Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

[ShredCrazed]

I recently bought my first guitar with single coil pickups, its a Fender Standard Strat with a maple fretboard. I wanna swap out the bridge and neck stock pickups for duncans but I'm unsure of which ones suit my style. My favorite band is Opeth for those of you who aren't familiar with them they use distorted swedish melodic metal tones interchangeably with clean breaks that have a bluesy edge to them. I tend to use the bridge pickup for leads and solos and the neck for rhythm and usually clean stuff too. Basically I want to be able to whip out distorted stuff from the bridge with alot of sustain and screaming pinch harmonics and I want to have a more low endy sound at the neck but somewhere I MUST HAVE GOOD CLEANS! I'd be using the bridge the most and I'm torn between the Hot Rails and JB Jr. --- for the neck I was considering Cool Rails, I'd like to put another hot pickup at the neck but I'm afraid I'll lose those crystal cleans. Someone please suggest some combos for me. Other stuff I play includes older stuff like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, and Judas Priest to more modern stuff like Lamb Of God. Michael Åkerfeldt from Opeth uses duncan Full Shred pickups in his guitar, does anyone know a single coil sized pickup that would sound like those?

[Benjy_26]

Re: Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

Welcome to the forum!

Is it a MIM standard strat? If so, with a diffrent pickguard, you could fit a fullsized humbucker at the bridge, thu, widening your options.

[ShredCrazed]

Re: Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

Yeah its a mexican strat. I know its probably stupid to limit my options for vanity reasons but I've already got a *****in looking aftermarket pickguard on it that I really don't want to replace or cut up. After listening to the sound demos and reading stuff on here I'm sure I can get the sound I'm looking for with the right combo of single coil sized hums. Right now I'm thinking JB Jr. for the bridge because its closest on the tone chart to a Full Shred and people seem to think the cleans sound good, then maybe a Hotrails in the bridge for rhythm and maybe some leads too?

[Jeff5]

Re: Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

Not sure what single coil would sound like a full shred, most likely nothing out there. I don't think you can go wrong with a Hot rails bridge, and cool rails neck for what your talking about. Good distortion and great lead tones and harmonics from the bridge. And if you want to tone it down a bit use the cool rails neck for cleans or combo hot/cool for cleans would work good too. Middle you can put another cool rails in there, or even hot rails if you want a bit more output, and be totally set.

[Benjy_26]

Re: Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

I agree with Jeff about the CR at the neck and the HR at the bridge. It's a cool combo. I like the Vintage Rails in the mid though, just to keep some strat flavor in there.

[mongrollo]

Re: Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

Yes, just think that if you like those cristal clean you'll probabely loose them with the CR or the HR. But you can have it all and you'll have to make a decition about that. Another posibiliy it is the lil'59. The humbucker sized delivers a very good clean tone but definitely NOT stratish.

[ShredCrazed]

Re: Need Some Quick Advice For Selecting Pickups

Thanks alot guys, the rails combo was my very first idea but I started to question it after reading things on this board. I've descided thats what I'm gonna do and when I have the money I'll drop a vintage rails in the mid.