Hi guys,
Here is the deal. I couple years ago i bought a Squier II for $50 to leave at work for when I get song ideas there...so i never plugged it in. About a year ago I bought a 2007 Mexican Strat, which i then installed a high mass block, graphite nut, Schaller locking tuners, an S-1 switching volume pot, and DiMarzio Area 61/58/58 pickup set into. I thought it sounded pretty good until I plugged in my Squier II for the first time and it blew me away. In comparison the Mexican Strat sounded dull and lifeless. Much weaker highs and lows. Does anyone know what might have caused this?

Thanks,
Derek

Tone is in the ear of the beholder.

Not being funny but i constantly question my drummer on what sounds good. He's about as far removed from guitar cliche as can be.

What do other people say you sound good on?

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No no and no

Nevin,
I disagree. After installing the DiMarzios I thought it sounded better than it did stock.

On a side note...I am not even sure if this thing is really a Squier II. I was told by a friend that it was a fake but who would fake something like a Squier? But after he told me that I looked up pics of Squier IIs online and sure enough there were noticable differences. Squier IIs seem to have string retainers on the E, B, G, and D strings while mine has them only on the high E and B. Also there is no serial number to be found anywhere on the guitar. What is most interesting to me is the single coils are physically larger than those on my Mexican Strat. You can see the size difference by comparing them to the humbucker, which is a Seymour Duncan SH-1. Each coil of the SD is the same size as the standard single coils.





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Its one of the Indian made Squier IIs, they have that slightly off Headstock.

Ok, I get it...tone is subjective. It's just that in this case it seems as though there is a blanket over the amp with the MIM and everyone who I have shown the difference agrees that the Squier sounds much better. I was just hoping that maybe someone knew of common wiring mistakes or something that would cause the dull sound. I know that single coils should use a 250k volume pot while humbuckers should have a 500k, for instance.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I guess I will double check my wiring. If anyone knows any tips or tricks to make the output brighter and/or fuller I would love to hear them.

It seems to me you're hearing the differences between:

A: Humbucker vs. Single coil
B: Duncan vs. Dimarzio

I typically use Duncan and Dimarzio humbuckers depending on what I want out of the guitar.

When I bought my Hamer, it had a Dimarzio HS-3 in the bridge. The pickup sounded the same in comparison to what you're describing. It sounded flat to me compared to my humbuckers, and I didn't like it very much. But it's also listed as such in the Dimarzio chart, so it wasn't too surprising.

But, not to let a good pickup go, I decided to give the HS-3 some more oomph, and came up with this concoction:



I bought a plate that would convert a humbucker routing to accept a single coil, then dropped it in one of my Stagemasters and paired it up with a Dimarzio Super Distortion.

The 2-pickups together were really surprising. There's no way I'd undo this setup. It gave the HS-3 more life, and added clarity to the Super Distortion. With a treble bleed installed, it gives the pairing a lot of possibilities. As you drop the volume, bass tones can be dropped from the neck PU and the overall sound cleans up even more in the clean channel. This is a great pairing of pickups and I'm really glad I tried the experiment. It would appear to be a one trick pony, but it's really not.

I don't doubt that the Dimarzio sounds flat to you compared to the Duncan Humbucker. But it could just be that you like humbuckers better. I personally haven't heard an Area 61. I do have a Duncan JB jr. single coil in my Hamer and I like the midrange it has, but once again it seems to lack power to me, so I typically use it paired with another JB jr. in the neck for thicker, fuller sound.

My personal favorite single coil bridge PU is my 57 RI. There's no need to pair it with anything. It has plenty up top, lots of power. It's freaking great for Reggae music. Something tells me that your Area 61 sounds similar.

The reason I say that is just simply by looking at the tone charts on the Dimarzio website, I can see that the Area is made to have an extreme amount of treble and not much else. The problem I would have with the setup you have is I also see that as being the case with the 58's. Why so much treble??

If it were me, I would be looking for at least a neck pickup with some bass tones in it, and wire it up to have the option of bridge and neck together. You might even find that you're not digging the extreme trebly nature of the 61. The closest eq-wise that I see on the Dimarzio website to your SH-1 is a Cruiser bridge pickup, or possibly one of the Virtual models. You might even like a Virtual pro '54 in the neck paired with the '61 better than the '58.

I'd be willing to bet anything that you're just not digging the setup as a whole with all the Treble and not much in the way of Mids and Bass. Not a whole lotta color options going on there. A great guitar has the options of painting a colorful sound-scape, and you have the equivalent of a pencil and paper to work with. It's all treble.

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HaleAmano- House Of Sharks (Now On iTunes)
http://www.reverbnation.com/haleamano
http://www.haleamano.com

You aren't the first guy to call noiseless pickups dull and lifeless.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

I'm just tossing my $.02 worth in here...these are only my own personal opinions and should be taken as such.

The first comment I have is in regards to having replaced the MIM stock pickups. Ok...yes, I will be the first to absolutely agree without argument that "Tone is subjective"...we all hear things a tad differently. That said, I think it's safe to say that there is a fairly general consensus that MIM pickups quite often leave a great deal to be desired. In other words, most people tend to think that MIM pickups suck, LOL! As such, it's not hard to improve on that tone...personally I think my Squier Standard pickups sounded better than the MIM's. Somewhere in your post you said that you thought the DiMarzio's you put in sounded better than the stock MIM's and this I believe.

