Pickups

OffHeGoes29

I want to get a new set of Pickups for my Mexican HSS Strat. I looked at Di Marzio pickups on musiciansfriend.

Any input?

Thank you.

gimmesometruth27

i have some lollars in my strat. to my ear they are the best sounding strat pickups i have ever played, and i have played almost every brand out there. i have some dimarzio humbuckers in some of my lower end guitars and i don't really care for the tone i get from them anymore. i would check the lollar site or the lindy fralin pickup site. both brands are excellent imo....

http://www.lollarguitars.com/Pickups.htm

http://www.fralinpickups.com/

ianvomsaal

depends on what sound you're looking for - there's a lot out there.

jcmark611

and your budget will play a factor in our recommendations.

OffHeGoes29

Well its for my X-mas list, so no more than maybe 70 for each single and a little more for the Humbucker. I play mostly 90's rock and classic rock. I'll try to play something heavy every now and again.

mccreadyisgod

Well, here's my 2-cents-worth.

Bridge, I'd look for something that approximates a Gibson PAF tone. Considering your budget, I'd go with the Seymour Duncan '59, which (I believe) is available in Fender string-spacing form. It's a pretty prototypical humbucker, and is one of the most common HB upgrades. It will cover 90's rock, classic rock, and most heavy stuff.

For the other two, I'd probably recommend using a "noiseless" pickup. I personally feel that the Fender Samarium Cobalt Noiseless (SCN) pickups are the best noiseless pickups for Strat. They have a fairly authentic Strat tone, healthy output, no noise, and really good clarity. If you wanted to go for a more traditional pickup, I'm all for Fralin pickups. The Blues Special model would probably be the best match to the Seymour Duncan in output.

Find the Seymour Duncan '59 at pretty much any music shop or website (Musician's Friend, et. al.)
I'd buy the SCN pickups on eBay; you can buy them new in sets of three, but you can find singles all the time on eBay, and you'll save a bundle.
Find the Fralin Blues Specials (or any of Lindy's stuff) through his website: http://www.fralinpickups.com/stratstyleBS.asp

Pacomc79

I like Suhr V60's too very very clear and articulate single coils around 75 a piece.

definately go F spaced on the humbucker whatever you get. The JB is pretty commonly used in the bridge, as is the George Lynch Screamin Deamon

http://www.seymourduncan.com

and http://www.suhrguitars.com should give you some info too.

ianvomsaal

Yeah, the Seymour Duncan '59 (SH1) is a decent pickup - I sometimes use them in Les Pauls.
I'd probably recommend the Seymour Duncan Custom Custom SH11 for the bridge position HB,
because they're designed to be used in bright guitars like Strats - they're a really great overall
humbucker (traditional vintage tone with increased output that's great for blues, classic rock,
heavy rock, pop, and even country) - these seem to work very well for almost all styles.
Here it is: http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/electric/humbucker/progressive/sh11_custom_cus/

The best thing I can tell you to do is just take a look at your favorite players and see which
pickups they use. If you like their guitar sound, try to find out what pickups they're using to
get that sound (just keep in mind that a lot of it also has to do with what guitars, amps, and
effects they use - look at live performances, not studio recordings (usually sounds different).

Here is a fairly large list of Dimarzio Pickup players (248 of them), and supposedly what each
of them currently uses (click complete players list): http://www.dimarzio.com/site/#/players/
And here is Seymour Duncan's list: http://www.seymourduncan.com/artists/featured_artists
Also, read this: http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/choosing-installing/how_to_pick_a_pickup.pdf

Pacomc79 wrote:

definately go F spaced on the humbucker whatever you get.

YES - there's a lot of debate about this, but F-spacing refers to Fender & Floyd Rose spacing.
The only pickup most people need to worry about is the humbucker "bridge" pickup. Almost all
single-coil-sized pickups are designed as F-spaced. And remember that you can always go with
Rail style pickups (because there's no pole pieces to match up the spacings).

I lifted this from Dimarzio's website to make sure the measurements were correct.

What is F-spacing?
All of our full-size humbuckers except the X2N® are available in two polepiece spacings. F-spacing refers to the wider of the two spacings. For proper string alignment and balanced output, F-spaced humbuckers should be used in the bridge position on all guitars with string spacing at the bridge of 2.1" (53 mm) or greater. On these guitars, if the nut width is 1-11/16” (43 mm) or greater, F-spaced pickups can be used in the neck position as well.

Why are there two different spacings?
A long time ago (in the 20th century, actually) the electric guitar world was divided between Gibson and Fender designs. One of the differences between the two was string spacing. In general, Gibson chose a narrower string spacing at the bridge than Fender, and therefore the polepieces on Gibson humbuckers were closer together than the magnets on Fender pickups. When guitar shops started installing humbuckers in the bridge position of Strats, it was obvious that the strings didn’t line up with the polepieces, and if the E strings were too far outside, the sound could suffer. Our first humbuckers followed the original Gibson spacing, and we call them standard-spaced. When we released our first humbuckers with wider spacing, Floyd Rose bridges were very popular. Floyd string-spacing is the same as Fender spacing, so we naturally called the new pickups F-spaced.

How do I know which spacing to use?
F-spaced pickups measure 2.01" (51 mm) center-to-center from the first polepiece to the sixth. Standard-spaced pickups measure 1.90" (48 mm). Although some players believe that F-spaced pickups are only for the bridge position of tremolo bridge guitars, many guitars with fixed bridges (including late 1990s Gibson Les Pauls and Epiphone LPs) should have F-spaced pickups in the bridge position. Most tremolo equipped guitars that have a nut width of 1-11/16 (43mm) or more should also use an F-spaced pickup in the neck position. If you’re replacing a bridge-position pickup and you're not sure what your string-spacing is, it's usually better to get an F-spaced model. It is not necessary for the strings to pass exactly over the center of the polepieces for best performance, but it is wise to avoid a situation where the E strings are sitting completely outside of the outer polepieces.

Cheers . . . IAN

OffHeGoes29

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to write back with a lot of great info. I'm still new to playing so I got a long way to go with the knowledge base. Thanks again.