Long before the online buzz, there was just Virgil... a quiet amp and guitar tech who spent decades working with real players in Los Angeles, Austin, and Nashville. Guys who played for a living. The kind of men who could tell within one note if a pickup had that rare thing everyone talks about but can’t describe.

Much of his success was never advertised. It spread the old-fashioned way... word of mouth among the session men who lived on the edge of tone for a living. Players like Pat Buchanan in Nashville, who was already a legend before winning ACM Guitarist of the Year in 2005. Buchanan plays Virgil’s pickups in his main working guitars and swears by them. When someone like that gives a nod, other pros listen.

Soon the name found its way into the hands of Rick McRae, one of Austin’s most respected guitarists and longtime member of George Strait’s band, and Mike Gallaher, who had already made a name for himself in Texas after winning the Texas Tornado Award for Best Guitarist.....the same honor earned by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Johnson, Billy Gibbons, and Johnny Winter. Gallaher later moved to Nashville to work with Leon Russell, before being recruited by Joe Cocker. These were not collectors or tone chasers on internet forums. They were the kind of seasoned players who made a living with a single take and a good right hand. When they started showing up with guitars loaded with Virgil’s work, other players took notice.

In his younger years, Virgil had picked up the nickname “Arlo” because of his resemblance to a well-known musician. When it came time to sign his work, his real name simply wouldn’t fit on the back of a pickup. He wrote Virgil Arlo instead, and it stuck. He never cared about fame, and the pseudonym gave him a way to keep the world at arm’s length. For a man who valued his privacy above everything else, it made perfect sense. 

Old School Techniques

Every Virgil Arlo pickup begins the same way....by hand, by ear, and by feel. There are no automated winders, no CNC templates, and no shortcuts. Each coil is guided by tension, touch, and instinct. That’s what separates great pickups from everything else.

Virgil’s method doesn’t chase an exact year or serial number. He focused on feel, not formulas. Decades of restoring and listening to real vintage instruments taught him that none of those old pickups ever sounded the same, but the great ones all had a living, breathing quality that could be felt in the player’s hands long before the first note hit the amp.

He found that quality through balance. Every coil is wound under variable tension, a lost technique that shapes the response of each string and brings out natural compression without choking sustain. The magnets are aged and charged to precise field strength, never too hot or sterile. The wire is tensioned just enough to create micro-variances, the subtle inconsistencies that make the best vintage pickups so alive.

Each pickup is then tuned by ear, not by meter. That’s why the response isn’t flat like most aftermarket pickups, it’s musical. The lows stay tight, the mids bloom, and the highs ring with clarity that never turns harsh. The more dynamic your hands, the more the pickup gives back.

This approach creates a natural voice that reveals the character of the wood and the soul of the player. Unlike modern designs that mask everything under output and EQ, a true Virgil Arlo pickup translates the smallest details, the way a note blooms, the way a string rings, the way the note pushes back.....some people call this "feel".

Whether it’s a 1952 Tele, a 1954 Strat, or a 1959 PAF, the goal is never replication for its own sake. It’s about recapturing what made the best examples of those eras feel alive. That’s why Virgil’s sets don’t sound the same in every guitar. They adapt, they breathe, and they bring out the best of the instrument in which they are installed.

The overtones shimmer like air caught in motion. The midrange is open but bold. The highs carry sweetness that captures your imagination and motivates you to keep playing. They react differently to every player, which is exactly the point.

These aren’t museum pieces. They’re instruments of communication between wood, wire, and human hands. And that’s what makes them timeless.

Humble Beginnings

By the time most players heard the name Virgil Arlo, the man himself had already stepped away. His shoulder was giving out, his tools were boxed up, and his pickups were quietly changing hands for more money than he ever made winding them.

Most people only knew the name from a label on the back of a pickup. Few ever met the man. Even fewer earned his trust. This isn’t another internet legend or collector’s myth. It’s the real history of a craftsman who shaped the sound of modern music without ever trying to. It’s also the story of how a chance conversation in a small Poway guitar shop led to the rediscovery, preservation, and continuation of his work..... 

