What Pickups?

  • Thread starter Thread starter lank81
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lank81

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I'm looking to upgrade my stock Fender Strat pups and am looking for suggestions on what I should go with. I'm looking for a 90s alt/grunge (Seattle Grunge & RHCP) & 2000 garage rock/blues revival(White Stripes, Black Keys) tone. I was looking in to Lace Senors, SD SSL1s, SD Rails, and Bare Knuckles. Any other suggestions? Anyone have a favorite setup?

Lank
 
Well, your list of sounds is pretty diverse for just a strat. John Frusciante, to my knowledge, has always been a strat guy, and for that you would be well served with something like the SSL-1s (though they are single coil pickups, so they will be noisey, and if you want that sound without the noise I would suggest going instead with Seymour Duncan's Classic Stack Plus pickups, which are my favorite strat pickup at the moment). But for a lot of the Seatle guys, or the White Stripes stuff, those aren't going to get you there. The Seatle thing is quite varied - you've got Cobain playing the Jazzmaster a lot (which sound a lot different from a Strat), Kim Thayil using humbuckers, and Pearl Jam usually doing the one-guy-on-a-LP/one-guy-on-a-Strat thing. And of course Jack White with all those old junkie things he likes.

You might try something like this - for the neck, use a `lil 59, for the middle use the Classic Stack Plus, and for the bridge use a Hot Rails - then make sure you have it wired to tap everything in the "in between" positions. It will take a four pole/5-way Supper Switch, but will give you a bunch of options, and if you use the right amp/amps you should be able to get a lot of different sounds.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light,
Thanks for the suggestions. I definitely put up a very diverse list of players so to cut it down i'd say frusciante, corgan, and mccready. I've thought about going with the lace sensor corgan route but i think i might do ssl-1 in neck, hot rails in bridge and i'm unsure as to what i will choose in the middle. I think a setup like this will get me a nice strat tone with some diversity and high gain possibilities. Also, just so you know i'm running through a fender deluxe verb. I'll be getting my distortion an od via big muff, tube screamer, and micro amp in front or end of chain.

Lank
 
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