Build/Pickup questions

[rocknrolldork]

So I have repainted my old Ibanez Blazer guitar. I put a PRS Artist in the bridge position. It's a fantastic creamy sounding pickup. Love it. I'm wanting to put a single coil in it too. Admittedly, I don't know much about the in's and out's of pickups. I have the original bridge pickup that I took out of my 73 strat. Even though it's a bridge pickup, would it still have a decent sound in the neck or middle position or are the single coil strat pickups made specifically for their position in a strat? I don't want to cut into the pickguard if it is going to sound like shit and ruin the pickguard. Anyone a stratmaster out there and have some good info on this?

[Nitro Express]

So I have repainted my old Ibanez Blazer guitar. I put a PRS Artist in the bridge position. It's a fantastic creamy sounding pickup. Love it. I'm wanting to put a single coil in it too. Admittedly, I don't know much about the in's and out's of pickups. I have the original bridge pickup that I took out of my 73 strat. Even though it's a bridge pickup, would it still have a decent sound in the neck or middle position or are the single coil strat pickups made specifically for their position in a strat? I don't want to cut into the pickguard if it is going to sound like shit and ruin the pickguard. Anyone a stratmaster out there and have some good info on this?

Fender in the 50's and 60's just wound the same pickup and put it in all three positions on a Strat. No special pickups. On my 72 Strat I run 68 reissue Fender pickups in all three positions and the next pickup gets that wonderful Hendrix mellow tone. I can nail Third Stone From the Sun with it.

The specialized pickups didn't come on to the scene until the 70's and 80's. With the vintage Fender pickups you will get 60 cycle hum and noise because there is no opposing coil to cancel out the hum. They make new pickups that get close to the old tone without the hum and noise.

For me that's part of the fun of having a Strat. I like them original.

The key thing is knowing what sound you want and if you want it quiet or noisy. Once you know that a lot of good pickup manufactures probably have the pickup you want. There are no shortage of pickups for a Strat that's for damn sure. You will always get more dynamics and color with a single coil over a humbucker. What you sacrifice for a quiet pickup is some of the color. A good P-90 will always beat a good humbucker from raunch to clean. The Who Live at Leeds is Townsend playing an SG with P-90's. Some of the greatest rock albums were recorded with single coils.

[jhale667]

So I have repainted my old Ibanez Blazer guitar. I put a PRS Artist in the bridge position. It's a fantastic creamy sounding pickup. Love it. I'm wanting to put a single coil in it too. Admittedly, I don't know much about the in's and out's of pickups. I have the original bridge pickup that I took out of my 73 strat. Even though it's a bridge pickup, would it still have a decent sound in the neck or middle position or are the single coil strat pickups made specifically for their position in a strat? I don't want to cut into the pickguard if it is going to sound like shit and ruin the pickguard. Anyone a stratmaster out there and have some good info on this?

There's no reason why you couldn't use whatever position "bridge" model in another slot if you wanted to: I mean, I do. My "traditional" Strats (w/o Floyds) have the now-discontinued but awesome if you can still find 'em Dimarzio Virtual Vintage '54 bridge model in the middle position for added brightness, works great - particularly with the Eric Johnson tone control mod.

YMMV depending on what model you put where, but experimentation is fun...

[Hardrock69]

One of the things I have on my "to do" list someday is get some kinda PAF replica pickups and put them in my Korina V. Seymour Duncans might be what I get. That is for someday.

Yeah....pickups can be used at any place on the body. All up to you. And you can experiment as well. Try one pickup in 3 different spots, and figure out what you like best.

[rocknrolldork]

I cut the pickguard and wired the single in the neck position yesterday. The PRS pickup still purrs. But when I click up to the single it just buzzes. A friend of mine said something about not being able to run a 500 pot on the single coil and that I may need to wire in some type of resistor somewhere. Not quite sure about this but definitely doing some research on it.

I forgot how much I love playing this cheap little guitar.

[jhale667]

True single-coils do seem to prefer 250K pots, but that's not really ideal for the humbucker. Perhaps split the difference with a 300K?