It started, as these things often do, behind a door where only a few were allowed. In the mid-2000s, StringMasters sat tucked away in Poway, California, part guitar repair shop and part rehearsal studio. The place had character. It smelled like lacquer, solder, and coffee that had been reheated one too many times.

The shop was run by Paulie Joubran, owner, repair tech, and connector of people. Paulie had a rule about who could come behind the counter. If you were part of the circle, he’d wave you through that back door. That’s where the good guitars and the real conversations happened.

One of the regulars back then was Randall Van Dyke, a San Diego-based technology consultant who spent his days working with cutting-edge tech of the day... emerging cellular and satellite technologies and his nights chasing tone. He wasn’t famous, but he had a good ear and a bad habit of taking guitars apart to find out why they sounded good.

“I was an aspiring musician,” Randall later said. “Did some session work, wrote a few songs, but nobody ever complimented my playing. They always said, ‘man, your tone sounds great.’ That’s when it hit me... I wasn’t a musician, I was a tone designer.”

Randall had been chasing tone since the mid-90s, trying every pickup he could get his hands on. The best he’d found were David White’s Old Glories, a small-batch design that used something called variable tension winding. It was a method far beyond the typical scatter-winding most boutique makers were doing at the time, and it opened his eyes to what was possible.

By the time he started studio renting space at StringMasters, he’d already begun experimenting with his own pickup designs. That day, though, he was just another player hanging around Paulie’s bench while the tech worked on a batch of Bill Lawrence Telecasters, a setup contract Paulie had for what looked like import models.

“We were all talking about tone,” Randall recalled, “and one of the guys mentions this guy named Virgil up near Julian. Said he made the best pickups he’d ever heard, better than anything out of Nashville or L.A. I said, ‘No way they’re better than Old Glories.’ Then he plugged in his Strat and played, and I just about fell over. Those pickups were so fat and lively sounding... it didn’t even seem real....I was like....give me that dudes number”

That was the first time Randall heard Virgil Arlo’s work, not in a store or a video, but live in a back room surrounded by players who lived for tone.

Virgil already had a quiet following among pros, the kind of players who didn’t care about brand names or hype. Word had spread through the session scenes in LA, Nashville & Austin but no one could a hold of him and he didn't have a website. Some said Virgil was from Texas, others thought New Mexico. Virgil talked mostly about coming out of the Bakersfield scene in the 60s and working at Mosrite.

After that day in Poway, Randall tried calling Virgil, and the line rang endlessly. He tried again and again to no avail... then he tried again months later, and finally Virgil finally picked up. Virgil didn’t do email or business cards. If you wanted a set, you drove out to Julian paid the guy and waited, sometimes more than a year.

“My first set took fifteen months,” Randall remembered. “But when I finally got them, it was worth every minute. The phone barely worked, he didn’t answer half the time, but man... when those pickups showed up, you knew they came from someone who really understood tone.”

That’s how it started, a phone call, a long drive, and a handshake. The kind of introduction that feels like a secret you were lucky enough to stumble into.

The Bridge That Changed Everything

By 2009, Randall had moved his work into a small industrial space on World Trade Drive, right across from the old Carvin factory in San Diego. It was part office, part lab, part tone bunker. The front half was clean and orderly, reserved for his consulting work in emerging communications tech. The back half was chaos... magnets, flatwork, wire spools, and the constant hum of experimentation.

“I had enough space and enough curiosity, just enough to be dangerous” Randall said. “I was getting compliments on my tone, so I figured... why not build my own.”

He started small, winding pickups for guitar builders he knew through word of mouth. The margins were thin, sometimes non-existent, but the tone was right. Even then, in his main working guitars, he still played Virgil Arlo pickups.

“It didn’t matter what I was making,” he said. “When it came time to record, I still reached for the guitars with Virgil’s sets. Those things just breathed different.”

