Photo: Robert Randolph & Jason Lollar | By Jamie Dickson, Guitar Mag / Yahoo | Poised and responsive, with a sonic vibe all of their own, Lollar is one of the few electric guitar pickup brands whose products we could identify almost blindfold. Whether it’s P-90s we’ve played in an Eastman semi on review or Tele pickups fitted to one of our modded creations, Lollars always seem to pull off the trick of being balanced yet never bland, clear yet never clinical, classic but never clone-like.
So when founder Jason Lollar said yes to an in-depth chat about his approach to designing and building pickups – both traditional and progressive – we were intrigued to find out more. We join him to delve deep into Lollar pickups from A to Z, ranging from his earliest days as a designer to his most recent designs.
How did you start making pickups?
“Well, I started building electric guitars in the mid-’70s. I went to Roberto-Venn [School of Luthiery] in Phoenix, Arizona, and they showed us how to make really rudimentary pickups, kind of like what Semie Mosrite used to make.
“They were made out of bits of plastic with a wood core and you’d glue it all together and drill it out. They had a little winder powered by a sewing-machine motor and a [model] train transformer. You were constantly getting shocked any time you touched that transformer…
“Anyways, after I went through that school, I kept building guitars through the ’80s and ’90s, and I was making pickups for most of them, too. It was saving me some money at the time and people liked them. Eventually, people started wanting me to make the pickups [as standalone products].
“I built about 50 guitars in the ’80s, but the pickups became popular and by the 2000s I wasn’t making instruments primarily any more, I was just making pickups. So it just started with me in my garage while I was working a day job. I was playing music at nights and then I’m working 20-hour days, sometimes 48 hours straight, and it grew out of that.”
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Read the rest of the interview here:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/apocalypse-happen-most-pickups-ever-142500462.html
Photo: Robert Randolph & Jason Lollar | https://www.facebook.com/LollarPickups/
“The apocalypse will happen before most of our pickups ever take a dump”: Jason Lollar on What Drives Him to Make Better Pickups Than Anything That’s Gone Before
