In 1957, a man by the name of Seth Lover was working for Gibson, and decided to come up with a "Double coil" pickup with the coils wired in series (ground lead from the first coil into the second), and sharing a single magnet - resulting in the cancellation of certain frequencies - in particular, 60Hz noise from high powered electrical stuff, such as those found in an old school recording studio, or a TV broadcast station. Such "Hum" as it's called, being "Bucked" (eliminated) from the signal - and hencefourth - we have the now world famouse "Humbucker Pickup".

Lots of variations of these two designs have been used over the decades. Rickenbacker, who were the first, had Horseshoe magnet pickups in some of their guitars and basses all the way into the 1960's. Gretch had Filtertron humbuckers and HiLoTron single coils. Guild had their own single coil and humbucker designs. Fender had the Tele-neck/Strat style design, Tele-bridge style design, Jazzmaster, Jaguar, split-pickup design used on the P-Bass and electric XII, and their CuNiFe (Cobalt, Nickel, Ferrite) humbuckers found in their 1970's guitars like the Tele Deluxe, Custom, and the Starcaster.

The 1970's is when standardized CONSTRUCTION started to be a thing. Basically - the standard designs - the ones where I start calling the Stratocaster the "IBM PC of Electric Guitars" - started at that time. You had Seymour Duncan hopping up pickups for rich rock stars like Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, and Billy Gibbons. You had Larry DiMarzio who had some of the first high-visibility commercial 3rd party guitar pickups such as the Super II, Super Distortion, and PAF humbuckers, and later the single-sized "Hot Rail" that fits in a regular Stratocaster pickup route but sounds rather close to a full sized humbucker. You had Mighty Mite which seemed to be the budget brand of the time - like GuitarFetish, Dragonfire, or those weird AliExpress/E-bay Chinese pickups - who had a whole myriad of different pickups, many used by early shredders like Edward Van-Halen, and George Lynch, where the whole tinkering with your guitar became a mainstream thing.

