Serious Guitarists rely on ToneSpec Pickups in all of their guitars because they deliver a serious advantage over guitars with cheap, stock or vintage pickups. Our proprietary techniques make all other pickups obsolete. Due to demand, we have a waitlist you can easily join.
It's tone you can feel & once you experience it, you'll never play guitars with anything less than ToneSpec Pickups. You can easily join our roster of guitarists with top-notch tone by following these easy steps to get started:
“You are a Genius. These things make a solid state amp sound like it has Tubes in it. They have this 3-D thing going on. I’ve tried every important pickup upgrade since 1983 & the pickups are the best by far. I want these in all of my guitars.”
"Man you are a Genius. I put your 57/61 PAFs in my #2 Gibson & your Blues Strat Pickups in #2 Strat and now both those guitars sound better than any of my vintage guitars. Now I need to get more sets."
“It sounds like the have Tubes in them...almost three dimensional. They just sound really sweet. I don’t how they do it but they even feel sweet. Just like vintage pickups but with more sustain and less noise. They are just amazing”
-Mike Gallaher, Legendary Guitarist - Joe Cocker, Leon Russell
Professional guitarists install ToneSpec Pickups in their vintage guitars for one simple reason—they need the absolute best tone and feel when recording in the studio.
A vintage guitar already has the wood, the resonance, and the soul, but ToneSpec Pickups enhance every detail, giving players that "record-ready" tone that amateurs can only dream about. CONTACT US TO ORDER
Why Do Pros Trust ToneSpec Pickups in the Studio?
1. Tone You Can Feel
These pickups react to every nuance of your playing, from the lightest touch to the most aggressive attack. This means more expression and dynamics, without relying on heavy post-production tweaks.
2. Unmatched Touch Sensitivity
In a studio setting, every detail matters. These pickups respond instantly to changes in pick attack, letting players dial in a wide range of tones just with their hands—no pedals or EQ needed.
3. True Vintage Tone, Enhanced
Many vintage pickups, while legendary, have lost some of their magic due to age. Tone Specific Pickups capture that perfect “broken-in” tone, but with even better clarity, warmth, and balance across all frequencies.
4. Less Noise, More Tone
In the studio, unwanted noise is a nightmare. Tone Specific Pickups maximize warmth and sustain while minimizing noise, making them perfect for clean or distorted recordings.
LIVE ON STAGE
Professional guitarists install ToneSpec Pickups in their less expensive modern guitars for touring because they need consistent, world-class tone without the risk of traveling with rare, irreplaceable vintage instruments. Touring is demanding—guitars go through different climates, rough handling, and constant use. ToneSpec Pickups ensure that no matter the conditions, their tone remains exceptional. CONTACT US TO ORDER
Why Pros Upgrade Their Touring Guitars with Tone Specific Pickups
1. Bringing Vintage Magic to Modern Guitars
Many modern guitars lack the warmth, responsiveness, and depth of vintage instruments. ToneSpec Pickups transform these guitars, delivering that sought-after aged tone, full of character and feel.
2. Consistency Night After Night
On the road, pros need reliable gear. These pickups provide the same incredible dynamics and touch sensitivity every show, so players don’t have to fight their instrument to get the right tone.
3. Superior Touch Sensitivity & Dynamics
A touring guitarist plays with a range of attack and feel, and these pickups react instantly—soft picking delivers warm, articulate notes, while digging in brings out rich harmonics and sustain.
4. No Compromise on Tone
Just because a guitar is a production-line workhorse for the road doesn’t mean the tone should suffer. With ToneSpec Pickups, even a mid-tier modern guitar can sound like a vintage or luthier-made masterpiece.
5. Less Noise, More Reliability
Touring stages come with electrical interference, different backline setups, and unpredictable environments. These pickups are designed to reduce noise while enhancing clarity, so the tone stays pure no matter the venue.
PRO TONE w/ ANY AMP OR DIRECT
One of the standout features of ToneSpec Blues Strat Pickups is their ability to deliver exceptional tone in any setup—whether you're playing through a high-end tube amp, a solid-state combo, a digital modeler, or even recording direct into a console. These pickups bring out the soul of your playing no matter the signal chain. CONTACT US TO ORDER
1. Vintage Warmth & Harmonic Richness in Any Setup
Many modern pickups sound sterile or overly bright without a tube amp, but ToneSpecific Blues Stratocaster Pickups maintain their organic warmth and dynamic response in any environment. Whether you're running through a solid-state amp, digital profiler, or direct into an interface, they retain the classic, soulful Strat tone with rich harmonics and natural sustain.
