I own a 2008 Fender MIM Strat. HSS. I want to replace the humbucker with a higher output pickup. The 2 single coils also need changing. I play mostly blues and classic rock. Any recommendations will help me decide what would work best .

The magnets for the pickups you have are ceramic bars. You can go to mojotone and get alnico 5 or alnico 2 slugs. Take off the ceramic bars on the back of the pickups and put in the new alnico slugs.

Try this first. It will be cheaper than new pickups.

All of your choices for higher output pickups are going to be humbuckers. You want to play blues and classic rock, but a lot of that stuff is ideal for single coil pickups. Why do you want to replace all of your pickups with high output pickups? Doesn't make sense.

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Have you tried playing with pickup height? Moving the pickups closer to the strings will give you increased output and distortion, but with a loss of some sustain.

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

My advice is, if you are looking to get a new sound from your Strat and you are planning on keeping the guitar for a while, then replace all three pups. You can get creative once you get under the hood. I believe that your MIM Strat will be routed so you could get a humbucker in the neck position. So you could stay S/S/H or go H/H or even H/S/H. Don't forget you can go standard S/S/S as well. But since you mentioned Classic Rock as one of your musical tastes, then you probably want that humbucker. As mentioned previously it depends on what your budget is and what your level of experience is with a soldering iron.

There are plenty of web sites with wiring schematics that can set you up with a pretty cool assembly. You can coil tap those humbuckers to split them to make them into singles and get a wide variety of sounds. You can find a ton of pre-wired Strat pickguards available for any price point. If you are on a strict budget, I've heard good things from some of the pickups from GFS (Guitarfetish.com) I'm not about to say that they are any better or any worse than what you have right now, but its a budget option. I just installed a set of Jimi Hendrix Reverse Staggered pups in a Monterey Tribute Strat that I'm completing and I have to say that I am impressed with both the quality of the pickup (even has cloth wire) and the price.

But one thing is certain. Don't go changing pickups and expect the skies to open up and the mojo of Jimmy Page and the ghost of Hendrix to inhabit your axe. You ask 100 people on this forum and you probably will get 100 different pickup recommendations.

Sometimes one of the easiest and cheapest things you can do to make your pickups sound better is....practice.