PICTURE TYPE	MAKES & MODELS	SIMILIAR	DESCRIPTION/COMPATIBILITY
Rickenbacker Horseshoe Pickup	Rickenbacker "Frying Pan"	Ric 4001 Ric 4002 Ric 4003	The Rickenbacker Horseshoe Pickup was likely the first pickup ever used in a solidbody guitar since Rickenbacker's first commercial solidbody product (and the first commercial solidbody in general) was the aforementioned "Frying Pan" guitar from 1932 or so. This guitar had a single horseshoe pickup, with two thumbscrews to wire the input jack into the guitar (no 1/4" Phono I guess), and I think was really intended for lap steel. However, the Horseshoe design carried on into Rickenbackers 1950's electric spanish models and continues to be a mainstay on the 4000-series bass guitars. However, the critique is these pickups have a limitation in that putting the horseshoe around the strings interferes with being able to play right above the pickup, which might be very uncomfortable for some people.
Telecaster neck Style Strat Style Jaguar Mustang	Fender Telecaster Fender Stratocaster Fender Duo-Sonic Fender Musicmaster Fender Mustang Fender Bronco Fender Musicmaster Bass Fender P-Bass (53'-56')	Fender Jaguar Fender Elite Strat Strat Copies Tele Copies Ibanez Roadstar	The Stratocaster pickup design started with the Telecaster neck pickup style design. Most Fender-style pickups are built much the same way - 2 pieces of fiberboard "flatwork" have a set of six Alnico 2/4/5 bar magnets known as "pole pieces" pressed into it, and then the coil winds around those. Some inexpensive models of these pickups instead use regular pole pieces made of steel, iron, or some kind of alloy with a ceramic or alnico bar magnet glued underneath the bottom flatwork. They traditionally have a Kiloohms reading of around 5.5K-7.5K and have a fairly moderate output with a very "bell like" or metallic treble response, and a very tight, but moderately thick, low end, and a spikey "twang" to them. Higher winds adds more base but still retains the general bell type character. Most often these use Alnico 2 or Alnico V rod magnets pressed into "Flatwork", but a lot of cheaper copies put a Ceramic bar magnet under some pot metal pole pieces to magnetize them.
Telecaster Bridge Style	Fender Lap Steels Fender Broadcaster Fender "no-caster" Fender Esquire Fender Telecaster Fender Telecaster Deluxe (60's) Fender Telecaster Deluxe (70's) G&L Classic G&L ASAT Strings & Things St. Blues		The Telecaster Bridge Pickup is much the same design as the Strat/Neck pickjup design, it's only different in the way it MOUNTS to the guitar. Traditionally, Tele Bridge Pickups (also used on the Esquire), are attached to a metal bridgeplate/RF shield assembly via 3 screws - one up top, and two on the back, allowing adjustment of both the height AND the angle of the pickup in the slot (keeping it perpendicular to the strings). These pickups were also used in Fender Lap steel guitars prior to the Esquire and Telecaster/Broadcaster/Nocaster. Earlier designs were wound hotter per Jim Wieder's videos on Telelcaster age differences, while later ones are wound less as hot, closer to a stratocaster (about 6.4K) and sound "airy" and cleaner. The difference in tone I attest comes more from the bridge assembly's rigidity - adding a sharper attack as the magnetic field is focused differently by being surrounded by metal, but this negated by a more ridgid assembly compared to a plastic pickguard. The fatter Tele bridge pickups, such as those found in early Broadcasters, Esquires, and lap steels, get into the "hot" 7K+ territory with smoother sounding magnets, making them capable of getting into P-90/Humbucker territory tone wise, but with that telltale "Fender" spikiness and clarity that makes them unique, which is one reason I myself tend to really love teh sound of those early Tele/Esquire style guitars Fender made.
Gretsch Dyna Sonics			Gretsch Dyna-Sonics were the pickups found in most of Gretsch's product line prior to 1960 or so, when the "Filter-Tron" pickups took over (which were basically humbuckers with a proprietary design). Each polepiece is individually adjustable with a flat-head screw. The sound they have is that classic 1950's Rockabilly sound, a little hotter and less as pronounced than a Fender single coil, but not as fat as a P-90 or Gibson pickup. Gretsch typically has a thick, round, but snarly twang to it that's quite unmistakable, these pickups did that job initially.
Rickenbacker DeArmonds			The Earliest Rickenbacker designs used these DeArmond pickups in conjunction with a Horseshoe in the bridge position back in the 50's. You don't see these very often but they turned up in the "Tulip" body designs of that time.
P-90			The Gibson P-90 pickup was released in the late 1940's, and was standard equipment on their first production solidbody, the Gibson Les Paul, introduced in 1952. These pickups are often referred to as "soapbars" because of the shiny plastic cover looking like a fresh bar of soap (obviously). They are quite a bit different from Fender pickups. For starters, the coil is tall, but it's also WIDE, so these are wound quite a bit hotter than a Fender pickup - about the same as a Gibson Humbucker - in the 7.5-9.0K Ohms range. So they sound thicker, and fatter than a Fender pickup, but less as much so as a Humbucker, because the magnetic field is more focused. These have a very spikey, bright, energetic sound to them, and sound incredlbe in the neck, with a nice, hoopy, thick, square wave type sound when distorted, or very nice, clean, but cutting midrangey cleans. A lot of people consider these to have the best of both worlds.
