I love active pickups because they have that extra punch///I love passive pickups because there set and forget. Meaning I don’t have to worry about battery changes. When I pick up my guitar the passives are always ready to go. Less we forget we live in a dollar/pound (whatever) driven world. The technology exists out there to build cars that get 100 miles to the gallon…..can you buy one?…(heck no!!!!)..then we cant make any money selling you 3 & 4 dollars a gallon for gasoline. Same thing goes in the instrument world….Let’s face it….I is self defeating to build a guitar or a pick up that can do everything…..OOOh the technology is there to do such things; but the bottom line is that doesn’t keep the public buying different product to fill the desire to play different stuff outside your normal box. Sure some products do more than others. Eric Clapton once said “you can almost make a Stratocaster sound like a Les Paul but a Les Paul will never sound like a Stratocaster”…the fact is, if you want both sounds you need to have both….All you have to do is go to the Dimarzio or Seymour Duncan and look at all the different models available. The entire industry is geared towards specializing in a specific style of music or sound….to answer the question I like both because I can’t buy a pickup that does it all……sorry about the rant guys, I guess I just needed to vent a bit…..

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(80’s Hair Metal) = A snapshot in time before Grunge ruined Rock & Roll forever!!!!

No apology necessary, you've made several very valid points.

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You dig?

wtc, I agree. One fellow was suggesting as well that there's no need turning a pretty girl like a Straotcaster into a drag queen. If the Strat is a blonde...let her be a blonde. If you want a brunette, maybe date a Les Paul or a PRS. Those are great little brunettes. And there's red heads out there too!

Why a Strat ever had to be anything different than what it was, did or was intended to be is far beyond me. How much worse off would we be today if all the Strats ever made to date were exactly like a 1957?

I'd love that, then throw in a set of EMG's like what Gilmour did to his 57 re-issues!

Hi everybody,

Many thanks for the advice, actually the main reason why I want to change my pickups because it made a loud of noise. And I just found out it was the electric component that cause the problem but the PU's just fine.

I can't help it to try what will my 72 strat sounds like if I'm using an active pickups so I replace it with a set of EMG-SV. It was worth it but still I can't decide wich one is better, using active or passive....both has their own character. For the active PU it sounds so great when I'm playing it clean, but you can't get that classic old fender sound when using the the distortion...you can only get that kind of sound using the original PU.

For the time being I'm gonna stick with the active pickup first, but I got this weird feeling like someday I will use the original pickups again.


Cheers

I have a set of EMG DG20s in my Hwy 1 and they sound amazing. I hate changing batteries though.

On the contrary, I've been using SV's for years and have fooled a long line of "vintage" geeks with theier sound. Try using less distortion and see if that doesn't get you in the ball park.

Yea - I don't like the motor in my Lamborghini - I'm going to change it. Not to be overly critical but I'd say "let it be" if you know what I mean? It's your call though. Why not buy a different strat?

Oh and yes - EMGs are killer!

Thanks for the advice and you're absolutely right, it's sounds just the way I like it.