2. Unmatched Touch Sensitivity & Dynamics, Even Without Tubes
Most players associate touch sensitivity and dynamics with tube amps, but these pickups are designed to react to your playing no matter the amp type. Even with a solid-state or digital setup, they preserve the expressiveness and responsiveness that blues players demand.
3. Smooth Highs, Full Mids & Tight Lows—No Harshness or Mud
Many digital rigs and solid-state amps can make pickups sound harsh or flat, but Tone Specific Blues Strat Pickups are voiced for smooth highs, full-bodied mids, and tight, controlled bass. This means: ✅ No icepick treble, even with clean solid-state amps or direct recording. ✅ No muddy lows, even with higher gain settings on digital modelers. ✅ Balanced mids that sit perfectly in a mix without extra EQ adjustments.
4. Studio-Ready Tone When Recording Direct
Going direct into a recording console can often expose a regular pickup’s weaknesses, making some sound thin, brittle, or lifeless. ToneSpecific Blues Strat Pickups retain their warmth, sustain, and articulation, delivering a full, mix-ready tone straight from the guitar. Whether using an analog preamp or a digital audio workstation (DAW), they provide a record-ready sound.
5. Perfect for Modern Rigs Without Losing Vintage Soul
With more players using modeling amps, profiler units, and digital recording setups, having pickups that translate real feel and tone through any system is crucial. ToneSpec Blues Strat Pickups excel in any format, allowing blues players to embrace modern technology without sacrificing authentic, vintage-inspired tone. Whether you're playing through a boutique tube amp, a budget solid-state combo, a Kemper, a Fractal, or straight into a DAW, ToneSpec Blues Strat Pickups deliver rich, expressive, and dynamic tone every time. No other pickups give you this level of touch sensitivity, warmth, and clarity—regardless of what you plug into.
BLUES TONE DONE RIGHT
ToneSpec Blues Strat Pickups aren’t just another set of pickups—they’re the only choice for serious blues guitarists who demand the ultimate in feel, expression, and tone. These pickups don’t just sound good; they respond to your playing with an unmatched level of dynamics and touch sensitivity, giving you tone you can feel with every note.
Whether you’re coaxing out soulful bends, digging in for gritty Texas blues, or rolling back the volume for sweet, glassy cleans, these pickups translate every nuance of your touch into rich, organic tone. The dynamic response is second to none—soft picking delivers warm, articulate notes, while digging in unleashes a harmonically rich, singing sustain.
With ToneSpec Blues Stratocaster Pickups, your guitar doesn’t just produce sound—it breathes, sings, and growls with a voice that’s as unique as your playing. If you’re serious about the blues, there’s simply no other option. CONTACT US TO ORDER
Alnico Magnets - Period Correct
We meticulously select only the highest-quality materials. Our pickups feature vintage-correct Alnico magnets—the very best available.
Magnet Wire - Vintage Style
Period-accurate magnet wire manufactured to the precise thickness found in legendary pickups of the 1950s and 1960s.
Bobbins & Alloys
Materials we use is a precise recreation of those original vintage materials, carefully chosen to deliver authentic tonal character and unmatched responsiveness.
Potting
We have proprietary potting techniques that eliminate unwanted feedback and noise while retaining the lively character of vintage pickups. This is a big part of the ToneSpec magic & why nothing else on the market compares.
Output
Unlike mass production manufacturers, we are artisans & choose not to disclose pickup output ratings as we recognizing them as meaningless to real musicians and producers who genuinely understand tone.
If you're serious about tone, stop chasing meaningless numbers and start trusting your ears. Players are so inspired by our pickups that they've flooded youtube with more sound demos of our pickups than any other pickups on the market today--that alone should tell you how important our pickups are to those who are serious about top-shelf tone.
Rest assured, however, the output of each ToneSpec pickup faithfully matches that of iconic vintage pickups—lower than modern "high-output" pickups, yet more than capable of effortlessly driving your amplifier into musical and expressive tones.
Specs: The Truth
At ToneSpec, we understand that most pickup manufacturers rely heavily on published specifications as a marketing gimmick, targeting beginners and those unfamiliar with the nuances of genuine tone. These competitors typically source the cheapest possible materials and blindly wind pickups to predetermined specs. The result is invariably disappointing—lifeless pickups that fail to inspire, prompting confused players to move on quickly to the next set of heavily marketed, underperforming pickups.