Rickenbacker "Toaster"			When most people think "Rickenbacker" - they think of the TOASTER pickups - ie these little guys. Most of the early ones were around 4.5-5.0K Ohms, later units from the prime era of Rickenbacker - the 60's - when John Lennon, Pete Townshend, The Byrds, and whatnot were using them and making them very popular, were a little hotter than Fender pickups at around 7.5K ohms each, so they had that Jangle, but had the horsepower behind them to be formidable at lead work. That's the thing these are mostly revered for - JANGLE. Most people who play Rickenbackers tend to use a cleaner sound - compared to say - Gibson or even most Fender players. Newer versions of these pickups get super hot, some of them far into the frickin' metal guitar territory - like 15K Ohms (seriously, why has nobody enlisted a 360 Capri or a 330 for some shred....I think Rics could have a really unique voice in metal, heck knows, Lemmy had a killer sound and his BASS was a Rickenbacker (and it had a Toaster in the neck). With that kind of range, these might be fun to play around with, especially the new clones coming from elsewhere for cheap.
Liptstick Tube Pickups			The story on these was back in the 1950's, Nathan Daniel was hired by Sears Roebuck and Co. to design and make an inexpensive line of guitars for their wishbook catalogs. In order to do so, and keep prices down, Daniel, and his soon-to-be-company, Danelectro, had to be quite resourceful and frugal. One way, as the legend goes, is that they sourced - for pickup covers - disused Lipstick Tube assemblies from a cosmetics company to make their pickup covers out of. These simple pickups are single coils with magnet wire wrapped hastily around a single bar magnet that is then slipped inside the pickup. Thes epickups are lower output, around 5.6K Ohms, and have a more metallic din kind of sound from the bell-like strat tones, that's sort of it's own thing. They sound great with fuzz in most people's eyes, and have come back into style cyclicly for decades off/on again.
Jazzmaster Pickups	Fender Jazzmaster S.D. Vintage S.D. Hot S.D. Quarter Pounder Fender J.Mascius Pickup Wizards David Lollar Vintage Noiselss		In 1958, assuming that rock music was a fad, to preserve their longevity, Fender attempted to get into the Jazz guitar market dominated by Gibson and others. So they designed an upscale solidbody - the Jazzmaster - and part of the guitar's key design elements were these wide-flat single coil pickups, which were designed to sound "mellower", but all they really did was change the E.Q. curve of a traditional Fender-style pickup - by adding more lows, and highs, and cutting the midrange. It sounds basically like a "high fidelity" (very crystal clear with less mids) Telecaster pickup TBH. A lot of twang, but with an enhanced low end, and some salty and at times SPIKEY highs because the Jazzmaster uses Unusually high impedance 1MEG Ohm pots - which when "wide open" allows more high frequencies to pass. Jazzmaster pickups typically require a special JAzzmaster Route that looks like a Jazz-Bass Pickup but about triple the width. They are adjustable via four screws, one near each corner, on little rounded tabs, and are held up by foam located under the pickup in the pickup cavity.
Humbuckers	Gibson PAF Seymour Duncan JB		The bog standard Humbucker is based on the original Seth Lover design created for Gibson back in 1957. This design came to be known as the "PAF"/"P.A.F." style - or "Patent Applied For" style and are the basic shape, size, cutout, and design of a Humbucker in the industry ever since. It consists of two Fender single-coil sized bobbins wired in series, sharing the same magnet - resulting in the reverse wound, reverse polarity feature "cancelling out" or "bucking" the infamous 60-cycle hum you'd get playing a electric guitar on a 1950's sound stage or anywhere where there was a high amount of electrical signals. All these parts are affixed to a baseplate with 2 screws on each side, and they all fit the same mounting rings or cutouts with 2 spring loaded screws. Starting in the 1970's, guys like Larry DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan started making early hot clones of these used by famous rock musicians such as Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van-Halen, Buck Dharma, Neal Schon, Billy Gibbons....and the list goes on and on and on...and these pickups partially and somewhat basically kicked off what is now the third party guitar parts industry in the late 1970's/early 1980's. The typical humbucker sound is a midrange-heavy tone with slightly rolled off highs resulting in a boxy, thick, biting attack in the bridge, thick lows iverakk, and a nice "Bark" in the bridge position, and a really smooth, buttery, or even "muddy" sound in the neck position. This is why the Humbucker is the #1 most popular bridge pickup in most guitars today, Fender, Gibson, or otherwise. The original pickups were wound to around 8.4 Kiloohms resistance and used Alnico 2 magnets. Modern variants can get as high as 17K Ohms or more, and use all sorts of magnets ranging from Ceramic to rare earth magnets. Popluar ones of note are the original Gibson PAFs (and all clones thereafter), The fender Wide Range Humbuckers designed for Fender by Seth Lover in the early 1970's (used in their Tele Deluxe, Tele Custom, and Starcaster guitars originally), the DiMarzio PAF, Super II, and Super Distortions - darlings of the 70's/ealry 80's rock circuit, The Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck - aka SD J.B. as it's often abbreviated, or the notorious Seymour Duncan Invader which has a ceramic magnet, aluminum oxide cap screws for pole pieces, and a whooping 17K Ohms (and a budget version called the "Detonator" which lives in my Kramer Focus 3000).