Pat Buchanan, one of Nashville’s most respected session players, once described that same feeling. “There’s something alive in them,” he said. “You dig in and it pushes back, the way a great amp does. It’s not just sound... it’s touch and feel.”

Mike Gallaher, who’d earned the Texas Tornado Award for Best Guitarist years earlier, felt the same way. “Virgil’s pickups had that big, singing midrange... they made your fingers feel more confident,” he said. “You could back off and still sound strong. That’s rare.”

Those words echoed what Randall was hearing from players and builders alike. He’d spent years dissecting what made pickups come alive. The best he’d found before Virgil were David White’s Old Glories, a small-batch design that used variable tension winding. It was a step beyond scatter-winding, and it opened his mind to what was possible.

By the time he set up shop across from Carvin, Randall was experimenting with new materials and winding methods. One day he swapped one of his own bridge pickups into a Strat that already had Virgil’s middle and neck pickups, and something happened.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It was like the whole guitar woke up. I played that setup for years... Virgil in the neck and middle, mine in the bridge. I didn’t think about it like a business move. I just wanted great tone.”

By 2013, Randall’s small workshop had become a testing ground for tone. He had a few assistants helping with winding and assembly, but it was not a glorious time, winding budget pickups for guitar builders. He was bored at work and still playing Virgil’s pickups in most of his guitars and he knew Virgil could do more with his business.

“He was always running behind,” Randall said of Virgil. “He didn’t do email, didn’t have a website, and sometimes his phone would get shut off. I wanted to help him, but honestly, I also wanted to learn from him. I figured if I could help organize things, maybe I’d get to see how he worked.”

That’s how their collaboration began... as a handshake between two craftsmen. Randall set up a simple website for Virgil Arlo Pickups, handling orders and payments while Virgil kept winding. The early site brought in a small but loyal following. The first customers were floored by what they heard.

Rudy Pensa, owner of Rudy’s Music in New York, remembered hearing about it for the first time. “It was all word of mouth,” he said. “You didn’t see advertising. I heard about them from Cali Freeman, a regular session player here at my shop, who couldn’t stop talking about how good the Arlo's felt.”

A few customers, though, echoed the familiar complaint... the bridge pickup on the Strat felt thin next to the neck and middle.

Randall passed the feedback along. Virgil wasn’t worried. “He’d tell me, ‘It’s a Strat. The bridge is supposed to be a little thinner. It’s still fatter than anything Leo ever did.’” Randall laughed. “He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t right.”

A few weeks later, Randall drove up to Julian to pick up a batch of sets. He brought his Strat... Virgil in the neck and middle, Randall’s bridge in place. “You could tell when I started playing, he noticed,” Randall said. “His face said it all. But in true Virgil fashion, he just said, ‘I like mine better.’”

A few days later, the phone rang. “He asked, ‘What are you doing to those bridge pickups?’ That was the moment everything changed.”

By mid-2015, Virgil had quietly adopted Randall’s Infinite Bridge Technology, applying it with the voicing that made the Arlo's famous. But the tone was now rounder, fatter, more dynamic... still unmistakably Virgil, but balanced in a way that made players take notice.

Legendary guitarist, Allen Hinds put it best. “The bridge pickup, especially. It sounds totally warm and full, without being thin or shrill or having too much high-end, it's really incredible, the best pickups I ever played." 

Virgil's orders surged. Word spread fast through the studios and backline circles of Nashville, Austin, and L.A. Randall helped build bobbins, PAF assembly, potting and manage orders, and keep things running as demand outgrew both of them.

“Make no mistake,” Randall said. “Those were still Virgil’s pickups. He taught me more than I ever taught him. But once he added my bridge tech, everything changed. Players could feel it in their hands.”

And they did. The calls started coming in from names that would soon define the next era of tone. That was the turning point... the bridge that didn’t just fix a sound, but helped carry Virgil’s legend into the hands of the modern professional world.

