In short, what was your most disappointing pickup swap?

Mine? Replacing the stock bridge pup on a 90's something American Standard Tele that was already acoustically challenged with an Antiquities bridge...

a dead guitar is a dead guitar...

I remember this! It was replacing a 1971 Gibson LP Custom's OEM neck pickup with a DiMarzio PAF. In that position, it went from singing with excellent frequency response to flabby mud. It essentially killed the neck position of that guitar as an option.

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You dig?

Ouch!

In the midst of this, why do we do these things?

One learns in this business that there's no accounting for taste and along with this, you'll continually marvel in astonishment at what some players consider, "upgrades".

Again, my bottom line: If this is what the player wants, this is what the player gets, regardless of what anyone else, including myself may think.

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You dig?

why you ask?

to get "that sound", that sound in your head the way you want the guitar to sound.

i get caught up in it.
i think i GAS for pickups more than strats. but i buy more strats than pickups.

Honestly, I think it was when I replaced the stock pickups of my Japanese Ventura gibson l6s copy with EMG's. I love the EMG's, but the 81 in the bridge sounded very similar to the stock bill lawrence superhumbucker in the bridge. But I lost the 6 way varitone switch that gave me all the different sounds for a three way switch. Not only that, but I changed what made the guitar unique. The one saving grace was the EMG 85 in the neck...that was an upgrade

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

I replaced stock pups in an MIJ strat with Hot Noiseless and they're fantastic! However, the bridge pup went dead so I replaced with a Fralin SP 43 (think Blue lace sensor but with adjustable poles).

Martian,

When it comes to the MIM Standard Strats for example, what do you think is the worst direction to try to take say a fairly good acoustically good Strat? Where I'm going with this is that I think "vintage" sound might not always be the best option for a particular instrument even if it sounds "good" as responsive with enough volume but still not sweet enough to benefit really from vintage pups...

Frankly I think Strats esp. heavier ones with bigger sounds might for the most part be better off going in the Tex-Mex direction...I could be wrong...

In other words, slapping in CS 69's or 54's might not be the best match even for even a guitar that sounds good...like a close but no cigar kind of organ donation that's just a little off...

the WHOLE guitar isn't being taken into consideration...???

In other words, does it ultimately come down to not matching the given acoustic unplugged quality of a particular guitar?

I replaced the stock Alnicos in my Fender Highway Strat for a noiseless SCN Fender set. I was looking for more body and slightly less attack. I got bland, sterile, characterless HiFi.

A set of Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro single coils saved the day, but made my Highway more expensive than a Std US Strat!

The original Highway p/ups went into an old Squier strat where they sound just fine actually. The SCNs are on my 'not sure what to do with' shelf..

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

I was swapping a neck pickup out on an old American Standard, and was aiming to put a Vintage Reissue pu in there... instead I managed to grab one of my old Squier POS pickups. I had it partially wired, and realized what I did, so then I thought... meh, what the hell. I went with it.

I really shouldn't have. [puke]

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Some Guitars played through an amp...

I chuckled when I read this. It proves that tone is completely subjective because I was going to post that the worst aftermarket pups I ever tried was a set of SD-AlNiCo II Pro's. I absolutely hated them and couldn't get them out of my guitar soon enough. Weird. I guess one man's food is another man's poison.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

So far I have refrained from swapping out pickups with the exception of changing a HSS to a SSS. It initself was an adventure.I dont think it takes a dead sounding guitar and turns it into a great sounding one.There is so much going on other than the pickups.I have changed amps , guitars and pedals before to achieve the sound in my head.The pickup would be the last thing on the list of mods to achieve the tone I am looking for, but marketing people make it sound like its the first and only thing.

First, let us drop the badge, "MIM Standard Strat". Now, let's apply your question in general to (paraphrasing your goodly self), a nice, resonant Strat.

I absolutely agree: "vintage" sound might not always be the best option for a particular instrument, period, regardless of the supposed propensity of said instrument to a certain group of sonic possibilities. I'll even take your postulation one step further:

Musically speaking, there are SO many styles, sub-styles, sub-sub styles and many more even yet to be discovered. Locking one's guitar into any one simply because the instrument itself tends to lean toward this style or that one is preposterous. This is especially true if it inappropriately serves the owner which segues me deeper into supporting your postulaton:

Your leanings towards a 'heavier' sounding Strat are not only valid, but appropriate to you and others who not only would agree with you but actually use it for these purposes as a Strat properly supported, can and does excel in your stated areas.

A classic of classic example of a guitar 'supposedly' misused: A benchmark of most genders of Rock, especially the 'thick, hard and heavy' type is surely a Gibson Les Paul. I doubt many will disagree on this statement. Now, reinforcing my point, Les Paul designed it to be a Jazz guitar with all the right stuff for a solid body as Jazz is what he predominantly played.

When the Les Paul guitar was introduced on the market, Hard Rock or ANY Rock and all it's spin offs simply did not exist but down the road, players found ways to do stuff with it for Pop and then Blues, then Rock, etc. NONE of these genres were by design or tradition, what the Les Paul guitar was created or even possibly intended for, nor could such things be even conceived back in the late 40s/early 50s when Les Paul designed it. Nonetheless and ironically, the Les Paul guitar and all its mutations of today is predominantly not the Jazz player's overwhelming #1 choice but the choice of many other musical genres instead.

One could give example after example after example. I've seen so many seemingly, "inappropriate" guitars used for and by those players who are truly independent thinkers and know what they want out of their choice of guitar and how to achieve it. As a matter of fact, I know a guy who uses a Tele with an .008 gauge string set. All he plays is Jazz and believe me, he's freakin' great!

I've said this a million times when it comes to electrics: If you like the way it plays, you can get it to sound like virtually anything you want if you really plan it out.

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You dig?

Seymour Duncan TB5 for my HSS. Can you say mud,yuck. The TB4 replacement was beautiful.

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10-4 good buddy, over and out!

Martian, thanks for your time and experience.

I think what hurts the cause of pickup swaps the most is some overly general sense of "better."