Gretsch FilterTrons
Split Pickups	Fender Precision Bass (57-present) Fender Electric XII Fender Mustang Bass G&L ASAT		Split pickups started with the Fender Precision Bass's redesign in 1957. This is a reverse wound, reverse polarity pickup with 2 separate magnets, wired up like a Humbucker in series, one pickup for 1/2 the strings. Teh concept was adapted to guitar for the 1965 Fender Electric XII guitar and reproduced for the bass guitar again with the Fender Mustang Bass in 1965 as well. The design later could also be found on the G&L ASAT - another Leo Fender design.
Rickenbacker "Hi-Gain"			Starting around 1967 or 1968, Rickenbacker changed from the Toasters to the "Hi-Gain" pickups, which were more versitile, and higher output than the 60's Toasters. These are what Johnny Marr (The Smiths) and Peter Buck (R.E.M.) Use. Got to wonder if the guy in Jefferson Airplane had these as well (I mean, c'mon man, Paul Kantner was playing B.C. Rich in the 70's as if that's any indication and still alternating with the Ric). Basically, true to their name, they're higher output Toasters with adjustable pole pieces.
Active Pickups			Active Pickups were an outgrowth of a trend in the 1970's of installing a little "preamp" into your guitar to boost it's output and reduce noise by over-driving the signal so much noise could not get through it. Alembic, Odyssey, B.C. Rich, they all did this sort of thing. The most notable is EMG - based out of California. EMG created the earliest active pickups to market commecially, with initial examples turning up in production STeinberger instruments, and being available aftermarket. Active Pickups have a small preamp on each pickup fed by a 9 volt battery, and then that boosted signal is sent to a set of 25K Ohm potentiometers in place of the traditional 250K/500K/1MEG pots found in most guitars. Otherwise, the circuit is much the same. The complaint by most traditional players was that these pickups sounded "cold" "lifeless" or "not as analog" as they'd like, so a lot of the more traditional guys eschewed them in favor of hotter wound passive pickups (all the rest on this page). Later Seymour Duncan would make their own competitor set known as "Blackouts". EMG's, due to their boosted signal, became somewhat popular with heavy metal guitarists starting around the mid 1980's, with the EMG 81, 85, and SA pickups being the most popular, as well as Studio Guitarists for their very clean and noiseless operation. Some popular players of EMG pickups included Eddie Van-Halen (Steinberger guitars only), Zakk Wylde, David Gilmour, Stevie Ray Vaughn (who replaced his with passives for the reasons I mentioned), Munky and Hed from Korn...hell, I myself use an SA/81 set in a souped up Jag-Stang megabeast.
Stacked Humbucker			The Stacked Humbucker was a creation of the 1980's, in attempt to create single coil sized pickups for Stratocasters and similiar instruments that don't have the 60-cycle hum noise issues a traditional single coil pickup has. Basically, it's 2 single coils, wired in series, stacked, and sharing the same set of six rod magnets and/or same magnet(s) magnetizing those rods. While the original intent was to make a noiseless single coil sounding pickup, a lot of hard rock/metal players looking for something different, such as Yngwie Malmsteen, would start using these in search of a hotter version of the regular Strat guitar tone.
Single Sized Humbucker			With smaller wire and tighter tolerances that came as the 1990's came around, the "Single Sized Hum" became a thing. A LOT of people call these "Hot Rails" though depending on model, this description might not be fully accurate, because there are versions with pole pieces, and versions that are not all that hot and intended to sound "vintage". Basically, a regular side-by-side coil humbucker, on a Strat-Sized bobbin, some even with proper covers. The intent with these pickups was to give a full humbucker tone, in a Stratocaster sized package, which allowed installing in a traditional 3 pickup strat without permanantly routing the body or cutting up the pickguard. However, they kind of have their own little timbre to them as they don't get as thick as a humbucker pickup does, but they are not so far away from that sound that they don't fit their name perfectly. Some single sized hums attempt to do the job mentioned above with stacked humbuckers, to create a noiseless single coil, such as Seymour Duncan's "Duckbuckers" designed to get the classic strat sound without the hum, or their "Cool Rails" which are designed to sound like a hot single coil pickup in the moderate output (though they sit in the "high Output" territory around 10.85K in the bridge - I have em' in my Jaguar).