We refuse to play that game & we've made a few enemies among those in the guitar pickup industry. So much so, we've heard they pay their friends on guitar forums to bash us and spread hate. Pros know our pickups are the industry standard, the problem is pros make a small slice of the market and these unscrupulous but savvy competitors work hard to confuse beginners and intermediate players with their misinformation and smear campaings.
Our goal at ToneSpec is simple yet uncompromising: creating professional-quality gear designed specifically for professional musicians. Seasoned players understand that truly great pickups can't be defined merely by specs on a sheet. Instead, professionals prioritize responsiveness, dynamic sensitivity, and how pickups interact organically with their playing style, pedals, and amplifiers.
ToneSpec Approach - Must See TV
Stage Worthy
Life as a Professional Guitarist is filled with ups and downs. All gigs and tours end eventually, this reality makes every performance an audition. Top Pros know this & this is why they suffer over every detail.
You've spent a lifetime finding the right instrument, don't come up short with stock or average sounding pickups. Top Pros realize that an amplifiers circuitry actually starts in your guitar, precisely at the location of your pickups. Anything less than the best in your guitar will make your tone less than it should be.
From Nashville to LA, Austin to NYC, Brazil to Japan top touring Pros load up all of their main gigging guitars with Tone Specific Pickups. After hearing these pickups, you'll feel the same. Just take a listen.....
LIVE ON STAGE
Studio Ready
In this era of technology, everyone seems to have a home recording studio. As a result, the session scene has never been more competitive. If you want to make it these days, then you need to make every note count. Top Session Players understand this & choose Tone Specific to equip all of their main studio guitars.
Your next session date might be in a real studio. The producer might ask you to just bring your guitar, when you show up they might have you plug into a modeler or computer rig. If you show up with average pickups, you might not get a second chance. Our pickups are optimized to work well with vintage style amps as well as modern modeling digital devices. This is why serious session guitarists use Tone Specific Pickups.
RECORDING SESSION
Luthier Approved
Pro Guitarists & Luthiers have a few things in common. They both work in very competitive fields & the both want their instruments to sound as good as possible.
Luthiers spend years perfecting their craft & many hours testing various hardware and components to get the best out of their instruments. We are honored that so many top luthiers and guitar builders choose to use Tone Specific Pickups. Stephen Marchione discusses his approach to crafting some of the worlds finest guitars in the video below.
BUILDING A MASTERPIECE - STEPHEN MARCHIONE
Huge Tone. Huge Sweet Spot.
Our pickups are designed to sound great in the guitar in which they are installed. Whether you like to put them closer to the strings our further away, your tone will remain dynamic, warm and touch-sensitive. These pickups let the sounds in your head shine through the speaker with sweet tone and singing sustain.
They make a good guitar sound great and a great guitar sound amazing. More than a few top pro's have reported a huge improvement by dropping these into their vintage guitars.
You Have to Hear It to Believe it
The love for our pickups by Professional Guitarists has been well documented. Until you hear and feel these pickups for yourself, you'll never really understand why serious guitarists use our pickups in all of their main guitars.
The amount of dynamic range you can cover just by moving your guitars volume knob or by hitting the strings hard or softly is amazing. This is what separates our pickups from all others. It's a real game changer for serious tone connoisseurs and pro guitarists.
If you want to really understand the dynamic range & harmonic content of our pickups, you need to take a moment to listen to the video's below.
Unlock Dynamic Tone w/ Your Picking Hand
Clean to Dirty w/ Your Guitars Volume Knob
Add Warmth & Retain Clarity when Rolling Back Tone Knob.
Design Process Video - Must Watch for Serious Players
Every Pickup is Optimized for Something—Intentional or Not
In the guitar pickup market, each product is inherently optimized toward a specific goal, whether the manufacturer acknowledges it or not. Unfortunately, nearly all other pickups makers optimize their pickups primarily for profit, using inexpensive components combined with marketing hype with a focus on irrelevant specs like Ohm readings. In these cases, genuine tone quality becomes secondary, resulting in pickups that often fail to deliver authentic, inspiring sounds
ToneSpec's Intentional Optimization
At ToneSpec, we approach optimization deliberately and intentionally. Rather than pursuing profit margins or mass-market appeal, we meticulously design and craft pickups to be specifically optimized for distinct musical genres, particular eras of music, or compatibility with specialized gear.
Genre-Specific Optimization: Pickups tailored precisely to the sonic character needed for specific music genres—from classic blues warmth to high-gain metal clarity.
Era-Specific Optimization: Authentic recreations capturing the unique sonic signatures from iconic musical periods, providing players with genuinely vintage-accurate tone.
