Recommendation for good all around Strat pickups

[Freeman Keller]

As I've mentioned several times, I really don't know diddly about pickups. I have an inexpensive little Squire on the bench right now and among other work the owner wants me to replace the stock pups. Since I don't play a Strat I asked him what he wanted - he said "something good, you choose it, maybe those Budz that you put in the Tele".

 

So here are some options that I have easily available

 

Budz Purebred - $240 set. Budz says "bridge clear, complex, balanced with neck and mid". We are really liking the Budz P90/single coil in the Tele but this would be quite different. Pretty expensive

 

StewMac Golden Age - $140 set. I've liked the StewMac pups for other guitars (humbuckers and single coil tele). I need to order some stuff from them anyway

 

Fender Tex Mex - $100 at my local store. The clerk was pretty positive about them

 

Lace $159 set. I was given a set of these so I could make him a heck of a deal. Lace says they are "warm, good for pop, rock, blues, aggressive".

 

Any other favs out there?

 

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

Fender's Texas Specials are pretty good, as are the Seymour Duncan Vintage Staggered Strat (VSS) sets.

[Pine Apple Slim]

Wilde Keystones, tho there may be a wait for a Strat set.

 

http://www.wildepickups.com/Wilde_Bill_s_Keystones.html

[badpenguin]

Bill Lawrence, just as Pine mentioned.

http://wildepickups.com/Wilde_Bill_s_NF_Singles.html

 

If price doesn't matter, Lollar.

http://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-stratocaster-pickups

 

If price DOES matter, The GHF goldtones are REALLY nice!

http://guitarfetish.com/GFS-Gold-Foil-Pickups_c_525.html

 

Personally, I happen to like the Lace Sensors.

http://www.lacemusic.com/

[Grant Harding]

You know what I recommend.

[GAS Man]

Fender Tex Mex - $100 at my local store. The clerk was pretty positive about them

 

Lace $159 set. I was given a set of these so I could make him a heck of a deal. Lace says they are "warm, good for pop, rock, blues, aggressive".

 

Any other favs out there?

 

 

Fender's Texas Specials are pretty good' date=' as are the Seymour Duncan Vintage Staggered Strat (VSS) sets.[/quote']

 

I'm not a huge fan of the Tex Mex p'ups. I have them in a few of my guitars (stock), a Nashville Tele, Jimmie Vaughan Strat and a American Standard HSS.

 

But they tend to have a bit too much sizzle for me. I really did not like my JV Strat when it first arrived, but I found that lowering them a bit indeed helps (a suggestion I got a while ago from another forumite here) and I've since made peace with my JV Strat. So I think of them as being a bit more on the aggressive side and not as warm, in other words, fairly high on their "presence", but still a pretty good value.

 

I'm agreeing with Phil on the Texas Specials. The first time I ever upgraded the pickups on a guitar I had a set put in a MIJ '60s Foto Flame Strat and it was a nice improvement. The stock MIJ p'ups were anemic sounding. The TS p'ups sounded more full/fatter with more vibe.

 

I've got others that I've bought but never got around to installing (like the Fat '50s and '69s) so I should be able to add more, but due to procrastination, that's about all I can add. Although I also like the pickups they are using these days in the American Standards. They are kinda like the Momma bear's porridge, "not too hot, not too cold, just right".

 

The one thing I've personally learned over these years of being a devoted hobbyist is that the wood sure makes a difference with how the p'ups will sound. With that Strat being a Squire (and assuming it's also a bit thinner) it probably has a bit less ability to make the hotter p'ups sound good, since internal resonance helps smooth out those edges.

 

I think the Lace set might be a good idea. Especially if they are the golds. I once put a red in the bridge of a early 90s laminate body Squier Strat and that was an ice-pick disaster. If one does that, they should also get the tone pot connected to the bridge pickup.

[Les Paul Lover]

My vigier expert has a set of Di Marzio Virtual Vintage 54 noiseless pick ups that are simply outstanding.

 

I've had a number of Strat in my hands, this is my favourite set. Wonderful bell ring, and noiseless.... !!!!

[Grant Harding]

Hard to remove the Vigier from the equation, but those pickups do get a lot of kudos.

 

The target Squier is unlikely to ring like a bell even after Freeman has squeezed every bit of goodness it has to offer.

[Freeman Keller]

If it was my guitar you know what I would put in it.

