Strat® Pickups

ST Sets

After two decades of producing pickups for the Strat I can say that this is still the greatest challenge! From my experience one has to be really exact here, since you only can influence 10 parameters to do the job right.

In the beginning of my career I was trying create pickups for my ‘65 Stratocaster, so it would sound like my ‘62 Strat. When I realized that the body of my ‘65 was made out of Swamp Ash I’ve had already learned so much about making Strat pickups, at this thrilling work resulted in the production in my first own pickup set. The ST 60 Set!

The attached soundfiles are by Rainer Gaffrey (see Soundclick.com/flatjamboo trax) Fistaval you will here only the neckpickup, then the middle pickup followed by the bridgepickup and last but not least again the neckpickup. Have fun and enjoy

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ST60 This is my best selling set! The perfect all-round pickups and wound in homage to the famous pickups you find on early ´60s Stratocasters with a rosewood fretboard. From Hank Marvin to SRV, Gallagher or Knopfler – the ST60 is your perfect mate and will fit like a glove! The tone will always stay defined with unbelievable string seperation, clarity and punch even on higher gain settings! Lot´s of Twang included! No ice-pickin´ highs, but a chimey and sweet top end that won´t get lost in the mix!

ST50 These pickups deliver Leo´s legendary ´50s Strat sound when they were only made of Ash with a one piece Maple neck! Bright and bell like tones with less mids and tons of twang on the low end strings! A fine and trebly bridge pickup that avoids sounding thin, harsh or brittle.From Buddy Holly to Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy: You really must dare to play ´em! But if you love these unforgettable ´50s sounds you can´t resist…..

The ST67 set truly represents the typical Strat sounds between 1966 and 1973. These pickups were wound with Plain Enamel wire instead of Formvar. Normally Plain Enamel was used for Tele pickups and that´s why the ST67 Set soundwise have some kind of Tele midrange. The low-end is more focused and a little bit thinner sounding compared to the ST60s. The ST67 pickups are more Hendrix and Blackmore than SRV……the neck pickup begs for some silky Gilmour leads. The ST67 wants you to play the classic English amps: Marshall Plexi, Hiwatt, Vox – and turn them up!

ST Blug Signature Set. Europe´s best Strat-player Thomas Blug was looking for an authentic sounding replacement middle pickup for his ´61 Stratocaster. The original one had something missing and lacked character especially in the in-bewteen positions 2 and 4. When Thomas found an original middle pickup from 1966, he asked Andreas Kloppmann to make an exact replica of that pickup but RwrP wound. That was the birth of the Blug Signature Set, which contains perfect replicas of a 1961 neck pickup, a 1966 RwrP middle- and a 1962 bridge pickup. With Thomas Blug´s growing reputation as a real master of the Stratocaster his signature set is becoming more and more popular among tone aficionados from all over the world.

Many thanks to Andreas Oberhofer for this Soundfile (cut by R.Gaffrey).

(To hear the versatile colors of this set of pickups in the complete tune, please follow this link!)

The Errorhead SSH Set Marcus Deml, one of the most versatile and innovative guitarists of our time is an inspired user of Andreas Kloppmann’s Pickups sinc 2008. This productively coorperation started during an engagement on the Frankfurt Fair 2008.
After having put a HB59 Set in his R7 Les Paul, he decided to equip his beloved 1963 Fender Stratocaster with a Set of ST60 RwrP.For his black SSH ‘82 Strat Deml and me created a very special Set. It is a mixture of the revived Real62 Strat Set (the very first Kloppmann Strat Set made between 2001and 2003) and a special new designed F-Spaced Humbucker, the HB-DML. The Real 62 Strat Pickups do sound a bit more “meaty” than aST60 Set and help thinner soundung Strats to gain reasonable Output.
The HB-DML has a 4-Conductor wire and therefor delivers “the best of both worlds”: A nice straty single coil sound the legendary Kloppmann humbucker lead-tone.

See the YouTube Video of the Errorhead SSH Set by Session Music

ST60 Tillcaster Bridge. This pickup was a custom made homework for my friend Till Hoheneder, a German musician, comedian & author. He wanted to have a typical Strat bridge pickup with the gain and midrange of a good Telecaster bridge pickup in order to compensate the loss of gain when changing from his Esquire to his Strat during a set. Mission impossible? So I came up with the ST60 Tillcaster bridge pickup: Although slightly overwound it´s sonically a typical Kloppmann! Gainy with a chimey top end, punchy and dirty – but always with clarity, definition and superb string seperation! And the best: the ST Tillcaster has not lost his Strat identity. A perfect choice for fans of Billy Gibbons or Keith Richards and a best kept secret for Hardtail Strats.

Yes. Yes! Yeeeeeaaaah! It´s stratty, it has the Fullerton bite and the typical hollow honk within the 2 & 4 position and yet something sounds different! Right! The Tillcaster-Set screams! Mean, lean and dirty! Think of Buddy Guy…Jimmy Vaughan and all those Strat guys who have this thick, throaty and earthy sound. This set is highly recommended for those who like to plug their baby straight into an already cooking amp. It´s all about pick attack dynamics…finding different degrees of drive with the pickups and the Volume pot. What sets the Tillcaster-Set apart from other slight overwound pickups is the fact that it able to deliver classic cleans, too! Listen to the soundfiles. These pickups have tons of soul and characterwise they are more like a proud, tough and dirty underdog - but if you sympathize with these kind of species you´ll love them like no other!

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Strat™ Replacement Sets

Set	Pickups
ST 60	Neck 1960, Middle 1964, Bridge 1962 (Formvar)
ST 50	Neck 1956 , Middle 1957, Bridge 1959 (Formvar)
ST 67	Neck 1967 , Middle 1966, Bridge 1965 (plain enamel)
ST 60 Thomas Blug Signature Set	Neck 1960(FV), Middle 1966(PE), Bridge 1962(FV)
ST 60 Tillcaster Bridge	Hot Bridge (Formvar)