Hey guys. Well, over the past 2 months now I have been building my own custom line of guitars. I started with the first one, its main idea is an all black guitar, maple fretboard, gold hardware & a pearloid pickguard. Its a strat. I have spent countless hours mastering its action, and intonation and I am now down to just the pickups. Everything else is solid, and beautiful, and I have to make the decision of pickups.
Now, I am the type of guy who loves to put a strat through everything. I want to acheive a beautiful glassy, 54' vintage clean, a dirty SRV blues, and a screaming yngwie malmsteen. Now, you would think that would be a combination of pickups, but I'm trying to focus on just getting a pack of pickups. I have played Lace Sensor "silver/blue/reds" and couldnt have loved them more. I also have an yngwie strat with HS-3, YJM in the neck etc, and couldnt love that more. However I am a little strapped on cash, and I am looking to spend about 100-150$ on 3 pickups. Now, Lace sensors go for about 70$ a peice online, but ebay has them for 140$ in kits of three. Thats almost in my price range, but I want some other opinions. Does anyone have any idea on some excellent pickups for a strat under 150$? I know the texas specials are only 60, and they hit the SRV & Clean ok, but any ideas on what they'd do with some yngwie thrown at them?
Im not TOO terribly picky about pickup tone, but I can definatly tell when its dead, or alive. So please guys, give me some ideas on what you think...
Another option is to leave a cheapo chinese middle pickup in, and spend 60-70$ a peice for the neck & bridge seeing as I rarely use the middle, but on the clean channel I do use the middle pickup sometimes so lost there too.
Let me know ANY options,
Thanks guys!
Josh
Sing Me A Song Your a Singer, Do me a wrong, your a bringer of evil. - Dio
if you like the Lace pickups, and they're in your budget, just go with them. they're good pickups, you won't go wrong.
<Make careful note of this post. It's one of the very few times you'll actually see me advise someone to throw money at a problem!>
One of the coolest things about a Strat is that all the electronics except the input jack are mounted on the pick guard. To completely replace a pick guard with the electronics mounted involves attaching three wires: ground, positive and negative.
One of the most elegant solutions I've seen to this problem involves taking advantage of that fact. He used spade connectors to make the connections, and could literally swap out loaded pick guards with different pickup configs in minutes. You can get the connectors at Radio Shack in 12 packs with male and female.
So . . . in your shoes I'd go for a fully loaded pick guard, and set the current one AND the new one up with spade connects. You now have two pickup configurations you can swap out in minutes.
Oh . . . no I haven't forgotten for second that you're a starving student with a guitar jones.
Check out what you can find here: http://store.guitarfetish.com/hawipi.html
I use one of their lower end pick guards in my Mexi strat, and it was a VAST improvement over the stock electronics. I'm very pleased with the quality and tone.
Playing guitar and never playing for others is like studying medicine and never working in a clinic.
Yeah cool idea man, but I already bought my pickguard, pots, switch, solder, etc. I just need the pickups.
Sing Me A Song Your a Singer, Do me a wrong, your a bringer of evil. - Dio
Yeah cool idea man, but I already bought my pickguard, pots, switch, solder, etc. I just need the pickups.
Check out their pickups then . . . They're highly regard by a lot of people.
Playing guitar and never playing for others is like studying medicine and never working in a clinic.
