strat pickups

reco

reco

New member
Hey all I have a am strat and would like to know what experiances poeple have had with single coil sized humbuckers, I need a phater sound but dont want to buy a gibson because of cost.
 
I would not recommend Lace Sensors; very bland. In fact I took mine out and replaced them with Fury pickups. The improvement was huge. An alternative as someone else suggested is Seymour Duncan--I had a Hot Rail in the bridge position for a while and this was as fat as it gets.
 
A few years ago I bought a Strat- I guess it's now considered a "Strat Plus", outfitted
with the Lace Sensor pickups, which to me deliver a great strat sound without the noise of traditional single coil pickups. Check out Seymour Duncan pickups too; I think they have a stacked double coil that fits in a single-coil cavity but I can't comment further because I've never heard how they sound. Good luck.
 
Reco, I've been using a seymour Duncan hotrails for a few years now in my strat it's got a pretty toasty sound to it, check em out.

[This message has been edited by David (edited 04-05-2000).]
 
I came close to replacing my pickups with a set of Duncans. They have a lot of good info on their web site, plus they also sell a CD that has samples of all their pickups. Being able to hear the pickups you're interested in is a big help, so I'd recommend doing that somehow. If you can't then make sure you like the company's return policy (and Duncan has a good one).

I ended up going a different route than most people and bought active single coils - an EMG David Gilmour set. It's not that I was dying to sound like Gilmour. I liked how the pickups sounded despite some people saying they sound "sterile" compared to regular single coils, plus I liked the add-on preamps that came preassembled on a pickguard. One is a presence booster that also cuts the highs and lows, giving the guitar a fatter sound. The other add-on does just the opposite - boosting the highs and lows while cutting the mids so you get an even glassier single-coil tone. These gave me the flexibility of being able to get a nice single coil tone and also a fatter humbucker-like tone (especially when I turn up both tone controls) from the same guitar. At $229 it was a lot cheaper than buying a 2nd guitar.

Lots of choices out there. Have fun checking them out.
 
reco - What kind of amp are you using? I found that changing to a tube amp (Fender Deville) made the biggest difference in my guitar sound. I have Strats with lace sensors, and ones with regular single coils, and they both got much fatter when I upragded my amp.
 
Here's one torresengineering.com ever hear of lindy Fralin pickups? Yes No? well this is the place, I would like to try some out though.
 
I would stay away from the buckers that fit into a single coil spot, they almost always suck. I have put tons of them in guitars and guys almost always like them at first and then come back two or three months later and want them swapped out. We don't even carry them anymore. The Lace sensors are nice (at least the GOLD ones) but they are hard to come by these days, as Fender doesn't use them any more.

The best pickups, in my opinion and in the opinion of everyone i have ever installed these pickups on, Rio Grande are the best aftermarket pickups on the market. Check out the website: http://www.riograndepickups.com/

they are the best... no question.

MIKE
 
Try www.kinman.com
I have a set of Kinman Avn-blues pickups in my Strat and they sound fat like SRV. They are all noiseless single coils and are supposed to sound vintage too.
 
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