New Strat Pickups Advice Options

[Tomas Santa Clar...]

hey guys

i recently bought a Fender strat USA (2nd hand) and im not too keen on the pick ups , they sound good but faint and week
i liek to play hard rock and some shredding

what i realy want is not to loose the beatiful clean FENDER sound ( you know what im talking about) and add it a little bit more juice
a sound similar to the tone of David Gilmour

i am a total noob when it comes to strats

thansk for reading!

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This post has been edited by Tomas Santa Clara: Dec 21 2009, 02:41 AM

[ZakkWylde]

hey guys

i recently bought a Fender strat USA (2nd hand) and im not too keen on the pick ups , they sound good but faint and week
i liek to play hard rock and some shredding

what i realy want is not to loose the beatiful clean FENDER sound ( you know what im talking about) and add it a little bit more juice
a sound similar to the tone of David Gilmour

i am a total noob when it comes to strats

thansk for reading!

Gilmour would be a set of active EMG SA single coils - he uses them for years now.

Don't get thrown of by EMG and their Metal-image, the SA single coils have great rock and clean sounds, they have nothing to do with them EMG metal humbuckers.

If you don't want to go active, you can try a stacked humbucker in single coil size for the bridge for playing rock like a Seymour Duncan Hotrail or a DiMarzio Chopper. If you want to spend a little more and get custom pickups, I would recommend an Irish Tour or Slow hand Set by Bareknuckle Pickups!

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This post has been edited by ZakkWylde: Dec 21 2009, 02:51 AM

[Tomas Santa Clar...]

Gilmour would be a set of active EMG SA single coils - he uses them for years now.

Don't get thrown of by EMG and their Metal-image, the SA single coils have great rock and clean sounds, they have nothing to do with them EMG metal humbuckers.

If you don't want to go active, you can try a stacked humbucker in single coil size for the bridge for playing rock like a Seymour Duncan Hotrail or a DiMarzio Chopper. If you want to spend a little more and get custom pickups, I would recommend an Irish Tour or Slow hand Set by Bareknuckle Pickups!

hmm You got me intriguied with the SA´s i gotta check them out

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[Adrian Figallo]

hey bro, i would go with something hot on the bridge like a chopper and something warm and vintage (noiseless tho), line an area dimarzio pickup, you can have the best of both worlds

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[Staffy]

Hmmm... sensitive topic.... +1 on Zakk here, I don't really now what pickups You already got, but the single coils on new Fenders are really good. A Fender will never sound "high-gain" in itself. The guitar has a totally different tone-shape than a LP or Ibanez. Switching to EMG's will give You more gain - but You will loose the classic sound imo. I would rather spend the money on some boutique booster or distorsion device, though I think the gain is really the problem here. Eg. if You are used to high-gain guitars, a strat will sound less "fat" because of the single coils. But its all a matter of taste, and I guess one must fine his own way....

//Staffay

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[Sensible Jones]

For a Gilmour type set up then (as Zakk says) his Red Strat is loaded with EMG SA single coils.
His main guitar, the famous 'Black Strat', has Fender pickups in the middle and neck positions (original 1971) and a Seymour Duncan SSL-1 in the bridge. It also has a mini toggle switch to combine the neck and bridge pickups and runs a 0.033uf Capacitor.

Depending on how much you want to spend on a new set of Pickups I would recommend any of the following:-
Cheap - Toneriders 'Classic Blues Set'.
Mid range - Van Zandt Blues set.
More expensive - Seymour Duncan LW-CS1 Classic Strat Set or a set of Kinman (either the Blues set or the Traditional Mk III set)
Or either of the Bareknuckle sets that Zakk mentioned!!

hmm You got me intriguied with the SA´s i gotta check them out

The red Strat
Fender 1983 ‘57 Stratocaster originally with Fender vintage reissue pickups.
- Original Fender candy apple red alder body with a white black 1-ply 8 hole pickguard.
- Original Fender ‘57V reissue maple neck with Gotoh tuners.
- EMG-SA pickups with EXG mid-cut/expander and SPC mid booster.
- Shortened tremolo arm to 4.25″.
If you want to go this route then have a look on eBay as I know of a couple of companies that sell pre-wired EMG loaded Strat scratchplates and so the only wiring you would need to do is to attach the ground to the spring claw and the output to the Jack Socket.

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This post has been edited by Sensible Jones: Dec 21 2009, 02:53 PM