I'm lost and I need help.
I've been playing acoustic for a while and a friend recently gave/sold me a very nice Fender American with no electronics or pickguard. It has an alder body, a rosewood neck and the stock trem. I've researched the electrical part and I don't think the wiring will be a problem. The thing that's making me crazy is the pickups. I have absolutely no experience with these things. I've beento the Seymour Duncan site and even with the sound clips and tone wizard on that site I'm still lost. There are just too many combinations for a newbie to digest.
There are only a few things I know for sure:
1) This is a nice guitar and I don't want to waste my time or money on cheap pickups.
2) I would like the guitar to be as versatile as possible. I don't expect perfect tone for everything, but I would like to explore blues, classic rock and pop rock. I'm not really into the very heavy stuff, so I don't need to get a metal tone.
3) I will gladly consider humbuckers and would likr to install at least 1.
4) I would consider more complex wiring schemes if it will add to the versatility. By this I mean humbucker switching, phase switching, and series/ parallel switching, or anything that may be suggested to increase versatility.
5) My amp is a Marshall G30RCD. First amp, Practice.
With my very simple goals, could someone suggest a combination of pickups that will allow me play blues and rock using the same instrument, or am I asking too much from the pickups?
Thanks for the help,
George
Id say get all single coils but thats the kind of guy i am (even though i own no single coil pickups myself :oops:). You can get a humbucker that fits in a single coil spot (that way you dont have to rout any) if you want a humbucker but id personally say just go all single coil. Especially with the type of music youd like to play. Blues= Strat (single coils), Classic Rock can be played with a strat and pop-rock definately can be played with a strat. Id get texas specials just because they are cool and not expensive.
Might as well get some real Fender pickups. I dont know that much about pickups.
aka Izabella
Start with ebay - they very often have complete pickguard assemblies - pickguard, pups and controls - just needs fitting.
See how it sounds for a while, then decide what, if any, modifications you want to make.
I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
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For the music you want to play, I second Izabella that you probably want single coils (but I always want single coils, so take my advice as you will) but you could consider Seymour Duncan's stacked pickups for a sigle coil voicing in a stacked humbucker sized package (very much like the Fender Noiseless design). Regular humbuckers would tend to not give you the cleans you want for pop/rock.
From those two catagories, I would then consider lower output pickups or vintage voiced pickups. ( I was amazed the first time I played a strat with vintage style pickups, those were the sounds I recognized from so many recordings. I found Steely Dan in about 30 seconds.)
These give you those classic strat sweet tones that were the reason people fell for the strat in the first place. The Vintage Alnico V are smooth sounding and give a nice midrange for blues. Go for the Alnico II's if you want a warmer high end. You probably want to go for reverse wound/reverse polarity for the middle to get some hum cancelling (even though that's not classic strat). The Classic stack is a nice alternative in the stacked humbucking catagory. A lot of people seem to like the Cool Rails, another approach to humbucking. (You also might want to consider 1 hotter pickup, in the bridge probably, for when you need some dirt for those blues leads, though I play the blues at the neck, personally.)
The Fender Vintage '57 reissues are real sweet if you like the idea of going all Fender. You wouldn't go wrong with these or the Texas Specials, if you decide you want something hotter.
