Best after market single coil pickups for Strats.. Heavy Sound !

[scottd1984]

Hey Panamark,another option for you would be the Duncan Quarter Pound Strat pickup it's a true single coil It Has 1/4 pole piece magnets and is hotter (higher) Output than a regular Strat p/u

[BrownSound1]

Personally I like stock Strat and Tele pickups...of course I'm not playing Metal on them, but you can play heavy rock with a single coil. We've all seen it done successfully many times.

I'm not one who likes a distorted pickup like the Invader, but I've played a Strat with a Lil' 59 and it was an awesome thing to behold.

[Nitro Express]

Not all Fenders have good pickups in them. If your Strat is one of those Standard Mexican made ones, it's going to have cheap pickups. You can tell by looking at the backs of them. The cheap ones have two bar magnets glued to the bottom bobbin. In original Strat pickups, the polepieces are the magnets. The Cheepie pickups sound like shit.

Like all big brandname guitar makers, Fender makes some great stuff and then they also make shit. If you look at the huge selection of Stratocasters available some run from $300 all the way to sevral thousand.

The higher end Strat pickups are excellent. I like the vintage ones just the way Leo Fender himself made them. Those are the pickups that gave us all those great Jimi Hendrix tunes.

Sure you can go with a hotter pickup, but what I do is use peddles to boost my signal. The Dunlop Fuzz Face reissue is good and so is the DOD 250 overdrive. Both of these peddles love to mate with a good Marshall and sound great with humbuckers as well.

You have to remember, the Stratocaster was designed to be a country-western guitar. That's why they sound twangy. In 1954 when those pickups were designed, they had no idea in hell, people would be turning the amp up all the way.

Some tricks you can do is put the tone knob on the bridge pickup. Eric Johnson does this and you can dial out some of the bite. What I do is play the inbetween position and turn the middle pickup tone know down to 6. You do use the tone knobs on a Strat, you can eliminate the hum from the single coils and make the sound warmer and less biting. Then crank the hell out of some good boost peddles and run it into a good amp. A good Strat should handle it's own with the right signal chain.

[Hardrock69]

I got a Fender Jazz taco bass (parts made in Mexico, actually assembled in the USA like they all are) and the pickups in it sound good but not spectacular.

I have to buy the following for my axes:

2 EMG pickups for my Jazz bass

4 PAFs for my Korina Explorer and Flying V (The Explorer pickups sound ok, but weak, and the V pickups squeal like a stuck pig under the best of circumstances).

3 good single coils for my #2 JB Player neck-thru-body Strat.

Now if I can just come up with a bucket of money to blow, I will be set...

[Kristy]

At least check out the Fender 'Noiseless'. Many a musician that I know who had tried the 'Noiseless' seem to like them and I've changed out many a Strat (and some Strat copies) with them and the players seem to have no compliants other than too much low end - but that can be adjusted through your amp

[Nitro Express]

For me, I could care less about the noise of the the vintage style pickups. Listen to Hendrix Live recordings, you hear the 60 cycle hum. Heck, at the Isle of Wight he had the security radios coming through his amps. It's rock and roll. Who cares about a little dirt in the signal? You go low hum, you lose some of the tone.

A Stratocaster is a vintage guitar design. The trem is going to go out of tune, it's only got 21 frets, the pickups sound thin and are noisey. That's the nature of the beast. There's lot's of great guitars that give you Strat like ergonomics if not better and thick tone. PRS, Jackson, Wayne's Guitars, Musicman all make them.

[Panamark]

Edward had the right idea, a strat with a hot pickup..

Sorry folks, but Fender pickups suck.
scottd1984 Ive never heard of the Duncan Quarter Pound Strat,
but I love Duncan P/U's.. So Im sure it Rocks.

I dunno how you guys who like fender pickups put up with
that hum. Pisses me off. You have to find a position to play
in to minimize it, or place the pickup selector inbetween
the bridge and middle.. (Then the tone sucks)

I prefer the metal sound. Maybe thats why I hate Fender
pickups..

