Two years after replicating his '50s Mother Strat pickups, the Custom Shop has turned its attention to Sayce's harder-hitting 1963 counterpart.
Philip Sayce plays two legendary vintage Stratocasters: Mother and Big Daddy. While both are 1963 guitars, they couldn’t sound more different. Mother runs a set of slightly underwound ’58 pickups, airy and articulate. Big Daddy is the one Sayce reaches for when he wants mass: a 1963 sunburst Strat with its original neck and bridge pickups intact and a carefully matched early-1965 grey bottom middle pickup. In his own words, it plays “like a steamroller.”
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After the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop replicated the Mother pickup set in 2025, Big Daddy was the natural next step. The result is the Philip Sayce “Big Daddy” Stratocaster Pickup Set, with three pickups voiced to match the tone and the output and character of the originals after over 60 years of playing and ageing.
The set covers a full-bodied neck pickup, a greasy and expressive middle pickup, and a bridge pickup tuned to cut without going harsh. The bridge pickup required specific engineering, as on Sayce’s original guitar, the copper winding on the bridge pickup has made direct contact with the Alnico 5 magnets over decades of use, subtly smoothing the high end. To replicate that, Seymour Duncan’s engineering team soldered a 75pF micro-capacitor to the back of the pickup, shifting the resonant peak to reproduce the same sweet treble response.
The first 630 sets get the full limited-edition treatment: Custom Shop aged to match the look of the originals, with a certificate of authenticity signed by both Philip Sayce and Seymour W. Duncan, inside limited-edition packaging. All sets, limited or otherwise, carry Sayce’s signature pad-printed on the vintage-correct flatwork.
For players after that early-’60s Strat voice with some real muscle behind it, the Big Daddy set is available in Australia now through Australis Music Group.
