Nobody truly knows who OTPG was. OTPG stands for “Over-The-Pond-Guy”.

Some builders chase attention.
OTPG chased tone.
He stayed private, stayed quiet, stayed focused and that made some people angry, especially his competitors and their internet trolls. That made for some funny guitar forum threads but only one thing really mattered: creating PAFs that felt alive in the player’s hands.

Its not uncommon to see OTPG pickups for sale at Reverb for ebay selling in the $2,000 range. Here are some listings, click on the links below to find out more.

$2300 – OTPG PAF – Humbuckers (ZEBRA).

$1900 – OTPG PAF – Humbuckers (BLACK).

$1000 – OTPG PAF – Legend Series (VINT NICKEL).

People have their theories.
Some thought he hid his identity to keep his day life separate from his craft.
Some thought he didn’t want the pressure, jealousy, and drama that come with rare and expensive gear.
Some believed he stayed anonymous so the tone would speak for itself instead of becoming another personality-driven circus.

The truth is probably simpler.
When you make something great, you attract the two types of people who always show up:

Real players who judge with their ears.
And forum critics who judge with their insecurities.

As OTPG sets started showing up in the hands of serious musicians, the haters crawled out of the online shadows. The same predictable crowd every builder has seen a thousand times. Guys with no recordings, no gigs, no credits, no real-world experience. The ones who live on forums arguing with strangers all day because the real world hasn’t asked anything of them.

They attacked what they couldn’t understand.
They questioned what they couldn’t match.
They filled threads with jealousy because their own lives had nothing better going on.

Some even pushed the laughable rumor that OTPG pickups were made in China. That is the kind of thing only someone with zero real experience would even consider. Anyone who had actually touched a great vintage-style humbucker could hear that the work was on another level. The bloom, the movement, the clarity, the way the pickup pushes back when you dig in. You can’t fake that. You can’t outsource that. You can’t buy that skill from a factory.

Players who actually knew tone dismissed the rumor instantly.
Forum trolls kept repeating it because that’s what trolls do.

And that is exactly why OTPG stayed hidden.
He didn’t owe the hobbyists an explanation.
He wasn’t trying to impress critics who had never played a real gig.
He wasn’t seeking approval from people who spend their afternoons arguing tone on a message board instead of doing something meaningful.

He cared about the people who could feel the difference.
Not the ones who could only type about it.

So who is OTPG?
A ghost.
A craftsman.
A man who believed tone mattered more than a name or a public face.

His identity never added to the sound.
His anonymity never took anything away from it.

The pickups themselves were the proof.
And for the musicians who still hear that magic today, nothing else matters.
Not the gossip.
Not the jealousy.
Not the forum noise from people who never played a real stage in their life.

The work stands on its own.
The tone is the truth.
And that is all anyone ever needed to know.