Vintage-Guitar
I opened up a 65 Fender Stratocaster this morning and on close inspection of the grey bottom pickups I noticed a AY signature on two of them.
Abigail Ybarra was employed by Fender in the late 50's and as far as I know she still has an affiliation with the Fender Custom Shop.
Has any one had any experience with some of her more recent pickups or any interesting facts about the pickup Queen?
AlanRatcliffe
Abby has been with Fender for over 50 years (on and off - she went to work for jackson in the mid '80s) - which is her main claim to fame. Otherwise she's a very experienced production line winder who winds a great sounding pickup, but has never been in on the pickup design side. Fender occasionally trots her out for marketing purposes and she does wind the odd occasional set herself. Apparently a very nice lady.
While not as highly regarded amongst aficionados as the pickups wound by "Josie", the Fender marketing hype around Abby has made her original pickups wound in the 50's and '60s quite valuable (and definitely a selling point for a guitar that has them). Don Mare has said that Abby's winds are louder, but the pickups wound by "Josie" (who is a bit of a mystery woman, no-one knows who she was) were magical - the archetypical "early '60s Fender" pickups of legend.
Abby works for the CS these days, but doesn't do much of the winding herself anymore. She supervises a small team and the new pickups initialled AY are not wound by her - only the ones signed "Abby" with a date.