The Viral Moment

By late 2015, the world had finally caught up to what the insiders already knew. Virgil’s pickups were no longer a secret whispered through studios, they were becoming a movement. The Infinite Bridge Tech breakthrough had fixed the one weak spot in every Strat & Tele, and also proved beneficial in the PAF design. Suddenly the tones players used to chase were right there in their hands.

The spark came from Allen Hinds. A well-respected jazz and fusion artist, longtime Musicians Institute instructor, and session/touring veteran, Allen had been playing a 1956 Stratocaster loaded with original vintage pickups. One afternoon he decided to take a chance, he pulled the originals, dropped in a set of Virgil Arlo Strat pickups, and hit record.

In the video, Allen played a little, leaned back, and said, “I’m completely blown away... these are the best Strat pickups I’ve ever played.”

“When I first saw Allen’s video, I was floored. That wasn't a demo it was an emotional moment, one of the most sincere endorsements I'd ever seen" Randall remembered. "You could see how deeply the pickups were touching him. I’ve seen plenty of polished gear videos, but this was different. He played so beautifully, with so much feel...and for like five minutes, he got completely lost in the moment." 

When Randall showed the video to Virgil, all he said was, "that guy’s a decent player" and walked back to his bench.

Within days, the clip went viral. Every forum and gear group lit up. The vintage purists lost their minds.

“It was insane,” Randall remembered. “Here’s this pro just saying what he honestly thought....that the pickups felt alive....and people lost their minds over it. They were mad that he’d even taken the vintage ones out. It was my first real lesson that in the gear world, that many amateurs on forums are unreasonable creatures......tribal, bored with their lives and incredibly bloodthirsty.”

The backlash didn’t stop Allen. A few months later, he installed another set of Arlos in his 1950s Goldtop Les Paul that had been converted from P90s to humbuckers. The guitar had been loaded with a vintage recreation pickup brand that spent a lot of time and money on forum marketing. When Allen posted that clip, that company’s forum dwellers went wild again.

“The guy’s just pointing out that Virgil is building great pickups,” Randall said. “And people are losing their shit over it. The hate was unreal.”

Allen took it all in stride. “Everywhere I go, guys either think I’m Virgil or they give me a hard time about swapping pickups in vintage guitars,” he laughed later. “Why do they care?” But that was the moment everything changed.

Leonardo Amuedo, one of the world’s top touring and session guitarists, said, “I still remember where I was when I first heard about Virgil.” For him, it was about touch, how a pickup could make a guitar breathe.

Before long well respected, under the radar luthiers like Rick Kelly of Carmine Street Guitars & Southern California off-grid legend Larry Wysocki were using them in their builds.

Real pros, see through the noise. The pickup world had been dominated for years by mass-produced pickup makers and with big marketing budgets & fancy packaging. Leaving players with stiff, shrill or muddy tone, so it's no wonder amateurs might have doubts... Then came a quiet winder from outside Julian, California... no ads, no hype, no interviews, no stupid looking picture of an old man on a website... just tone that made professionals rethink what was possible.

Rudy Pensa, watching the customers flock to his shop in New York, couldn’t help but smile. Stephanie Pensa said, “You know it’s real when the players are drooling over it,” she said. “It reminds me of when we get a Dumble amp in here."

The controversy only fueled the mystique. By early 2016, demand had gone through the roof. Randall and the ToneSpec crew were helping Virgil keep up. Wait times stretched to months, and resale prices doubled. But the players didn’t care. They wanted the tone only a set of Virgil Arlo Pickups could provide.

“We didn’t have a marketing department, we didn't need one, the tone told the story” Randall said. “What we had was players telling the truth about what they heard and felt. Watch the youtube clips, you can see it in their faces, you can hear it in their voice. It's heartfelt....it's emotional”

By 2017, Virgil’s name had become synonymous with professional tone. He hated the attention, especially when the “Dumble of Pickups” nickname started floating around online, but he couldn’t stop it. “He didn’t like that comparison, he felt like pickups are the starting point....the most important part of elite tone, and the amp multiplies tone source....if it starts bad, it's gonna end bad” Randall said.