Gear-Specific Optimization: Pickups engineered to perfectly complement particular amps, pedals, or guitars, ensuring seamless compatibility and maximized tonal synergy.
Clone Optimization: Meticulously cloned legendary pickup designs by renowned craftsmen such as Alan Hamel, Virgil Arlo, Tom Holmes, and Peter Florance. These carefully crafted clones capture the exact nuances and characteristics that made the originals highly coveted, providing guitarists with faithful recreations of iconic tones that are difficult or impossible to obtain.
At ToneSpec, we’re not just selling pickups—we’re curating intentional, authentic tonal experiences with the goal of helping pros produce higher quality music and helping amateurs join the ranks of guitarists with professional level tone.
The Difference - Amazing Tone
When comparing our pickups to other pickups, the great players hear the difference right away. It seems the better the player, the more excited they get after hearing our pickups in their guitar. This is the same reason so many pro's equipped all of their guitars with our pickups. Many of these guys even ditch their vintage pickups in favor of our pickups.
Sound is something you hear. Tone is something you feel. This knowledge drives everything we do. If you realize this, then you've arrived & you'll be blown away by our work. Marty5150 explains this phenomenon in the video below.
Demand for our pickups from Pro Players & Luthiers/Builders is enough to sustain us as a company. In an effort to reduce stress we've considered only taking orders from Pro's & Luthiers but a big part of the joy of comes from sharing great tone with the next wave of Pro's & other appreciative tone seekers from all around the globe.
A lot of companies offer more models than you can imagine. We think it is counter-productive to have more than handful of different flavors for each type of pickup. At some point some of the models are going to start sounding the same. Our pickup designs all sound different and are voiced in a way to help solve real-world musical problems.
If you are trying to sell a million sets of pickups a year, then it probably makes sense to have dozens models. Our focus is on making musical pickups that will agree with your musical vision for many years to come.
Some players have an idea of what their guitar needs to sound it’s best, others need a little help in deciding. To help you make an informed decision we’ve posted video’s that show the different models pickups being played by the same guitarist using one amp. This will help you hear the differences between the models.
Tonal Perfection is the Goal.
If you are like most Guitarists, then your Pickup Drawer is probably full. This is due to many failed attempts over the years to nail your desired tone. At some point in time, you probably came to the uneasy realization that “Close enough would have to be good enough”. Not having the perfect pickups for your style can be extremely frustrating. This frustration can limit your ability to create the tones and the music you’ve been hearing in your head.
Here at Tone Specific Guitar Pickups we feel your pain. We too have spent much of our lives chasing tones. In our quest for perfect tone our Pickup Drawers filled up too. Many of our friends had the same issue too. Fed up with over-hyped guitar pickups, we decided to take matters into our own hands.
The Art of Tone Perfected
We took the time to learn and master the art of hand-winding fantastic guitar pickups. This included working with top Professional Guitarists along with legendary luthiers, pickup winders and amp builders. To get it just right we had to really understand each part of the chain of tone and how each part interacted with the other parts. Taking this extra step enabled us to create pickups that sound great with vintage tube amps, modern tube amps, pedals, solid state amps, digital devices and even software.
During the learning process, we dumped our pickup drawers and started to reverse-engineering everything. There were some original vintage electric guitar pickups from the 50’s and 60’s as well as dozens of sets from the most prolific boutique winders. We learned the secrets of the stellar vintage guitar pickups and how to replicate them down to every tonal detail and nuance.
Tone over Hype.
During our research, the boutique pickups for the most part fell way short of the hype. Fearful of repeating the same mistakes of other winders, we took the time to find out why some of those pickups were so lifeless. There are few boutique winders doing some very special work, but what we've found is most of the big names are just wrapping wire around magnets as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Better Than Vintage?
That's what our customers are saying. It humbling but that was always the goal. Being just average was never a consideration. Our challenge was to build a line of incredible sounding Hand wound Electric Guitar Pickups made right here in the USA. These Hand Wound Guitar Pickups would at least need to have tone on par with the best guitar pickups ever made from the vintage era with enhanced dynamic and modern reliability. Now that’s a noble idea! An idea that sounds great on paper, but how do you get there? The answers were found in our study of the original vintage pickups from the 50’s & 60’s. Contrary to popular belief, not all of the Vintage Guitar Pickups were great, but there were a few very special examples. We dissected these special pickups and unlocked their secrets. We put this knowledge to use in every set we make.
