are amazing! The tone is harmonically rich and chimey without being harsh. The clean sustain is incredible and the pick response is simply delightful. Gentle attack is rewarded with shimmering cleans and harder attack brings compression and chime.

    Jesse helped me work through his lineup by listening to my desired tone description and prescribing different options that would meet some of my complex criteria. I ended up going with the Vintage 50’s set and am more than satisfied for the reasons described above. Thank you, Jesse!

    My set has an overwound bridge with a plate underneath to help with the ice pick.

  3. David Richards

    My favorite Strat pickups had been Fender Custom shop Fat 50’s until I installed these.
    My 2 other favorite strats have the run of the mill CS Fat 50’s and the hand wound Josefina Campos Fat 50’s.
    I like the way the Revel Vintage 50’s have great articulation and a great vintage sound. If you Like Fat 50’s or vintage tones that are slightly hot, you will not be disappointed.

  4. Freddy McDonnel

    Sweet and delicate is right. These pickups sing. I’m floored by the sustain out of these. I’m hearing aspects of notes I have never heard from a strat before.

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