Ever fancied making your own guitar or bass pickup? All you need is a spool of thin insulated copper wire (around 42 gauge) two popsicle sticks, some neodymium magnets (2 for each string) and some Gorilla Glue. When you have finished it you will need to dip it in melted wax.
The GraphTech brand was founded by Dave Dunwoodie. As a guitarist Dunwoodie was troubled by string binding on traditional guitar nuts.
"I went to do my first big “wang” and went totally out of tune" Dave says. "I couldn't use the guitar for stage work at all".
Dave began experimenting with a variety of composite guitar nuts designed to eliminate string binding before engineering the world’s first self-lubricating nut, a formula that is 500% slipperier than graphite.
Wizard Pickups Ltd has evolved from the UK’s leading pickup repair and restoration service. Andy Blake is the main pickup designer and creator, the self styled The Pickup Wizard. Wizard Pickups Ltd is based in mid Wales but trades worldwide and includes many leading manufacturers, hundreds of guitar shops and custom guitar builders amongst its client list.
TV Jones was founded by Thomas Vincent Jones in 1993 as a custom guitar and repair shop. Tom had previously learnt his craft in the late 1980s to early 1990s working at The World of Strings in Long Beach, California, where he became known as a go-to guitar tech for many players in the area and around the world. Tom’s interest in the Filter’Tron pickup arose from his association with guitarist Brian Setzer, whose guitars Tom has worked on since 1993. In 1998, Setzer chose Tom’s Hot Rod pickup design in a blind test of many different pickups for the new Gretsch Hot Rod guitar line. That moment launched TV Jones, Inc. into a lively relationship with Fender and Gretsch Guitars. Several months later, Tom became an independent consultant for the Gretsch Guitar Company designing pickups, guitars and more.
Tradition Guitars was established in 1998 by 3 friends with a background in the music industry. They initially planned to manufacture popular guitar body styles for sale exclusively to independent music store owners. They ended up selling a full-line of guitars, basses and accessories available through neighborhood music stores.
Tom Holmes has been electric guitars and pickups since the 1970s in Joelton, Tennessee. Holmes has made electric guitars or pickups for many famous guitar players including: Bo Diddley, Lenny Breau, Billy Gibbons, Gary Moore, Peter Frampton and Albert King. Since the early 1990s his USA made PAF pickups have become legendary. Some Tom Holmes pickups & guitars are made in Japan (by Momose?). Holmes was considering retirement 2022 but as of January 2023 he was still winding pickups at around 7 sets per month.
Sunrise acoustic guitar pickups are made by Jim Kaufman in the Thousand Oaks, California. There is a limited production run, with a maximum total of 1000 units sold annually. Sunrise pickups have been used by Keith Richards, Richard Thompson, Emmy Lou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Leo Kottke, Jackson Browne and Ry Cooder.
Seymour W. Duncan founded his guitar pickup making company in 1978, in Santa Barbera. California. Born in New Jersey in 1951, Seymour moved to London in the late 1960s. While working at Repair and R&D Departments at the Fender Soundhouse in London he repaired and rewound pickups for English guitar players including Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, and Peter Frampton. On founding his company Duncan initially offered custom Stratocaster, Telecaster, and humbucking pickups. The product line has expanded over the years to a wide variety of electric, bass, and acoustic guitar pickups; guitar effects pedals and guitar accessories.
Rio Grande Pickups was founded in 1993 by John "Bart" Wittroc. Bart had been repairing and dealing in vintage guitars since 1972, and is an active member of the vintage guitar show scene. He first started winding electic guitar pickups around 1978 as part of his vintage guitar restoration work. He aims to capture the tone and feel of the vintage pickups, from strat to tele single coils, up to Humbucking, but with the option of higher output and greater tonal variations.
Tom Nechville founded Nechville Musical Products in the late 1980s - making banjos with his patented Heli-Mount frame. Since then he has made further innovations in banjo design including: an adjustable and removable neck connection (eliminating the need for coordinator rods), a compensated bridge, wooden armrest and radiused fingerboard.
