Leslie West Mountain of Tone Pickup

Leslie West Mountain of Tone Pickup

When it comes to electric guitars, it’s common knowledge that the single most impactful change you can make is the pickups. There are other changes you can make as well that can change the flavor of your tone, but pickups will produce the most drastic change.

This post is focused on humbucker pickups. For years I’ve been chasing that perfect tone. I’ve tried so many pickups it’s ridiculous. I finally found what works for me. When Dean Guitars was developing the Leslie West Signature series guitars, Leslie insisted on a unique pickup to set them apart from everything else available. Dean stepped up to the plate and developed the “Leslie West Mountain of Tone” (MOT) pickup. When I got my first LW Signature guitar I was blown away at the amazing tone I was getting.

But why is this thing so different? The answer is that it captures Leslie’s signature tone as heard on his classic songs like “Mississippi Queen” and “Theme for an Imaginary Western” to name just two. He got this tone from using old Les Paul Juniors equipped with a hot wound P90 pickup. The problem with P90s is that they are a single coil design. Single coils produce a 60 cycle hum.

For his signature guitar Leslie said it must be a single pickup guitar that produced that hot P90 tone without the “hum” and the only way to kill that “hum” is with a “humbucker” design. Dean Guitars pickup designer Pat Baker found a way to make this happen. To my knowledge he has never divulged any details as to how he did it. He won’t even say what type of wire he uses to wind them. But what he came up with is a smokin’ hot pickup that got the seal of approval from the big man himself

The Leslie West Mountain of Tone pickup sounds AMAZING. Here are the specs and a sound clip for you to check out.

These are available direct from Dean, also Amazon, and there’s a bunch of em for sale on Reverb.com. All are available at a price that won’t break the bank.

Position: Bridge / G-Spaced
Bobbin/Cvr Color: Satin Nickel, Gold. No cover styles Black/Black, Black/Cream
Cable: Single Conductor
Magnet: Alnico 5
DC Resistance: 16.57K

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