Vaughn's Velvet Tele Pickups! Reviews

I bought my first set of Velvets a year ago, installed them in my ash/rosewood Tele, was completely floored by the sound, and only now am I adding this review. But just yesterday I installed my second set of Velvets in a Thinline, so maybe I will add my second review here soon, more timely-like.

So first off, the guitar has a heavy Mexican-made ash body, a Japanese maple/rosewood neck, with vintage bridge/saddles. I had just sold Am Std Tele I was going to put the Velvets in, so I cobbled together this partscaster with leftover parts. I used an AC15 twin (Reapers!) and an '81 Super Champ (G10c). In other words, nothing insane, overpriced, weird or rare.

I only had a 5-way super-switch on hand, so in addition to the basic 3-way switch options I wired the pickups with two extra positions- 1. in series 2 out-of-phase and in series

Oh, and other Tele pickups I've tried- Bare Knuckle: Boss, Flat 50s, Piledriver. Lollar: Special T's. Creamery: Broadcaster, Baby '71. Fender: Twisted Tele, Jerry Donahue/Alnico II, CS Texas Specials, handfuls of stock Amercian Standard, Mexican, and Fender Japan pickups, AVRI '62. Etc.

After a year, initial impressions from the honeymoon period have persisted- these pickups are rich, aggressive, clear and textured. And still my favorite Tele pickups by a mile and a moon.

By 'rich' I mean that the attack is heavier, less piercing and strident, than most Tele pickups. Also that the notes bloom; after the initial attack, some of the quieter tones, the ones 'between the strings,' arrive with a rumble that gives the the whole sound a 3-D quality. The compression in the bridge is especially 'rich;' it's incredibly rare to hear a pickup which really growls and blooms and yet still captures the Tele spank and slap.

'Agressive' to me characterizes a pickup's responsiveness to pick attack as well as the presence of muscular lower-mids/lows and ringing, cutting upper mids and highs. The neck pickup in this respect was surprisingly percussive and open- I love a standard covered Tele (or Strat) neck pickup, but this was something special, better. The bridge pickup simply rips. Full frontal.

'Clear' to me means good string and note separation, with lots of color in the upper-mids and highs. The Velvet bridge, as promised in the description, has no icepick, no jagged crystalline slivers, but plenty of cutting glassy spank. Not overly smooth or tidy. The neck, as hinted at above, has a lot of the clarity and airiness of a Strat neck, but with a thick rumbling menace underneath.

On to 'texture,' which is a hard one to characterize, but to my ears these pickups have a stone-like, almost gravelly quality, like you only hear with good Alnico II magnets, where it feels like all the frequencies are on the move, rumbling around each other. It's a great sound, thick but with plenty of interstices that give the overall tone an open expansive quality. Of course, there's plenty of 'woodiness' and 'glassiness' (esp in the bridge) but overall my impression is one of earth and air. Not spiritually or anything- that's just what it sounds like in my head :)

The closest pickups I can think to compare the Velvets to would be the Lollar Special T's, which are more 'gravelly,' almost too granular and airy for me, and the SD Jerry Donahue/Alnico Pro II set, which has a similar clarity and attack, but can sound a bit tidy compared to the Velvets, as least in terms of muscle and rumble. All three are great sets, of course.

That's it for now. I hope to add some more soon about the different positions, and how the pickups interact with each other, so hopefully this thread will continue and people will add their own experiences with and questions for Vaughn about these pickups. I'm pretty excited about them.