Going to put a new guard together for my strat and I want to go with a two pickup setup (single in the neck, single in the bridge). I want a good strat bridge pickup sound-- nothing too compressed or approaching humbucker territory. Just a strat bridge sound that doesn't sound weak. I'd definitely have a tone knob hooked up to tame that strat bridge shrillness. Hum-cancelling would be nice, but not a necessity.
Thinking of the following candidates for the bridge position:
I've tried the Injector (bridge and neck) in the bridge position, and the VVHB2, and while nice, just didn't feel quite right to me, even w/ 500K pots to get some highs back. For the neck position, I'm going for one of two things: 1) a nice full, fat, yet controlled humbucker sound, or 2) a fluid single coil sound that sounds good with high gain. Leaning towards the former. I also want something that when combined with a strat bridge sound gets me a cool useable sound for either high gain or clean sounds. I think a humbucker-sized single coil or an actual single coil would do that. It's gotta be single coil sized though, as I don't want to rout anything for a full size HB.
My neck candidates are:
humbuckery:
Dimarzio Pro Track (really dug this one-- very soulful in the neck position of one of my teles)
single-coily:
My general approach is the strat equivalent of those teles with a humbucker in the neck and a single coil in the bridge-- the middle position on those types of teles just KILLS, imho. Skronky/funky clean bridge position sounds (Chili Peppers "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic"), beautiful middle position sounds for funk and chording (The Police), and a big fat warm humbucker sound in the neck for solos.
Thinking of the following candidates for the bridge position:
- Duncan Twangbanger
- Dimarzio Area 67: nice and bright, but I've read this has a good solid bass behind it.. figured I could work the tone knob to get a variety of tones out of this one
- Dimarzio FS-1: I've had one of these before and I think I had it too close to the strings as it just didn't have the liveliness I thought it would... maybe it was the 250K volume pot that did it?)
- Duncan SSL-1: always a good standby
I've tried the Injector (bridge and neck) in the bridge position, and the VVHB2, and while nice, just didn't feel quite right to me, even w/ 500K pots to get some highs back. For the neck position, I'm going for one of two things: 1) a nice full, fat, yet controlled humbucker sound, or 2) a fluid single coil sound that sounds good with high gain. Leaning towards the former. I also want something that when combined with a strat bridge sound gets me a cool useable sound for either high gain or clean sounds. I think a humbucker-sized single coil or an actual single coil would do that. It's gotta be single coil sized though, as I don't want to rout anything for a full size HB.
My neck candidates are:
humbuckery:
Dimarzio Pro Track (really dug this one-- very soulful in the neck position of one of my teles)
single-coily:
- Dimarzio Chopper
- Dimarzio Area 67
- Dimarzio HS-3 (I remember really liking this for gained out neck position stuff in my old tele)
- Duncan SSL-1
My general approach is the strat equivalent of those teles with a humbucker in the neck and a single coil in the bridge-- the middle position on those types of teles just KILLS, imho. Skronky/funky clean bridge position sounds (Chili Peppers "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic"), beautiful middle position sounds for funk and chording (The Police), and a big fat warm humbucker sound in the neck for solos.
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