Lipstick pickup

[1] The original lipstick-tube pickups were, in fact, manufactured using real lipstick tubes,[2] and were featured on Danelectro, Danelectro's Coral series, and guitars that were later marketed through Sears, Roebuck and Company department stores under the name Silvertone.

Unlike a traditional guitar pickup that uses a plastic or fiber bobbin as a form for winding its coil, the lipstick-tube pickup has its coil wrapped around an alnico VI bar magnet, and then wrapped in tape, usually a cellophane-type tape on vintage units, before being inserted into the metal tube casing.

To overcome this situation, a variety of aftermarket lipstick-tube pickups have been offered that are the same general width as the common Stratocaster style single-coils, with a 2.77 in (7.04 cm) wide tube casing.

[a] More recently, Fender themselves introduced a Stratocaster with Seymour Duncan designed lipstick-tube pickups for their Squier line, called the Surf Stratocaster and a Fender factory special run (FSR) American Standard Stratocaster with Seymour Duncan SLS-1 lipstick pickups, as well as offering the same SLS-1 pickups as a Custom Shop option.

The sound of lipstick-tube pickups is frequently described as "jangly" and is most closely associated with surf, rockabilly, and jangle pop.