[Kristy]

Originally posted by Panamark

I dunno how you guys who like fender pickups put up with
that hum.

Hence the name, 'Noiseless'

[Nitro Express]

Well you certainly aren't going to get a heavy metal tone with stock fender pickups. Yeah, I would say Eddie Van Halen definately stumbled onto something and Floyd Rose did a good job of fixing the trem problems.

The old Stratocaster and it's thin sounding, noisey pickups fill a niche. Nothing else can get the Stevie Ray Vaughn or Jimi Hendrix sound. I always thought Yngwie Malmsteen got a good sound out of a Strat. Henry Garza with a stock Stratocaster sounds amazing. Check out Los Lonely Boys. That is the sound of a Strat if I every heard it.

If you want a heavy tone but with good deffinition and harmonics, pick you up a Peavey Wolfgang guitar. The pickups and the wood combination in them is heavy as hell sound wise but you still can turn the volume knob down and get a nice clean tone.

[Panamark]

I cant stand the Wolfgangs. The look, the fact that they are a Peavey, I didnt like the feel of them either. Never really got to the point of judging its tone, as you said the tone is great. I will take your word
on that one. To me the wolfgang is just another symbol of Van Halen
gone wrong..

[Nitro Express]

The Wolfgang was the only off the rack shred type guitar I ever liked. I don't like thin/wide necks you find on most of them. I tend to like the non-floating Floyd too. Yeah, I never cared for the chunky body or the headstock but I liked how the guitar played and sounded so I got one.

Lots of good Strat type guitars out there that will give you a Wolfgang type of sound. Just put a Dimarzio Tone Zone humbucker in the bridge position and there you go. If you want a great USA built shred guitar I highly suggest one made by Wayne/Michael Charvel at waynesguitars.com. Wayne Charvel himself does the final setup. The lowest best action you will ever play on.

[Panamark]

Originally posted by Kristy
Hence the name, 'Noiseless'

I hear ya, but even the noiseless fender pickups suck,
I like the metal sounds the duncans give..

[Nitro Express]

You're going to have to go the humbucker route then. Take off the pickguard of your Strat and see what kind of routing it has. It might be already milled for a humbucker. A simple change of the pickguard with the humbucker of your choice in there and you are good to go!

You can get a new pickguard at wdmusic.com or allparts.com.

Many of the new Stratocasters have humbucker routing in the body because it saves them money. They can route a zillion bodies the same way and use any pickup combination they want.

[BrownSound1]

P'Mark...I can't believe you think all Fender pickups suck, especially considering some of the people who swore/swear by them.

I guess if you're talking heavy metal only...but I can think of some heavy fuckin' sounds done on Strats and Teles.

Really though, why not just play a Les Paul or something if you're just shooting for a metal tone? If I were you I'd just play the Destroyer and be done with it.

Now for a replacement bridge pickup...try the Little '59 or the JB Jr., or any of those types of Seymour Duncan p/ups. Seymour won't do you wrong. LOL I've actually heard a lot of people brag on the Li'l Screamin' Demon as a great metal pickup. What are those boys from Iron Maiden using in their Strats? I know they have Seymours in there..just don't know what model.

I don't know about the DiMarzios except for the HS3 stacked humbuckers, and those yield a single coil sound...but Wingnut Malmsteen swears by them. I don't like DiMarzios so I'm biased...and yes folks I've used several of them.

[jackassrock]

Hot rails are humbuckers, just small so they fit in a single coil space. I would say (since I have guitars with both in them) that the hot rails is a close match to the invader.

Your average Fender single coil puts out about 5-7k dc resistance. The Hot rail is one of the hottest pup you can fit into a strat without a new pickguard (and possibly some routing of the guitar underneath). And, it's designed for the METAL shredder. It's output is about 16-17k. They sound fat as fuck. I know, I use them in just about every Fender guitar I have. Oh, and they don't hum.