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Post subject: How did you choose your aftermarket pickups?
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:06 pm
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My friend, who owns a new highway 1 strat, is interested in changing up the pickups for a more focused style of sound. He thinks he should change the lead and neck pickup for a hotter sound. My question is how does one go about choosing a good pickup? It's not like you can have them installed just to try them out.

Maybe I could also get some suggestions. He wants more of a hotter lead, so he can sound a bit more like the creamyness of David Gilmour's lead work, from Animals, perhaps. I suggested a "cool rails" though as a disclaimer, I noted that I'd never heard one, but another friend of mine had a "hot rails" and for what it amounted to I thought the cool rails might be more his style.

For his neck pickup, he'd like a really HOT humbucker, to fit in his single slot. He's a big Pantera fan, and though he can achieve similar tones on an amp obviously, he'd like to get as hot of a neck pickup as possible.

Any suggestions?


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Post subject: Re: How did you choose your aftermarket pickups?
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:15 pm
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Chris1980 wrote:
My friend, who owns a new highway 1 strat, is interested in changing up the pickups for a more focused style of sound. He thinks he should change the lead and neck pickup for a hotter sound. My question is how does one go about choosing a good pickup? It's not like you can have them installed just to try them out.

Maybe I could also get some suggestions. He wants more of a hotter lead, so he can sound a bit more like the creamyness of David Gilmour's lead work, from Animals, perhaps. I suggested a "cool rails" though as a disclaimer, I noted that I'd never heard one, but another friend of mine had a "hot rails" and for what it amounted to I thought the cool rails might be more his style.

For his neck pickup, he'd like a really HOT humbucker, to fit in his single slot. He's a big Pantera fan, and though he can achieve similar tones on an amp obviously, he'd like to get as hot of a neck pickup as possible.

Any suggestions?


Yes.

I have never been a big fan of the stock pickups. I loved the way the Highway played (I just bought mine a few weeks ago) but the first thing I did was get modified pickups in it.

Image

I ended up with a Seymour Duncan JB Jr. in the bridge...it's a nice, hot pickup that rivals most double humbuckers out there. For a comparison, I also have an old Ibanez RG with DiMarzios and used it as a comparison on a Roland Cube 60 amp...

That JB Jr did just fine...it screams well, and you can pick up harmonics all over the place.

I ended up with a hot rail in the neck, but to be honest I think I may end up eventually getting a Texas Tone by Seymour Duncan in there. You'll get that nice, Hendrix-y tone or SRV tone with a bit of distortion but it still sounds great clean.

And, I left the middle pickup stock (I usually play clean with using the middle straight up or in phase with one of the other pickups.)


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Post subject:
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:23 pm
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As I recall the Seymour Duncan website has a cool "tone wizard" that allows you to plug-in a few variables (style of guitar, music, etc) and it'll make some recommendations based on that.


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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:21 pm
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Before anything, he should decide what he does like about the stock pickups and then, consider his choices from there. Too often, many players will find tonal deficiencies in their stock pickups and blindly replace them based solely on their deficiencies. The problem with this is that oftentimes, even though the replacements provide everything the stock stuff is lacking, these replacements do not include those aspects which were liked and/or taken for granted in the stock stuff.


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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:36 am
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Sound clips of different Duncan Strat pickups -

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/e ... atocaster/

I'm sure that there are other links if you do a search.

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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:56 am
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When I go to choose a new set of pickups for a guitar, I like to go in and play a few different guitars in my locale guitars shop and see what the pickups sound like, then I go online and listen to some sound clips, ultimately playing them will help alot more


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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:26 pm
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If he's looking for the David Gilmour sound check out the EMG DG-20. Gilmour's been using EMGs for years.

http://emginc.com/displayproducts.asp?s ... talogid=56

I have a Am Deluxe HSS and use the EMG SL-20 set but with 2 tones that operate on all pups.


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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:50 pm
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I can also vouch for the JB Jr. I had one years ago in a mexican strat and it was awesome. I ended up replacing it with EMGs (young and stupid) and regretted it within weeks. That is until some sucker paid me $300 more than the guitar/pickups were worth to buy it! But that's another story.


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Post subject:
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 3:16 pm
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Martian wrote:
Before anything, he should decide what he does like about the stock pickups and then, consider his choices from there. Too often, many players will find tonal deficiencies in their stock pickups and blindly replace them based solely on their deficiencies. The problem with this is that oftentimes, even though the replacements provide everything the stock stuff is lacking, these replacements do not include those aspects which were liked and/or taken for granted in the stock stuff.
++

Excellent point!


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Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 5:01 pm
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I went to my local GC and luckily they had Strats with all of the different pickups I was looking for to replace the stocks in my Strat. So I decided on the 57/62s and went to the music store where I shop and buy my gear and bought the pickups I was looking for since Phil's had the 57/62s already in stock. My recommendation is to find some Strats that have the pickups with the particular sound/tone you're looking for if you have some sort of idea which pups produce the sound/tone you're looking for or do like I did and just try out a crapload of Strats with all the different pups and go with the sound/tone you like.


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