By 2018, the Virgil Arlo sound had passed through almost every studios, on tours, and in the hands of players who shaped what the rest of the world heard. The legend had grown, not from advertising or promotion, but from honest video's from thoughtful clients and the word of players who refused to settle for anything less. That was the surge... the moment when the secret finally got out, and tone became truth.

The Transition

By late 2018, the orders hadn’t slowed, but Virgil had...

His shoulder had been giving him trouble for years, and the long days of hand-winding were catching up. He’d never been one to complain, but those closest to him could see it. What had started as soreness turned into stiffness, and by the end of 2019, he quietly made the decision to stop full-time winding.

He didn’t announce it. There were no farewell posts or press releases. He simply finished what he had on the bench, boxed up a few extras, and handed off what remained.

The last pickups were dated by the ToneSpec team in early 2020, mostly warranty sets, just in case a customer ever needed one. They never did. Virgil’s pickups rarely failed.

Randall and the ToneSpec team were there to help him close things down. When the time came, they took home the remaining supply of parts, tooling, and unfinished assemblies. Out of that, they created the Tan Label Series, made exactly to Virgil’s specifications.

“I personally sound tested every one of them, just like I did with every Virgil build since I got here” Randall said. “I’d been testing his sets since about 2014, so I knew what to listen for. They sounded exactly like the originals. Maybe even a touch tighter because our reject rate was better. Younger eyes, healthy shoulders... it makes a difference.”

The players agreed. Those who had owned both sets, the original White Labels and the newer Tan Labels, couldn’t tell them apart. Some even preferred the newer ones, saying they had the same breath and clarity that made Virgil’s work so legendary.

As word spread, so did the prices. By 2021, used Virgil Arlo sets were selling for more than $3,000 on the secondary market. Collectors and players were calling them the Dumble of Pickups, a title that Virgil hated.

Even after retirement, the legend kept growing. By 2022, people were emailing ToneSpec asking if they would make exact clones of Virgil’s designs. They wanted the 1952 Tele, the 1954 Strat, the 1959 PAF, everything that had made him famous.

So Randall reached out to Virgil with an idea. They reached a handshake licensing agreement to create what would become the Black Label Series, official reproductions of his most beloved designs, including the core models and artist-inspired sets: the Hendrix, Clapton, Gallagher Strats, the Jimmy Page and Mike Bloomfield Teles, the Peter Green and Statesboro Blues PAFs.

The intention was pure. The execution got messy. “Things got weird,” Randall admitted. “It was one of those moments where you realize you both love the same thing but can’t run it the same way.”

By then, hundreds of Black Label sets had already been built, a massive expense that couldn’t be undone. So they made a deal. The remaining inventory would be sold to the highest bidder on eBay, and the proceeds split.

As the inventory thinned and the payments got smaller, Randall approached him one last time. “I told him, let’s make it simple. You’ve done your part, and you’ve earned your rest. Let me take it from here.”

A few months later, the Virgil Arlo name officially passed into Randall’s hands. ToneSpec would now carry the legacy forward, just as they previously had when helping Virgil with his builds... using the same methods, materials, and testing standards that made the originals great.

Mike Gallaher said, “the only pickups that make a Strat feel like it’s breathing. I’ve played everything, and nothing feels like this. They’re still Virgil’s at heart. You can hear it.”

And that’s how it continued. The name lived on, not as a company or a brand, but as a legacy of tone and touch.

Virgil never chased fame. He didn’t need to. His work spoke through the hands of those who played it. And even now, years after he stopped winding, that sound still moves through the music of those who knew.

“It’s not about ToneSpec vs. Virgil Arlo” Randall said. “It’s about a sound that changed lives. Virgil built something real, and I'm proud of my contribution... our contribution, and we're proud to be the team who gets to carry on his legacy”