what set of pickups are good for like a derek and the dominoes tone

Well, there is the story of how he bought 6 Strats in 1970 (which was right around the time he started to become known as a Strat player and also formed Derek & the Dominoes) and gave 3 of them away to some of his contemporaries. I forget the names of those artists but a Google search should fill in the blanks if you're interested in that part of the story. The part of the story which relates to your question is that he took the remaining 3 Strats and disassembled them all and reassembled the best parts into one guitar which became his number one. Presumably he reassembled the other two guitars and likely sold them or gave them away or possibly just used them as spares. Since the story is told without mention of any aftermarket parts being used I'd say you want the pickups that were in production in 1969 and 1970.

The Fender Custom Shop makes a pickup called the Custom Shop 69's

Here is a link to them:

http://www.fender.com/en-CA/products/search.php?partno=0992114000

Hope that helps. You may also want to do some research on his choice of amp at that time too as the amp will likely be a more important factor in getting that tone than the pickups. Plus you're also going to need his hands and I don't think he's done with them yet.

You might be better off to take the Jimi approach and start with a basic blues tone and personalize it for yourself. Emmulation is fine if you like a certain kind of sound but getting anal about perfecting every last detail will drive you nuts, cost you a ton of coin and will still only get you close because you don't have his hands.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

The Fat 50's set sound pretty "Bell-Bottom Bluesy" when played through a vintage Fender tube amp.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

So that makes me wonder: did he use the 3 hottest pickups or the 3 lowest output pickups?

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

In those years when pups were hand wound there was a lot of inconsistency in tone from one pup to the next, even if they had the same number of winds so I seriously doubt if the measured output level ever factored into his decision making process. I suspect he just listened to them and chose what he liked. It's very probable that "God" didn't even know what a henry was in those years. People can hype all they want about the good old days and how guitars were so much better back then but I'm old enough to remember there were a lot of lemons around in those years along with those rare gems of beauty and mojo. I believe it's quite possible it took 3 common Strats to make one great guitar.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Yeah,he bought all those Strats in Nashville,at something like $100 apiece,and like BMW-KTM just said,there were some great ones and some not so great...that's why those were hanging and so cheap,in those days Strats had kind of gone out of fashion,even with Jimi playing them.....I just wish I had bought a bunch of them back then.
He bought those in the Sho-Bud store....funny,probably nobody even paid much attention to him when he was walking around Nashville....now if he had been Johnny Cash or somebody ,Nashville was pretty much all country music back then...I used to see Cash come into the Hendersonville grocery store where I worked in the '60s and people GAWKED!