One of my favorite "did you know?" relates to early shoegaze bands using "vintage" jazzmaster and jaguars. The bands would buy those, sometimes original 60's instruments, because they were cheap. And the foam under the pickups would be almost gone so the pickups would be almost bottomed out and be much further away from the strings than originally intended. The guitarists didn't know this of course, but that became part of the "shoegaze" sound so people now buy brand new jazzmasters and dump the pickups all the way to the body.