What started back in the early 70s with pretty much just Mr DiMarzio and Mr Duncan is now a huge industry: the aftermarket pickup. Earlier this year, for the first time in its history, Fender launched a range of Cunife/Cobalt Chrome pickups that don’t feature on any of its guitar models. At their launch, Fender told us that it sees the aftermarket pickup business as “robust”. Checking in with Gibson USA’s Jason Davidson, who looks after the newly formed Pickup Shop, I asked if that was their impression, too. “Yes, it is,” was his simple reply.
In the new marketing for the Pickup Shop, Gibson actually states: “Since 1935, the Gibson Pickup Shop has been the source for the world’s finest pickups,” presumably referring to the bar pickup on Gibson’s Electric Hawaiian lap-steel guitar that debuted in 1935 and became the EH-150 in 1936.
“It actually goes back further than that if you think about Lloyd Loar in the 1920s experimenting with electronics,” says Jason. “But we also have catalogues here from the 50s and 60s that show the electronics were available separately – they weren’t the packed parts with leaflets like they are today, but they were sold as spare parts. I was just looking at a 1957 catalogue that shows the P-90 – you could buy one without the cover, you could buy just the cover. In the 1959 catalogue,
