Stratocaster pickup question

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copperandstars

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Hello Everyone,

This is not really a recording question, but I can not think of anywhere else to look for help, so here it goes:

I currently play a Fender Strat. I love the way they feel and everything, but I can't stand the single coil humm. I have been thinking about upgrading it to a couple Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB™ Humbucker pickups. I am not sure if this would work or how to do it. If i bought a new pick guard fitted for them, would this be a possibility? Is it hard to wire everything to the volume nobs? What about the pickup selector switch? I really appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks,
Ryan
 
i like the feel of a strat too....i like the tone of single coil pickups. i play blues and thats the tone i want.

there are some things to cut down on the hum. 1st you should make sure your guitar is grounded properly. if the ground wire has a bad connection the pickup will work, but have a bad single coil hum. another thing you can do is make sure your strat has a metal sheild behing the pick guard (like the vintage strats). the newer strats have the stick-on tin foil looking stuff on the back of the pick guard. its supposed to shield the pots and pickups, which reduces the hum, but i have found that a plate under the pickguard shields alot better.
one more thing you can do is notice your positionand angle of the guitar in proportion to the amp (alot of times you can turn the guitar to the left or right just a tad and the guitar with quiet down. if you are 6 ft or so frome your amp you shouldn't have alot of problem with hum.

if you just can't live with single coil hum you can go with a humbucker....but you can't get a single coil tone with a humbucker.

if you decide to go with a humbucker there are several stacked coil humbuckers that will fit your existing pickguard. a seymore duncan hot rails pickup fits the standard single coil pickguard and is a side by side humbucker (more gibson type tone). if you want an actual side by side humbucker like is on a les paul i would recomend the semore duncan pearly gates. the pearly gates is made especially for fender because the string spacing is different on gibsons ...the pickup poles won't line up correctly when you put a gibson type replacement pickup on a strat.

as far as just changing the pickguard to install a pearly gates...not. you will have to route out the guitar and its will not be pretty when you take the pickguard off. if it were me i would either put pickups that fit the single coil routing or leave it alone. thats my 2 cents
 
Hi Ryan,

I'm with Jimistone on this one...sound advice. I wouldn't think a real Fender Strat should be REALLY noisy. If you think it is, then do check the ground wire atleast, or have a tech look at it.

Im also with jimistone in thinking that you would be best to pick a pu that fits without serious routing mods, etc.

You could consider a Sensor. Some, like jimi, might not settle for that either though. Some say they roll off a tiny bit of 'bite' vs. a regular single coil. My Strat with Lace Sensors is very quiet.

Jimi probably has a humbucker guitar as well...I do.

BTW, I'm more working on developing the buzz at this moment...
 
I went down this road a few years ago..... I loved the Strat 'feel' but wanted an humbucker sound too.

After buying a few guitars which were fitted with humbuckers
(Yammie. Washburn) I realised nothing felt like a strat. I eventually got an Epiphone Les Paul Standard and loved the sound of it. It certainly doesn't feel like a Strat but a change is as good as a rest.

To me a Strat should remain forever single coil and for humbuckers you need a Les Paul.

I now have only two electric guitars, a Mexican Standard Strat and an Epiphone Les Paul Standard and I feel I have the best of both worlds. (If money was no object it would be a U.S.A. Standard Strat and a Gibson L.P. Standard).

Jimistones point about the metal pick shield is a good one, have you checked that?

Doesn't the Ritchie Sambora strat have a humbucker at the bridge?, or a cheaper option the Tom de Longe Squier strat ( I will stand corrected on that one if I'm wrong ).

Keep experimenting and you'll find what you are looking for..

Cheers,

Frog.
 
Ah, its an eternal debate. I LOVE the sound of single coils in a Strat, but I can't use them when working around a computer monitor or in gigs where there is bad wiring.

My solution was to get some Fender Noiseless Strat pickups. They sound very close, but not exactly the same. The resonant peak is lower. There is still chime but it is at a lower harmonic.

I've tried the EMG's. I hate them. I have tried the Sensors, and they are very cool sounding in the Clapton Strat--but they are weak on the high e string, which sux.

I have heard the Bill Lawerence pickups are both fantastic sounding and a very good deal for a set. I may try these eventually.

The Joe Barden Start pickups sound very good, but they don't sound exactly "vintage". They are also very expensive.

I also added a Demeter Mid-Boost to my guitar, so I can get more of a P-90 sound when I desire it. I love that thing to pieces.

As for wiring, you can get all the diagrams on line at Seymour Duncan. If you can solder and follow the diagram, its easy to put the pickups in yourself. If you are squeamish, you can hire a luthier to do it for you.
 
Thanks a lot for all of the responces, I really appreciate it!

For the style of music my band plays I do favor the humbucker sound more than the single coil sound. I am looking into the seymour duncan humbucker pickup that fits the single coil size. My only question is, should I get two of these...one for the bridge position and on for the neck? If so, what will become of the center single coil pickup?

Thanks a lot,
Ryan
 
A few suggestions...