[Freeman Keller]

This is all very helpful and I greatly appreciate the input. Talked with the owner today and he agreed to try the Lace (I've got them, price is right and several of you think highly of them). If he isn't satisfied we can try something else. There is a bunch of other work that needs to be done so please keep the suggestions coming.

[onelife]

My first choice would be Kinman - but they are expensive.

 

Staying with the noiseless - which is important to me - Seymour Duncan Vintage Stacks.

 

I had a set of Lace Sensors for several years and used them on a couple of albums but felt they were a bit of a compromise.

[1001gear]

I like single coils with that "frosty" tinge - the same sound you get with cheap Asian coils thru tiny Dano practice amps. That could of course be the cheap amp although from my POV too many guitarists are all about toan and not musical output.

Things that matter as they occur to me:

 

all the percussive aspects of technique.

Hard/soft/dynamics etc...

 

pickup position and adjustment

neck middle bridge obviously and any pole piece calibration required

 

pickup height is a bit more elusive. Basically with a neck coil FI, low as possible yields a full and clear sound. Higher increases output and drive. The moon landing here is, that gorgeous low setting requires more gain and therefore hum. Going higher fattens up the sound but it also increases the string output while the hum remains unchanged. Hmm...

Going too high flirts with magnetic interference. (crash and burn)

 

I stay in the middle zone and do the rest with the knobs.

 

[GAS Man]

There were a lot of years where Fender spec'd the Lace Sensor Golds for the Eric Clapton Signature model Strat

 

\m/

[t_e_l_e]

i have some considerations to add:

on my CIJ 68 reissue strat i replaced the stock pickups (with which i was soundwise very happy) with a kiman woodstock+ set, because of 60hz cycle hum noise issues.

noise is completely gone and made me very happy, but the sound changed to be not as strat jangly as it was before

 

i recently got a warmoth body and neck and put the other parts from a late '90 MIA standard together to make a second nice guitar, which plays and feels like the CIJ and looks better than the MIA

plan was if i have too much noise and do not like the MIA stock pickups to also get a set of kinmans.

so the stock pickups while having a bit of noise (not as much as the CIJ had, maybe there was some bad wiring), sounds really stratish with all the jangle one might expect and love from it.

 

so question: which one do i like better, soundwise?

to be honest, i don't know, or better said it depends...

 

the kinmans are very picky how high you set them. they can sound very bright and trebly, but do not have the jangle. they do sound more defined and clear. imho they are very good for a rock, hardrock/ metal sound (zero noise is a big plus here), yeah they do also the blues well.

 

the MIA stock pu are THE strat jangle, think of the edge, or sultans of swing, or wind cries mary/little wing. the kinmans can do it also, but not as nice and the difference how much jangle you can get is huge.

 

in my experience all sort of noiseless or stacked singlecoil etc pickups have this lack of jangle, also i have an ehx humdebugger pedal to cancel the noise, which works very well, but it also changes the sound and i lose the jangle...

 

so ask your customer what sound he likes or he wants from the guitar and which music he will play?

if he is in hard rock and/or metall, use some noiseless recommendation above, depending on the budget

 

if he wants sultans of swing, get him some "normal" single coils, there is a lot of praise about the texas special more than 15 years or so, but even some stock std strat pickups can sound great

 

with normal single coils, shielding and wiring becomes more important, using shielded cables for every inch where possibly and maybe shielding paint for the pickup cavatiy can put the noise dramatically down

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

Custom Shop 69s will do just about anything that a Strat needs, and are roughly tonally the same as original 54 6.5k A3 pickups.

 

The late 60s and 70s Grey fibre pickups, reverted to the more common A5 magnets, but wound to 5.5k, so Nile Rodgers, to Jimi, to Ritchie, to Yngwie.

 

I can't think of a better Strat pickup

[onelife]

...

the kinmans are very picky how high you set them. they can sound very bright and trebly, but do not have the jangle. they do sound more defined and clear. imho they are very good for a rock, hardrock/ metal sound (zero noise is a big plus here), yeah they do also the blues well.

 

the MIA stock pu are THE strat jangle, think of the edge, or sultans of swing, or wind cries mary/little wing. the kinmans can do it also, but not as nice and the difference how much jangle you can get is huge...

 

I have Kinmans is a couple of guitars - a strat and a tele

 

The pickup height adjustment is indeed a major factor and it may take a couple of weeks of tweaking to find the sweet spot but, from my experience, it is worth the effort.