That said, I think Shredd6 more or less hit the point...I think that what you're probably hearing more than anything is simply the difference between brands and styles of pickups. For example, I have an old NJ Kramer that's loaded with a pair of older DiMarzio hb's (no idea what model as I got the pickups -very- used) as well as a '96 MIM loaded with Duncan Hot Rails and an '85 MIJ Squier that is stock. All three guitars tend to sound very different...not that any one of them sounds "better" than the others (although some sound better in certain applications...), but different. Compared directly with the two Strats, the Kramer when played thru a clean channel does tend to sound a bit like the amp has a "blanket" over the top of it as you so eloquently described...the Strats of course both sound much brighter. However through the right amp with the right distortion, that guitar just sounds sooooo thick and rich. Very nice "classic" metal sound. In comparison, my Duncan loaded MIM does sound much brighter...but those Duncans are still hb's (in a single coil package of course) and are much thicker than regular single coils and not nearly as bright (although again much brighter than the Kramer). This is my good "all around" guitar because it get's most of the tones I'm after for most of the material I play...most of the time. Then my '85 MIJ with it's stock single coils...much more of that "vintage" single coil sound...like the Kramer, it's really -great- for certain applications but doesn't sound as good with other stuff I play. For example, if I'm doing some SRV (or just some good blues in general), I tend to favor the MIJ...although the MIM does work well...but if I'm doing some old classic Black Sabbath, then the MIJ doesn't sound so great and I use my old Kramer. On the other hand, if I'm doing stuff like Pink Floyd (which I tend to do a lot of), then it's my '96 MIM with the Duncans. Of course if I'm doing old "surf music" ala Beach Boys or the Ventures, then I break out my old Memphis LP copy because she sounds more like a "Tele" than anything else I own...but that's a different story, LOL!

I would also add that I have a "project" Strat that I've been working on...or rather something of an on-going project to be specific. It's a refinish project that I did earlier this year...alder body (that I did in a 2 tone lacquer sunburst), '04 Indo Squier Standard neck that I really like, MIM big block trem, etc.. She's truly my "international" Strat...but I still haven't found a set of pickups that I really like for this particular guitar. I've tried a few different sets, including a set of MIJ's that are nearly identical to my 85 MIJ Squier and they just don't really sound right for this particular guitar. She'll probably end up with Texas Specials or something (unless I can find some EMG's for a decent price). It's not that any of the pickups I've tried have sounded "bad" but I just haven't found the sound I want for this particular guitar. In other words, sometimes it's just the instrument itself and the particular combination of parts that make up that instrument.

With that said, most people tend to fall on one side of the isle or the other...that whole single coil vs. hb thing or the "Strat vs. LP", etc....some folks swear by the "bright side", some swear by the "dark". Neither is right or wrong, it's simply a matter of personal choice. In the case of your Squier II for example, maybe you have some really sweet factory pickups in there or perhaps they've even been changed out somewhere along the way for something really decent...from your description, it sounds as though you did NOT buy that Squier II brand new, so who knows what could be under the hood? It's also quite possible that you may simply prefer the sound of stock Fender pickups (even cheap ones) over the sound of the DiMarzios...just because a pickup is expensive or a "brand name" doesn't mean that it's automatically going to sound "better" to everyone's ear...including your own.

It's certainly possible that you could have messed something up with the wiring...and it's certainly worth double checking of course. That said, don't be surprised if you do not find the spoiled egg you're looking for...you simply may not care for the sound of DiMarzio pickups in a Strat. Some folks will go thru quite a few pickups before they find "the right" pickups for a given guitar.

Lastly, I would also briefly point out that this could also be a variation on "new toy syndrome"...something that effects a lot of us. In a nut shell, we have a specific "favorite" guitar...the one that we always play or at least play more often than anything else. Then we bring home the "new girl friend" and suddenly there's some new spice in our lives and not just the "same old, same old". Yea play the crap out of the new guitar (even if it's used) just because it sounds "different" and for a while at least, that difference appears to sound better. This certainly could be the case here...you played your heavily mod'd MIM and it's always sounded good to you but then... You brought the Squier II home and played it next to your MIM and wow...what a completely different sound! Woo-hoo! Yea! But wait...you put those expensive after market pickups and all those other mods in to the MIM...shouldn't it sound "better" than the cheapy? See my point?


That probably wasn't what you were looking for but I hope that on some level it helps and if nothing else, maybe it gives you a few things to consider.

Good Luck,
Jim

Ah, but you are assuming that Nevin's original comment was only referring to pickups. I know people who think graphite nuts and Callaham blocks are sustain and tone robbers, respectively. Just something to consider ...

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Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, tone is in the ear of the beholder. There's no mystical, magical, 'deep' philosophical or engineering answer here. Plain and simple, you prefer the tonality of the single coils in their surrounding hardware over the corresponding specifics of your other guitar and that's that; pedigree(s) not withstanding.

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You dig?