Hi,
Sorry, I dont know how old this thread is, you may have already changed your singlecoils or whatever, but I'll just put it in for the sake of future single coil prospectors.
If you like that tone from a single coil, great for blues and rock n' roll, but hate the hum, there are solutions to that problem, without losing that single coil tone, in favour of a Humbucker. Try Fender Hot Noiseless single coil pickups. They worked great for me, and they are noiseless. And I mean noiseless. Not a hint of a hum. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck (who helped develop them) and others swear by them. I cannot put in words the amazing tone I got off them. Even for hard rock/metal, turn your gain up to 11 and these babies dont even think about humming.
Also, try asking your local guitar tech to wire your pickups 'in series', or if you're brave enough to do it yourself, save a few bob by doing that. This means, that when you use two single coils at the same time, they behave like a humbucker, but you get a single coil tone. However, this limits tonal possibilities, as you'll get hum with just ONE single coil.
A cheaper alternative, is to seal every cavity of your Strat, or Tele or whatever the guitar in question. Just line it with some tin-foil, and this should have some impact on the hum, but for a full stop to the hum, I'd go for the Noiseless pickups. They're savages! And I found that I got more sustain aswell, cause the magnets are Samarium Cobalt or some mad mix.

Hope this helps.

John
 
You don't need new pickups (assuming you like the tone of them). All you have to do is shield your guitar. It'll cost you maybe $10 for all the parts and it'll take you a few hours.

The electronic concepts used in guitar are archaic and unbelievable. Cheap tape recorders use better electronic practices.

You will not believe the difference. The single coil hum is, for all practical purposes, gone. I did this on my strat, and people can't believe the difference. My Strat is quieter than a Les Paul guitar now.

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to do it:

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding/shield3.php

(this is the site that Clive Hugh referenced above, but he gave no explanation.)

It's really pretty easy, and it doesn't affect the appearance or tone (except maybe giving you more "sparkle" due to the lack of interfering hum) at all.

Try it. You will NOT be disappointed.
 
Shielding may or may not help you, depending on how well shielded your guitar is already and the environment in which you play. Shielding cannot address the RF/EM noise that comes in from the front of the pickups.

One simple thing you can do is to replace the center pickup with a RWRP (reverse wound reverse polarity) pickup which is otherwise as close to the original as possible. What that does is convert the #2 and #4 positions into noise canceling (humbucking) configurations. That worked really well for me as those are my favorite Strat sounds anyway.
 
ggunn said:
Shielding may or may not help you, depending on how well shielded your guitar is already and the environment in which you play. Shielding cannot address the RF/EM noise that comes in from the front of the pickups.

One simple thing you can do is to replace the center pickup with a RWRP (reverse wound reverse polarity) pickup which is otherwise as close to the original as possible. What that does is convert the #2 and #4 positions into noise canceling (humbucking) configurations. That worked really well for me as those are my favorite Strat sounds anyway.
Click to expand...

Yes well there's more to it than just lining the cavities with tin foil (plus you have to be careful with how you do this, because it needs to be one conductive shield throughout; if you have foil glued to foil, that's not good, because the glue is non-conductive, and therefore the shield is broken).

You also star-ground the guitar, which helps a lot.

All I know is that my Strat used to be a noisy b*tch, and it's now quieter (much quiter actually) than the humbucking guitars I've tried.
 
I fitted a Seymour Duncan 'lil' screamin' demon' pickup, which is miniature version of George Lynch's Screamin' Demon, to the bridge of my Strat about 13 years ago. Basically a humbucker the size of a single coil. Took me about 5 minutes to install. The hum is gone, and it sounds awesome. I don't ever have any intention of changing it.

As for the JB, you can get an equivalent miniature, single-coil sized version of it for a Strat.
 
If you want it to sound like a Strat without the hum, try either Kinmans or the new Seymour Duncan Strat Stack Plus pickups. I've not actually heard the Seymour Duncans, but I've heard a lot of good things about them, and I'm about to put them in my new strat, so if you wait a couple weeks I'll be able to give you a report on them. The Kinmans, however, are awesome pickups.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Ryan...
I got one of the assembled pickguards from Carvin for my strat and it sounds great. 2 singles and a humbucker is what I got. About $130.00
Check em out...Might be something you'd be interested in.
http://www.carvinguitars.com/guitarpickups.php

edit...forgot to mention the main reason was cuz I suck at soldering/wiring those 5 way switches.
 
Last edited:
crawdad said:
My solution was to get some Fender Noiseless Strat pickups. They sound very close, but not exactly the same. The resonant peak is lower. There is still chime but it is at a lower harmonic.
Click to expand...

I agree with the VNs. For a more vintage sound the regular VNs, and for overdriven rock sounds, the VN Hots work well.
 
I had the same prob

I would recommend a Seymour Duncan JB Jr , I had the same hum problem , I however got lucky and was at a guitar show here in Dallas and the guy was ready to leave , but he had a bunch of Duncan pickups , and I picked up on a JB Jr for $25 , I had never tried them before , but it was $25 , so I checked it out . They are the same size as the standard single coil in the Strat and they come with wiring instructions in the box , real simple install.

Rock On
 
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