Gearank

If you’re on the hunt for a vintage guitar tone, but don’t want to spend vintage guitar money, the Fender Custom ’69 Stratocaster Electric Guitar Pickup Set might be right up your alley. These pickups are designed to accurately reproduce everything that gave vintage pickups their tone.

Specifications:

• Position: All
• Magnet Material: Alnico 5
• Dimensions: Not Stated
• String Spacing: 52.451 mm
• Available Colors/Covers: White

With that in mind, the Fender Custom ’69 are a perfect example of vintage voiced pickups. They have the definition and rich clean tone you’d expect from a vintage set of pickups, and they retain their clarity and chimey tone when used with light amounts of gain.

While these pickups do retain the best aspects of their vintage inspiration, they also retain the less desirable characteristics. These pickups don’t take gain as well as modern voiced pickups, and because they don’t have a reverse-wound center pickup they’re more vulnerable to electronic interference. Though this can be compensated for if you use a noise gate.

To see which pickups are currently on our recommended list go to our guide: The Best Budget Guitar Pickups.