 

If you take your time and listen to the many possibilities you may even find something unexpected that sounds better than what you were originally striving for. My strat sounds like a '50s strat but my tele sounds like me.

[t_e_l_e]

don't get me wrong, i really like the kinmans, they have more grit and more bite and are somewhat punchier, but i can't get the same jangle sound in position 2 and 4 i get/got with the other pickups.

 

to me i have now two nice strats which play almost the same way i like (wanted to be the warmoth as close to the CIJ as possible beside the fretboard radius) with different pickup configurations.

 

so if i want the grit and bity strat sound i grab the CIJ with the kinmans, if i want the strat jangle i grab the green warmoth

 

i currently play the green one more often because it looks a bit sexier, still in honey moon

[pekelnik]

I'm not a super SC pickup expert, I've probably had 5 sets altogether, but I got custom wound pickups from Bryan (bg-pups.com), when he was starting his pickup business here. I guess I have the V60's though this was, I don't know, 2008?

 

To this day I find them awesome. They are not high gain, but the sound is very complex and chimey.

[Chris Kettlewell]

I'm not a super SC pickup expert either, but personally I just find it a real struggle dealling with standard single coils and the noise. I got a Fender US Deluxe strat which has their noiseless pickups in it with the extra switching options from the push button in the volume knob. It's really good. If I was going to get a standard strat the first thing I would do would be to whip out the pickups and put in a set of Kinman's. Haven't had them in one of my guitars, but have a friend who does, and they'd be the choice for me. Standard, noisy single coils almost restrict you to only ever using the 2 and 4 positions on the pickup switch, and to me, they are the least preferred positions most of the time (though I do like them on mine where I have the button pressed, but it's a completely different sound!)

[AJ6stringsting]

The 69's neck and mid pickups are great, but to me, the bridge was too much treble for my tastes, so I put in a Schaller S6 pickup. The S6 is 13.06k ohms and I love it. It has some girth and still has the classic Strat tone.

 

One question, does you 69 pickups have AY and a date written in ink on the bottom of the pickup ?

[GAS Man]

Thanks for the feedback. I've got an American Series HSS Strat with Tex Mex Neck and Middle, so maybe my idle set of '69s would therefore be a great upgrade for THAT guitar. Then I could sell off the bridge p'up if I don't find another axe begging for it. Indeed, I'm not a lover of an overly trebly bridge p'up. I'll take a look for the dates and report back.

[Freeman Keller]

Thank you everyone for the comments - I spent a lot of time reading this (and have it book marked if I need to replace pups in another strat). We put the Lace sensors in it, I cleaned up the pots and switch (pretty noisy), blocked the trem and dressed the frets. The guitar has a good strat sound, whatever that means, but something I've noticed is that the 2nd and 4th switch positions (Neck plus mid, mid plus bridge) are significantly quieter than each of the pickups by themselves. Is that normal? (Remember, I'm not a strat player and am used to Gibsons where you can blend two pickups)

 

Anyway, the Lace sound better than the stock MII pups - we'll leave them in and see what happens.

[gardo]

Pos. 2 &4 seem quieter on mine as well so I suppose it's normal. It must have something to do with the out of phase noise canceling . I'm sure a few people here could give us a scientific explanation for this.

[1001gear]

Lace sensors sound fatter than standard pickups so non blues/rock types might prefer them to standard coils with their "glassiness" and hair trigger attack. Why the in between positions are quieter might be a function of Laces being quieter than standard coils in the first place. Does the middle lace have a comparable reverse polarity/wind scheme?

[Chris Kettlewell]

Basically, pickup coils will pick up noise also. It's what happens. Humbuckers fix this by having 2 coils out of phase, switching the phase and to cancel out the noise. If you are using standard single coils in a standard 5 position switch set up, then positions 2 and 4 effectively do the same thing, as a humbucker, but 1, 3, 5 just use the single coil and will always be noisy. I've played standard strats with standard single coils in shops, and just can't stand all the noise. And I'm not a big fan of sound of the 2 and 4 positions. So they'd be useless to me.

 

I love my US Deluxe Strat with the SC Noiseless pickups and the S-1 switching. No noise issues on any pickup positions. Some strat lovers keep going on about the "jangly" sound and they probably wouldn't like that one, but I quite like the sound and hate not being able to use all the pickup switching positions on ones with standard single coils.