Technical Information / Comparison With The Fender Custom Shop David Gilmour Signature Series Relic & NOS Strats

All Information Below Was Obtained From Our Complete Black Strat Pickguard Assemblies

The testing results in the table below were obtained from February through May of 2010.

Below are resistance readings taken from each of the 7 unique pickup selection options from the documented testing results of 25 of our Black Strat fully loaded pickguard assemblies. Averages for each pickup selection is listed in Blue at the bottom. We also have listed the highest resistance reading we encountered in Red, the lowest resistance reading in Green and the amount of variance of resistance between the highest and lowest readings in White. We also list the manufacturer's resistance rating for each of the three different pickups.

The resistance values in the table below were obtained at the output jack connections with the volume and tone control settings at 10, so these values will be slightly lower than resistance values taken from an individual uninstalled pickup. I did not want to disassemble the original Custom Shop Gilmour Strat electronics to obtain direct resistance readings from each individual pickup, so I figured it was most appropriate to compare our complete pickguard assemblies with the Custom Shop Gilmour Strat by the same method at the output jack connections. This would give you comparatively similar results. Also, keep in mind that you could take a box of 250k Ohm potentiometers and check each of their resistance characteristics and find that they may vary as much as 100k from one another since most potentiometers have a tolerance of 20% and this variance will alter the resistance readings obtained from the output jack connections for the pickups. I've seen a lot of the Fender branded CTS potentiometers vary as much 30% where as the CTS potentiometers I use in my assemblies average about 10% variance from specification. I find the average resistance readings of the CTS potentiometers I use to be in the range of 225k to 265k Ohms which is much better than a large number of the Fender branded CTS potentiometers where I've seen some samples as low as 180k and as high as 290k Ohms. But for the most part when it comes to deviation from the specified rating (tolerance) I usually find the actual resistance value is lower than the specification rating rather than being higher...

Another factor that contributes to variations in a pickups DC resistance reading is temperature. This is probably something that is most often overlooked, and most would not even consider. We can pull a pickup off the shelf in the winter where the warehouse might be as cold as 30-40 degrees F. and that pickup could present us with a DC resistance that may be as much as 400-500 ohms lower than the same pickup that has thoroughly warmed up and once again tested at room temperature. You can actually watch the ohm meters digital display that is connected to a pickup that is cold and as it slowly warms up its DC resistance climbs higher and higher. So with temperature differences factoring in, there really isn't a true DC resistance, only close approximations to the manufacturers specified rating. It's all relative to the testing environment/pickup temperature. And of course for obvious reasons they will also vary simply because any given sample of pickup may be wound slightly more or less than the next sample...

Update January 5, 2012: With Fender introducing individual pickups from all of their complete pickup sets in late 2011 we have found that the individually packaged Fat 50 neck pickups are presenting us with higher than normal DC resistances than what we usually see. Fender advertises the Fat 50 neck pickup to have a DC resistance of 6.0k. Testing every single pickup for the last few years we found the Fat 50 neck pickup from the typical set of 3 would range from 6.0k to 6.45k, but now the newly introduced individually boxed Fat 50 neck pickups have presented us with DC resistances as high as 7.0k. We've just started using our stock of these newly introduced individual Fat 50 neck pickups so we have yet to see how they will average in DC resistance as we progress through this new stock. Another characteristic we found with "some" of these individual Fat 50 neck pickups is that they do not have the blue indicator on the pole piece on the underside of the pickup, we figure it must be because since they are being sold individually there is no need to identify which pickup is bridge middle or neck since the pickup is packaged as the neck position and only when you purchase the entire set of 3 is it important to keep them separated from one another so then they would use the red and blue coloring to identify the positions. We'll keep you posted with any new findings on color coding and DC resistances we encounter as we install and test more of these.

Update January 11, 2012: We've begun to notice a new trend with the Custom Shop Custom '69 pickups now that Abigail Ybarra is no longer inspecting or supervising the production of these pickups. First thing is that since she is no longer inspecting or supervising the production of these pickups they are no longer dated and initialed by her, but the more important change we've seen is that the average DC resistance is higher than any we've ever encountered in the last 3 years. Fender rates this pickup to have DC resistance of 5.8k. If you look at the testing results below the highest DC resistance from the time period we compiled the data was 5.645k and the average was 5.44k, and for the most part we usually never encountered any that had a DC resistance very close to the rated value of 5.8k, they were usually lower. But now with the current production Custom Shop Custom '69 pickups we've begun encountering DC resistances as high as 6.42k and this is at room temperature of 70 degrees with measurements taken with a calibrated Fluke 77IV meter. So on average that relates to approximately 1k (1000 ohms) difference, that's quite a bit and I'm sure it will influence the character of this pickup.

All resistance values below are in Kilo-Ohms (x 1000) unless otherwise noted.