Seymour Duncan “California ’50s” Vintage Staggered Single Coil Guitar Pickup Set – 3 x SSL1.

Vintage-correct true single-coil for warm instruments. Recommended for country, pop, surf, rockabilly, blues, ska and classic rock.

This is the sound that gave birth to rock & roll: The classic, familiar sound of a vintage Stratocaster. This calibrated, SSL-1 Vintage Staggered set upgrades your Strat or similar guitar to the same type of pickups used in the '50s.

Each SSL-1 pickup is a vintage-correct reproduction of an original Strat® pickup, using hand ground, sand cast, Alnico-5 magnets arranged in a vintage, right-handed, stagger pattern; hand-fabricated, lacquered, forbon bobbins; heavy Formvar magnet wire; and waxed cloth hookup cable. The materials and construction are as vintage correct as the sound: that sweet, familiar, bell tone with high-end bite and “quack” in the notch positions. Plus, you get hum-canceling in positions “2” and “4” due to the reverse wound, reverse polarity middle pickup. Great for blues, classic rock, and country.

The bridge model is designed for bridges with traditional string spacing of 1.925" or 48.9mm measured over the bridge pickup.

guitars: For warmer toned ash, alder or basswood body instruments. Works especially well with rosewood finger-boards

available mods: Reverse wound, reverse polarity (RW/RP) middle pickups for hum canceling in positions “2” and “4” on the five-way switch. Left-hand magnet stagger.

players: Chris Hicks, Kent Wells & Land Scott / Reba McEntire, Dan Schafer / Shania Twain, David Levitt / Alanis Morissette, Doug Pettibone / Lucinda Williams, Scott Henderson / Tribal Tech & Scott Henderson Trio, Jimmy Crespo.

Listen to the SSL-1 Bridge & Middle Clean and the SSL-1 Bridge & Middle Dirty
Listen to the SSL-1 Neck & Middle Clean and the SSL-1 Neck & Middle Dirty

User reviews

“I have been playing guitar for 35 years and I know what I like. I purchased the California 50s SSL-1s several weeks ago. These pickups possess all the quack, high-end sparkle, and biting tone found in the early Stratocaster pickups. Having played vintage Strats, I am impressed with how well Seymour Duncan captured the classic tone and vibe. The middle pickup is a Reverse Wound/Reverse Polarity (RW/RP) pickup that will cancel single coil hum in the 2nd and 4th positions of a 5-way Strat selector switch. This is wonderful feature that represents a major improvement over the original 50s style pickups that were prone to excessive hum and often produced a microphone effect. These pickups compare favorably with the pickups Fender installs in their 56 reissue. Rock and Roll cut its teeth on the biting tone of vintage a Strat. These pickups can turn a standard sweatshop guitar into a tone monster. They will sound all the better in a high-end instrument.” Southern Cross the Dog

“Buy these pickups if you want a real vintage strat sound. I pulled tex mex pickups, from Fender road worn 60's strat. The TEX MEX pickups are great..but IF you want to get as close as possible to an original early 60's tone, buy these! I've had many strats including a real 1960, the sound is right on. IF you want HOT, don't buy this set, buy this set for love of vintage tone, not volume etc, tone is the name of the game. This is the sound that made the strat a great all around guitar.” VJ

“I've tried many types of single coils in my Strats. Done the typical trying to make a Squire into an American failure, etc. But I settled on some MIM I liked and started trying Texas Hots, 60's style etc. My luthier suggested these and WOW they are amazing. I've had them for 2 years now and they STILL are my favorite pickups out of all my guitars due to their versatility. Put simply, positions 1,3,5 are Classic Rock-like, where the Bridge pickup is the best for using any distortion on. 2,4 positions are VERY Bluesy, just creamy so. So Neck being 1 to Bridge 5: 1: Warm sound, Rock, 2: Warm Creamy Blues, 3: Crunchy sound, Rock, 4: Clear Tone Blues, 5: Thin sound, perfect for Distortion: Rock. You COULD try and use 1 or 2 for Jazz by pulling back off the Tone a bit. And of course you can always ring in some Funk stuff. But the Humbucking versus Single Coil settings are Day & Night different sounding. In short, EVERY position is 100% usable. The first set of Fender strings to be this way for my ears! UPDATE: I've tried many other single coils and also some in this Seymour Duncan series, and still haven't found one that is more remarkable than this set! Still my favorite single coils! Had them for about 3 years now.” Dennis