Nobody can deny that Leo Fender revolutionised the process of mass-manufacturing guitars. Routing out planks of wood to form bodies and attaching necks with screws represented a paradigm shift in 1949. A couple of innovative vibrato designs soon followed, but the fundamentals of Fender guitar construction were in place from the get-go and carried through into Leo’s work with Music Man and G&L.
Everything, that is, besides the pickups. Competitors such as Gibson and Gretsch tended to use just one or two pickup designs for all their guitars, but every new Fender model had bespoke pickups that weren’t used on any other instrument. Leo Fender’s pickup obsession lasted throughout his career, and his approach to pickup design continued to evolve.
The pickups that graced the Stratocaster design when it was launched in 1954 set the precedent. Being a great believer in prototypes, Leo provided Bill Carson with several for road-testing and, according to George Fullerton, the prototype design that went into production was chosen by Bill because they “had the most hair on their chest”. Bill Carson also suggested installing four or five pickups on