Almost all aftermarket pickups most widely used are based on these designs: The Strat Single Coil, Tele Bridge, P-90, and the standard Humbucker designs. Other designs are a bit more "Specialized". But with those four designs, the most of which being the Strart single coil and full sized Humbuckers, are the most standard across the board (and the most widely used).

One of the earliest notables of modding was Eric Clapton, who once went into a guitar shop, and bought three Stratocasters - which were still cheap at the time - and took the best parts of each and made best-match-composites of all three guitars - the results being "Brownie" and "Blackie" - Brownie was famous for recording the hit "Layla" while "Blackie" was famous for recording a lot of stuff that came afterward and becoming the basis for Eric Clapton's signature model released by Fender in 1987. Prior to this, Eric Clapton was known for removing the covers off his Gibson Les Paul's humbucker pickups to make them sound tighter and more focused - as the metal messed with the magnetic field and made the pickups a bit more "muddy" and "unfocused" to some.

Jeff Beck wanted hotter pickups in his Les Paul and wanted a custom TElecaster with hot humbuckers in it, so he turned to a guy named Seymour Duncan to do the job - this was the literal birth of the now world famous and popular "Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck" or "JB" Humbucker. An extremely powerful, 16K Ohm, humbucker that sounds very thick, loud, but tight and punchy. It also was a part of

Around the same time, Larry DiMarzio started making pickups for well known guitarist Carlos Santana - spawning his DiMarzio company. By the end of the 1970's, DiMarzio had become the "top darling" to the majority of newcoming guitar makers like Dean and B.C. Rich, and had become also the de-facto mods of the 1970's. A total tricked-out 1970's guitar would have lots of knobs, switches, a preamp, brass hardware, exotic "hippie sandwhich wood body", and DiMarzio pickups (usually a Super Distortion in the bridge, and a Super II or PAF in the neck) - usually open-coil and white. DiMarzio early on picked up a LOT of players on their roster and thusly were the first big name pickup manufacturer to take off from what I can see.

A budget company known as "Mighty Mite" also came around at that time, selling less as expensive aftermarket pickups. One of their earliest users was none-other than Edward Van-Halen - to whom we can credit a LOT of guitar tinkering and modding to. I don't think there was ever a guy before or since, who has put so much on the map aftermarket wise and otherwise as Eddie. He also became a DiMarzio user for awhile, then went to Seymour Duncan, and then got his own company going through Fender - EVH Guitars - toward the end of his life. Mighty Mite also made custom pickguards, prewired assemblies, and a popular option seen on these kinds of builds were strats with individual toggle switches - those were likely Mighty Mite builds, I know the guitarist from STone Fury used such a setup at the time.

