I have a MIM strat i recently brought for live use with my band. I love the bright cutting sound and it fits our live mix much better than the les paul i still use in the studio. I like all the pickup sounds but cant help thinking the bridge pickup sound from the stock pickups could be giving me more.

I may be showing my tech ignorance here, but... Ive been doing some research for this and one of the things that kept coming up is about balancing the pickups and avoiding a volume jump when you change to the new bridge pickup. Now for me..... I WANT A VOLUME JUMP!! I will only be using the bridge pickup for solo`s, and a big soaring sound with a volume boost (whilst hopefully still retaining the strat sparkle) is exactly what i want. Is this possible? Any idea`s what pickup would suit my needs best? I keep seeing the SD little 59 pop up in forums, so am thinking of that one, but would appreciate any help re using pickups that arent matched, so actually going for the volume jump, and also keeping the strat sound as much as possible. I have been trying booster pedals to get this effect for solo`s, but not found anything that works yet, so im hoping a combination of an inventive bridge pickup WITH the boost pedals may do the trick. God, who ever thought a guitarist would have trouble making his solo`s heard eh!!

The band style is kinda indie rock stuff, some pretty heavy riffs, lots of fairly sparkly indie lead lines.

thanks

Olly
http://www.myspace.com/thehops

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`I prefer not to listen to music that I can't rip off or improve on` - Ian Dury

Perhaps look into the EQ "science". I don't think the volume jump by switching pickups is a good thing.

I would suggest to make them volume balanced and switch to the bridge for more mid range (due to the hotter pickup). What I learned from sound guys, and it works for me, is to boost mids to jump out of the mix. Set your good play levels on your amp until you are happy with your guitar volume control on 7-8 and when you solo either just switch to bridge or crank the volume to 10 on the guitar if you need more volume.

If in the end nothing works for you you might need to upgrade a a bridge pickup to something different.

Hope that helps