We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Wolf. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.

Michael , appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been a musician my entire life. I’ve been in numerous bands and have always been in love with the guitar in particular. Coming from the underground DIY music scene, I have always tried to do as much as possible for myself. I tried working towards building entire guitars but found quickly that to produce a quality product at a customer friendly price point was not something I was equipped to produce. So I turned to pickups which is the single biggest piece of a guitars sound.Some guitars in particular, I’ve never been happy with how they sound. So after spending many hours researching the history and construction process for guitar pickups, I set out to fix some issues I had with those pickup types. Specifically, Stratocaster pickups to start with. My favorite type of guitar is the Gibson Les Paul and I love the thick rich tone they produce. Strats on the other hand, tend to be thin and lacking in output. So I set out to specifically address those issues with a design I hadn’t seen before.

Michael , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been playing music for over 30 years and love a wide variety of types-and have played many styles. I make guitar pickups for players and modders not for people who are chasing the absolutely vintage correct materials. There’s a tone of companies already doing that and doing it well. Instead, I provide an American made handwound pickup made with quality materials that are affordable for the average player. I strive to overcome the “I like it but…” aspect that exists with many types of pickups. To achieve that, I always go back to the original specs as a starting point and based on what I want to improve, I’ll alter a few specs to make it produce the sound I’m after.
For example, for Strat pickups since I wanted to improve the mid response and have more output, I used a unique blend of magnet types and even different beveling on the pole pieces to “tune” the output of each string. Then I wound it to the point it’s on the hotter end of vintage and the result is a set of pickups that sound like a classic Strat, just thicker and more punchy. Great for that Texas Blues sound SRV was famous for. They just sing. It took that guitar from my least favorite to one I can’t seem to put down.
Same with my Tele pickups, most people complain about a muddy/useless neck pickup. With a different wire choice, different magnet type and wind amount I have an amazingly clear Tele neck pickup in my Outlaw set.
In a sentence, I make pickups that will help bring out the best in that guitar and from your playing. There’s that special symbiotic relationship between the player, the guitar and the sound. By fixing some shortcomings inherent in the pickups, it will sound better and that will result in the player feeling and responding better and thus playing their absolute best.
Being a lifelong player and modded I want to make that experience accessible to people without the exorbitant boutique custom shop prices. Everything from the design to pricing is done with the player in mind.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

I do the final construction and quality control personally. I had to learn the business from the ground up. Luckily we live in the age of the internet and so there are multitudes of resources available that would have been mind blowing a few decades ago. Of course, there is lots of bogus information as well, but that is easily sorted by looking at many sources. From data sheets from the original Fender and Gibson factories, from others in the business and even from groups on Facebook, Reddit, etc , there are tons of other experience and knowledge to leverage. And being a lifelong tinkerer, I’ve always found that hands on learning and learning from failure is the most useful. You can read and research but until you do it yourself that’s all academic. You did it and it doesn’t work? Great. How can you make it work? Or it did work but you want it a bit different, what should I change to do that? That’s where you develop your craft and the know how. You have to learn to learn from your mistakes and not let them defeat or deter you from the end goal.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I love self-improvement books (probably a more accurate term than self-help). Some examples of some that have impacted my mindset are classics like Napoleon Hill- Think and Grow Rich, T. Harv Ecker- Millionaire Mindset, and Robert Kiyosaki-Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I’ve also learned about marketing from Russel Brunson. The great thing is there’s so many good resources to glean from. Maybe it’s only an idea or two but take that and apply it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bigskytoneworks.company.site/
• Instagram: @bigskytoneworksofficial
• Facebook: Big Sky Toneworks