Fender Will Ray Jazz-a-Caster pickup info

I've owned a Fender Will Ray Jazz-A-Caster since around 2000, and among my 8 or 9 tele-style instruments it's pretty much my number-one choice these days because it's so versatile and has big, clear bottom end.

Does anyone know the story on the pickups? All I know is they were custom-designed by Seymour Duncan for that guitar, according to Will's specifications or flavor profile, and were supposed to be a hotter version of the traditional Jazzmaster pickup. Other than the overall shape, they don't really seem like Jazzmaster pickups to me although they sound closer to that than, say, strat or tele pickups. One obvious difference is that the rather large pole-pieces are adjustable.

I'm just wondering if any technically minded players out there might have more details, especially first-hand info from taking them apart and doing the analytics.

Thanks.

 

Interesting. I didn't know that the Classic Player JM had bar magnets. Is there any way to confirm this on my pickups without disassembling them?

 

Thanks, I just wrote to him

 

Will wrote back the day I emailed him, saying:

I gave Seymour a G&L ASAT Special single coil and said this is the kind of sound I want. And he delivered. All I know is that it uses a ceramic magnet instead of Alnico. Hope that helps.​

I assume he was referring to G&L's Jumbo Magnetic Field Design single coils, the last pickup Leo Fender designed and probably the best thing about G&L guitars. They're like Jazzmaster pickups in that the coil is broad and shallow rather than narrow and deep like P90s, but instead of pole magnets there's a ceramic bar magnet. And they have a steel plate at the bottom like tele pickups. So I reckon the jazzmaster reference refers to the shallow, broad coil and size of the cover.

Will followed a day later with a second email:

Incidentally, I had talked to Seymour about pickups before that and he mentioned that the Jazzmaster PU has such a large housing that you have plenty of room to put almost any design of PU in there. The seed was planted then. Thank you, Seymour.
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I've written to SD for information, and not received anything back so far. All I know is that among the 9 teles I've owned, I always choose this one for gigs where I'm paired with another guitarist using humbuckers. It's the only single-coil-equipped guitar I have that will always punch through the mix, no matter what. If they were still available after-market, I'd try them in another guitar.

 

Bingo. Will's answer led me to this DylanTalksTone video where he talks about ASAT pickup construction.