The 1980's was when the entire industry started to expand modding-wise, but it was still mostly for people "in-the-know" - ie, guitarists with a finger on the technical, which was still not a very common thing in the eighties. These things, by the mainstream, were still largely seen as "sacred" makers of music, not as modifyable consumer items with scientific variables a skilled user could alter to their advantage. EMG started to offer their pickups aftermarket, spawning their own fans mostly in the metal market with guys like Glenn Tipton and KK Downing of Judas Priest and Zakk Wylde in Ozzy Osbourne's band using their products. Kids could find out about these parts, but we were still in the Boomer Fuddy Duddy music store age of the guitar store. It seems the market was focused on offering budget model guitars to kids and teenagers, so that they could aspire to their higher end offerings as they advanced as a player and gained more need for a more expensive, stable, and better sounding instrument.

That's not to say that there were not underground, local band, 3rd party clients yet, there were, it's just it was not so widely known yet. Your average person off the street saw a Stratocaster as a Stratocaster and it'd stay a fully 100% original Stratocaster if you were someone with "sense". And it was not like every single teenager you knew was swapping parts around ala Eddie Van-Halen unless they were really really really into Van-Halen. Those guys doing this on a budget DIY Style in the late 70's early 80's - ie guys like Eddie, George Lynch, Sonic Youth, and Paul Dean, were really pioneers in a way. Even the guys in Bon Jovi were having their custom guitar work done by a professional (ie Kramer or Rod Shoepher) more often than not. Being a "tinker" on these things was not the mainstream yet at all.

The 1990's was when this market started to go mainstream, and saw it expand to more esoteric stuff outside the old standards of Strat-type single coil sized form factor pickups, and Gibson-style Humbuckers. First off, we had four new "scenes" making a ruckus: A Surf Revival, a BLUES Revival, a new "Vintage Guitar Market" being spawned by both of them, and of course, grunge Rock.

The Blues Revivalists, mostly consisting of guys like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, and Bonnie Raitt - were keeping the old standards alive, but also seeking ways to get the old sounds out of new equipment with hopes to get the gold standards of tone. It really depended on who you talked to. The majority of the Blues Guys tended to create a "legacy market" focusing on legacy type pickups like Seymour Duncan's "Pure Vintage" series pickups, and all the other companies following suit.

The middle-agers not into Blues started buying "Surf Guitars" - mostly Fender Jaguars, Jazzmasters, and Mosrites, and therefore, building a market for those guitars as well...but not as huge as the next one....were helping generate a small market for some of the more esoteric hardware, mostly Jaguar and Jazzmaster pickup replacements, and upgrade pickups periodically.

Gen X and early Gen Y's new genre was "Grunge", and Grunge, aka Alternative, was a genre with a mixed mess of guitars that were once inexpensive in the 1980's. And at the forefront was Kurt Cobain, who was playing (and smashing) a whole variety of Jaguars, Mustangs, and copies of Mosrites all over the place - with Strats usually as the victims, mostly modified with standard parts, but with the help of guys like John Fruschante, Thurston Mooore, Lee Ranaldo, and J.Mascius using the more esoteric parts (Jazzmaster Pickups, Wide Range Humbuckers et. al) - it built a new market for these unusual, "non-standard" or "Specialty" subjects that was left somewhat unappeased for awhile as Gen X and Gen Y came of age to afford such a product at full retail value in the quality the companies thought they'd like. So while Seymour Duncan made some Jaguar and Jazzmaster upgrade pickups in the 90's, for the most part, anyone playing anything other than the venerable Stratocaster, Telecastor, or standard Gibson designs (Les Paul, SG, V, Explorer - mainly) - the focus was still mostly on 80's shredders, 90's blues lawyers, and 90's vintage guitar restorers.

So a lot of mods to Offset-type instruments and other oddities as they were seen at the time, were to put pretty standard stuff in the guitars. This lead to a lot of oddball guitars with some pretty interesting modifications - ie screwing a humbucker into an open Jazzmaster pickup cavity that was a bit too big for it, putting Tune-O-Matics on Mustangs and having to shim the neck to get the right action, the invention of special devices such as the "Buzz Stop" to help keep the strings in the saddles.

