COULD YOU REVIEW a guitar without mentioning the pickups? Could you then review some pickups without mentioning the guitar? Are they inextricably bound up? Can they work without each other? Is a joke still funny if you tell it to the garden? Can we have some sensible prose?

Tokai did the guitar, a bog standard though reverent and immaculately produced homage to the Fender Telecaster. EMG did the pickups, these being two EMG Ts in place of the normal Tokai fittings. The Ts are custom designed for Teles, as the initial might indicate. They are, in short, beautiful, (if expensive) and the combined project gave me the most satisfying day's playing I've had in many months.

The Tokai was a straightforward, Butterscotch-finished model with a single-layer, black plastic scratchplate plus the usual chrome, oval mounting plate for tone and volume controls and three-way selector bearing a chunky black toggle switch. Strings through the back over the chrome (Tokai stamped) bridge bearing six saddles that happily resisted the urge to slip across the gleaming surface.

At the sharp end we have a one piece, bolt-on maple neck with walnut strip, topped by imitation Kahler machines (tuning didn't drift once) and a silvery Tokai logo. It was slim. It was generously rounded. It had a sweet and responsive action (lacquered for speed but not skid pan). It was a dream.

The solitary bad mark goes to the gentleman in the spray shop. I've seen bath sponges with harder finishes. This one was marked by so much as a fingernail in the wrong place.

EMG are Californian, but otherwise seem fairly sensible. They've tended to avoid the coils-with-outputs-like-Battersea-Power-Station approach, and instead concentrated on juggling with the frequency response. For example, the Ts were designed to obviate two problems that afflict normal Tele pickups — lack of a clearly defined edge in the neck position, and microphonic noise from its partner mounted diagonally in the bridge.

The prescriptions within the simple, plain black covered coils (adorned only by a gold EMG in the bottom right-hand corner) deliver successful cures in both cases.

The neck setting has a sparkling, knife-like presence in the upper registers that's calculated to lend precision to all the work you do without overshadowing the natural warmth and chugginess of this typical Tele position. On certain occasions, when pickup manufacturers try to lift the top frequencies of their products, they also imbue them with an overshiny, metallic flavour. EMG haven't. These coils stay sweet and human; they just glitter more. Chords remain thick, but that furtive line of treble running through them makes each note stand out. From mist to a Summer's day.

Gentle application of the tone control will change the character of the pickups, not merely assassinate the top end.

The bridge EMG is tighter, brighter (obviously) more aggressive and somehow closer to the ear — less outside and ambient than its mate at the neck end. Both the EMGs had a lengthy, even sustain (that's the sort of talent where you do have to rely on help from the guitar body). And they were responsive. Even light hammer-ons, which can sound muffled and half hearted, left the jack socket with crispness and clarity.

The middle choice was less than 100% — not quite out of phase, not quite in; a bit bunged-up-with-a-cold... distinctive for an interlude but overbearing for a long bash.

The rest of EMG's philosophy — low impedance to save signal loss through long cables, low noise, ready wired with controls etc — can apply to other retrofit pickup makers. But they don't always have this degree of subtle character — EMG could almost be British. Neither, however, do they have the EMG's price tag. These are costly items and they need a decent guitar to work with. Fix them to a mutt, and you'll never get the best out of them. But try them, once, on a worthwhile instrument, and you may never again be a happy guitarist. Just have a long chat with your wallet before risking a trial.

TTE-50 guitar: £250 approx
EMG-T pick-ups: £175.55

CONTACT: EMG, Rhino Music Spares, (Contact Details).
CONTACT: TOKAI Blue Suede Music, (Contact Details).