Single coil options explained

Potting and tone

What is potting?	Potting is when you soak the pickup in a substance like wax, lacquer, shellac, or epoxy. This stops the wires inside the pickup from vibrating and it helps to prevent feedback when using high gain or high volume.
Tone of pickup with No potting	Pickups that are not potted have an airy quality to them that makes them more alive and dynamic than potted pickups. Unpotted pickups also have a tendency to feedback if you use too much gain or play too close to your amp.
Wax potting	Wax potting gives you a tighter tone and it's a very effective way to get rid of microphonic feedback
Shellac potting	Shellac potting, done right, will slightly suppresses the very highest frequencies while bringing out the upper midrange for a nice, vintage, "brown" tone. Shellac is much warmer and fuller than wax but it doesn't protect from feedback as well as wax. I mix my own shellac from dry lack flakes and I add a few special ingredients to maximize the vintage tone.
Why I recommend shellac potting for vintage tone when real vintage pickups were wax potted.	I recommend shellac potting for the best vintage tone because the ALNICO magnets we use in pickups today are not the same as vintage alnico. Sometime in the late 60's or early 70's the process of making alnico changed and so did the tone from the magnets. My special mixture of shellac helps to shape the tone of the pickup and compensate for the fact that modern magnets produce more of the very highest frequencies.

Magnets Shape and Stagger

Beveled magnets on single coils	Beveling single coil magnets will focused the pickups magnetic field directly under the string. This will increase the pickup's output and make the pickup brighter which ultimately results in a more modern tone. Because the magnetic field is focused, bending strings pushes them out of the field which results in a scooping effect that was very common in the late 60's when Fender started using smaller magnets.
Non-beveled magnets on single coils	Leaving the tops of the magnets flat widens the magnetic field giving you a fuller, warmer tone but less output.
Vintage stagger	Vintage stagger is when the magnet so that you will get even tone from a fretboard with a 7.25" radius an a wound G string. Very few modern players use a wound G so this stagger doesn't give most players vintage tone.
Modern stagger	This stagger compensates for the fact that most players use a solid G string. It will balance the strings if you are using a 7.25" fretboard radius but will not sound balanced if you have a flatter fretboard radius.
Flush poles	This is when all the magnets are equal height. If your fretboard radius is 9" or greater then you will have the most "vintage" tone with flush poles. If your fretboard radius is less than 9" then you will want a staggered set.
Reverse stagger	This is available in vintage or modern stagger and it just means I install the magnets backwards. It is recommended for left handed people that want staggered poles or for people looking for the unbalanced tone of Hendrix.
Custom aged	As a magnet ages is loses magnetic strength. The stronger magnets have more output, more high end and sound more aggressive. Less magnetic pull means wormer tone, smoother, less aggressive tone. Most of my single coils come with the pickups charged to about 2/3 of their maximum capacity. If you want extra high end I can charge them stronger or if you want a more mellow tone I can charge them less.

Other options

Cloth covered vs 2 conductor shielded lead wire.	Shielded wire will reduce hum when you are using lots of gain but the 2 conductor wire is fragile and more difficult to install. Cloth covered wire is vintage correct and much easier to install but it doesn't have the hum reducing effect of cloth covered wire.
Reverse wound reveres polarity middle (RWRP)	Having an RWRP middle pickup will give you hum canceling when you are in position 2 and 4 on your strat. This is great for strat players that need to crank the gain from time to time or for people that play gigs in clubs with florescent lighting. The drawback of RWRP is that when it cancels the hum it also cancels musical tones and thins down your sound. Most people that play a strat never ever use positions 2 and 4; ever wonder why? If you don't get and RWRP middle then you won't have hum canceling in 2 and 4 but you will have a nice, smooth, full tone that most people really like.
Calibrated bridge	The strings vibrate more over the neck pickup so the neck pickup can have more volume even if it's a lower output pickup. Vintage pickups were all wound to the same DC resistance and when you flipped into the bridge position the tone was noticeably thin and the volume was much lower than that of the neck. My calibrated bridge pickup is meant to thicken the tone in the bridge and increase volume.