After we identified what made certain guitar pickups great, we had to figure out how to replicate this greatness. It was a very difficult process that took years to master. Sometimes it seemed like a road without an end. Our conviction never softened and we continued to push forward. After we figured out how to make guitar pickups tonally equal to the best pickups vintage pickups, our work still wasn’t finished…
Dialed-In Tone
Now the guitar pickups had to be dialed to nail Specific Tones. Some of the tonal answers were easy because of the special designs we uncovered in our study of vintage pickups. Most tonal solutions were quite elusive and required a serious amount of trial and error. In the end, with the help of our friends and Beta testers, we got there!
Now every Guitarist can experience the joy of having vintage voiced pickups tailored for their preferred tonal style without paying crazy prices for inconsistent vintage pickups. Unlike the rest of the herd of boutique winders that just wrap wire around a bobbin to achieve a certain Ohm reading, we've taken painstaking path to tonal perfection. We welcome you to join us on this path. If you are thinking about tone……….Think Tone Specific!
You Have to Hear It to Believe it
The love for our pickups by Professional Guitarists has been well documented. Until you hear and feel these pickups for yourself, you'll never really understand why serious guitarists use our pickups in all of their main guitars.
The amount of dynamic range you can cover just by moving your guitars volume knob or by hitting the strings hard or softly is amazing. This is what separates our pickups from all others. It's a real game changer for serious tone connoisseurs and pro guitarists.
If you want to really understand the dynamic range & harmonic content of our pickups, you need to take a moment to listen to the video's below.
Unlock Dynamic Tone w/ Your Picking Hand
Clean to Dirty w/ Your Guitars Volume Knob
Retain Clarity & Add Warmth When Rolling Back Tone Knob.
Misconceptions About Specs
Internet Chat Rooms are full of amateurs that rant about topics they don't understand. One of their favorite topics to discuss is guitar pickups. These folks spend hours upon hours discussing magnets and Ohm readings of pickups as if they were an appropriate indicator of tone. This is a ridiculous line of thinking. Just imagine if people assumed the wattage and speaker size of an amp where the only indicators of final tone. Obviously there is more to it but some people with way too much free time like to pretend to be experts because they know how to turn on a multimeter.
If you are serious about tone, you'd be wise not to fall victim to this amateur way of thinking.
Serious Tone Chasers and Professional guitars know that the most important aspects of guitar tone are the voicing, the dynamics, the harmonic content. Most pickups made these days are stiff, lack dynamics & harmonic content. Lackluster tone may work for guys that judge tone with their multimeter, but for real musicians that use their ears, nothing but the best will do. This is where we come in...
We've spared no expense in making the most dynamic and touch-sensitive pickups ever made. We've voiced them a few different ways to match playing styles and/or balance out the inherent tone of your guitar. We also created the "Deluxe" series which covers just about any style & will work great with just about any wood combination. This is the series that most pros use for their #1 guitar.
Stage Worthy
Life as a Professional Guitarist is filled with ups and downs. All gigs and tours end eventually, this reality makes every performance an audition. Top Pros know this & this is why they suffer over every detail.
You've spent a lifetime finding the right instrument, don't come up short with stock or average sounding pickups. Top Pros realize that an amplifiers circuitry actually starts in your guitar, precisely at the location of your pickups. Anything less than the best in your guitar will make your tone less than it should be.
From Nashville to LA, Austin to NYC, Brazil to Japan top touring Pros load up all of their main gigging guitars with Tone Specific Pickups. After hearing these pickups, you'll feel the same. Just take a listen.....
LIVE ON STAGE
Studio Ready
In this era of technology, everyone seems to have a home recording studio. As a result, the session scene has never been more competitive. If you want to make it these days, then you need to make every note count. Top Session Players understand this & choose Tone Specific to equip all of their main studio guitars.
Your next session date might be in a real studio. The producer might ask you to just bring your guitar, when you show up they might have you plug into a modeler or computer rig. If you show up with average pickups, you might not get a second chance. Our pickups are optimized to work well with vintage style amps as well as modern modeling digital devices. This is why serious session guitarists use Tone Specific Pickups.
RECORDING SESSION
Luthier Approved
Pro Guitarists & Luthiers have a few things in common. They both work in very competitive fields & the both want their instruments to sound as good as possible.
Luthiers spend years perfecting their craft & many hours testing various hardware and components to get the best out of their instruments. We are honored that so many top luthiers and guitar builders choose to use Tone Specific Pickups. Stephen Marchione discusses his approach to crafting some of the worlds finest guitars in the video below.
