There's something mysterious about the sound of a great old Strat® pickup. It has 60-cycle hum, and magnet-pull can be a problem, but the way notes jump out of the amp and then sustain is so appealing that thousands of players won't do it any other way.
We wanted to capture the qualities everyone digs about the originals, but we wanted a few other things, too. Most players use a plain "G" string (regardless of gauge), so we developed a magnet stagger balanced to match today's string sets. We also insulated the coil from the magnets so the pickup can't short out, and the Blue Velvet™ can be safely phase-reversed. Did we lose the original sound? There's no mystery about it: the Blue Velvet™ still sounds great. The Class of '55™ is our pick for clean country sound, but the Blue Velvet™ is our first choice for blues.