Gibson’s new $999 pickups come with a leather case – but what else can you keep in it?

Welcome to a very special edition of The Week In Guitar. Very special, because only one thing matters this week. Welcome in particular to those amongst you with superior taste. Those wearing designer leather jackets, reading leather-bound books and carrying your guitar pickups designer leather hardcases. What’s that? You’re not sure about that last one?

• READ MORE: NAMM 2024: The latest rumours and biggest guitar gear announcements from this year’s show

Well, if you need a refresher on the trends of the day – Gibson has unveiled its latest premium set of pickups, inspired, of course, by the holy grail of late-1950s Patent Applied For humbuckers. They’re limited to 1,000 units, and meticulously made. “Scientific analysis” and specs from the Gibson Archive mean Gibson’s promising the most accurate recreations ever.

To make the whole unboxing experience a little more special, they come with lots of case candy, and a case for said candy. Not just any case, this is a high-quality Lifton presentation case. With this all in mind, it’s safe to guess that these are just a little pricier than the average $200 set of pickups. How much more could they be? $300? $400?

Whatever you just thought, it’s higher than that. It’s $999. For a set of humbuckers. I’ll give you a moment to retrieve your socks, which I presume were just blown clean off.

It’s an undeniably ridiculous price. $999 can buy a lot of things. But, of course, they sold out instantly. So instead of offering financial advice to the thousand people who’ve already spent a thousand smackeroonies on two guitar pickups, let’s engage in a little thought exercise: what do you do with the case once you’ve installed the pickups? I mean, you have paid for the case. It would be a disservice to the cow if anything, if you didn’t find some sort of use for it.

Let’s get the most obvious thing out of the way first. You have a guitar already, which presumably already has pickups in it, so once you swap in Gibson’s latest PAFs you can put those old humbuckers back in this case. But this is heinous. An insult, really. I don’t know why I’m even considering it. There’s no way that the pickups you currently have are worth anything near $500 each – this isn’t some carrier bag from Tesco, this is a high-quality Lifton presentation case! This needs to be respected!

To that end, we asked our Instagram followers (very respectful people) what to do with it. Their suggestions were:

• Sandwiches
• Weed

OK. Do you know what? Maybe this was a stupid thought exercise.