With the mainstreamization of the internet, this along with the less expensive manufacturing in Asia and abroad, help make the once very exclusive actitity of guitar mods on down to something as simple as a pickup swap, become a common, mainstream, normal thing like changing strings. The 2000's, bolstered by the popularity of rhytnm videogames like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, had another massive guitar boom, and with the help of YouTube (including myself), helped create a culture around electric guitar technology to the point that i's been widely normalized. Whereas in the 1970's you were special calling these guys to get custom pickups made, now all you had to do was get online, whip out your credit card, and you could have the same pickups as Herman Li or Synyster Gytes complete with tracking number in just a few days.

By this time, companies like DiMarzio, Stew Mac, Seymour Duncan, Floyd Rose, Kahler, and the like, were now major mainstream companies with huge product lines and huge name prices. A typical humbucker from Seymour Duncan costs between $89.99 and $250.00 - and that's for just a bloody PICKUP! This kind of separated guitar into two camps: those who were doing all this modding for street cred and keeping up with the joneses, and those who were doing all this modding on their own tone quests. The former tended to want these big name, name brand products, the latter tended to want to find a cheaper alternative and rise to the challenge of working around their shortcomings to save money, not unlike Edward Van-Halen, George Lynch, and Paul Dean back the 70's were doing.

This lead to a huge growth of Chinese and Korean import parts makers, a lot of them nameless and flooding e-bay with brand new parts at very very reasonable prices - ie Duncan JB Level output humbuckers for $16, $10 Strat trem systems at Guitar Center unde rthe "ProTone" brand, $50 Floyd Rose licensed kits under the same name, bodies and necks for under $50. Some names such as Overlord of Music, Dragonfire, Tommy's Custom Bodies and Necks, and others, either succeeded or died with their creations. Some of their creations were found on import copycat guitars even - including some illegitimate builds often referred to as "Chibsons" "Fender-benders" and "Chickenbakers" - which lead to a bit of a second "Lawsuit" phase as well. However, these Chinese/Korean makers mostly focused on the holy Strat/Tele/Les Paul Trinity, so finding standard strat, tele, and gibson style pickups now in the 21st century CAN be inexpensive and can be easy if you know what you're doing, and what you're NOT paying for (ie wax potting, proper spacers for the bobbins, proper series link, not knowing the wiring, etc).

But I think an important thign to discuss also is how all this changed the VIEWPOINTS on pickups and modding in the 21st century. Soon we started to discover the brand name does not mean shit, leading to a lot of proponents supporting inexpensive guitar parts, some seemingly without any actual scrutiny or understanding of what they were getting into. But on the other hand, this lead to a lot of people wandering around like a billionaire influencer talking about how much better their shit is because some guy's name is on it. It also sparked debates on pickups vs. tonewood vs. speakers vs. mics vs. produced vs. in the raw - which has just made the world of guitar more divisive and ridiculous than ever. We even saw the entry of the truly "Scientific Guitarist" - one part Eddie Van-Halen, one part Neal Degrasse Tyson - out to prove to everyone that none of this shit matters at all because "science" - though half these guys don't have a solid experiment to back it up with.

Now, I know some of you are thinking "what the hell is a three conductor?" - well, it's a pickup wiring scheme used by EMG on their "Select" series humbuckers, and on some Peavey Products. Basically, they tie the Series Link together into one wire, rather than provide the Series Link as 2 individual wires (the end of one coil and the beginning of the other). In a way, it's like a "beginners" version of a "coil split" arrangement. I also use this on my own pickup mods where I'm modding 2 conductor Humbuckers to be coil split since it's easy to add one wire to the series link, feed it along side the other wire, and use that.

Then there's 4 conductor wires - where each coil can be addressed in the humbucker, by itself. This allows a veritable candy-store of options for the pickup switching.