Dating pickups

[D_B_S]

Hi everyone, my first post...

I've been wondering for a while how people manage to date pickups unless they know they're take them directly from an all-original instrument. You often see pickups for sale on eBay, etc, with specific dates attached to them... So how do you date a random pickup when it has no serial number or any identifiable detail ?

The same goes for other guitar parts of course...

A few years back some one gave me a Tele Deluxe pickup, if there's anyway I could put a date on it, it would be cool.

Any ideas?

Cheers...

[Pepe Silvia]

I can't date pickups unless they came out of an original instrument, those filthy whores. 

[sookwinder]

because vintage pups usually had the date they were wound written on the bobbin

and/or

different era pups have different components
- black bobbins
- grey bobbins
- cloth wire
- plastic wire
- flat pole pieces
- staggered pole pieces
-  reverse wound  /  magnets upside down
- a big red sticker saying "to whom it may concern this pup was born on __/__/__"

[Kinx]

Hi, can anyone please help me with dating of this pickup? From what I found online so far, it seems that it was made '73, but I couldn't find proper manual how to decypher the pickup code.







the guitar is early 70s JM that's supposed to be all stock.

[Embenny]

Wow, a 9-year necropost might be the biggest I've seen on OSG.

CBS pickup codes were normally 6 digits and no official guide to them exists. According to an interview with Abigail Ybarra (who started winding for Fender in the 50's), the first two digits were an operator code, the second pair were the week of the year, and the last pair are the year.

The grey bobbin and plastic leads do look like the "CBS years" pickups I have seen, and the font of the stamp looks correct. It's possible that maybe yours was stamped "2" instead of "72", in which case you have an operator code of 18, a week code of 38 (mid-September), and a year of '72. That would make more sense than a date code of the last two digits, "82" - no jazzmasters were made by CBS in '82 to my knowledge.

[Kinx]

whoops, didn't notice the thread date while posting.

thanks for clarification ! it sure looks more like a '72 than '83