humbuckers for solid maple Strat

[YukonGreg]

Hello,

New post from a new member!

I ordered a Warmoth Strat body and neck with these specs:

• Solid maple body (top-routed)
• H-S-H pickup routing (but no middle pickup will be used)
• Quartersawn maple neck and fretboard (SS jumbos and scalloped)
• Schaller Floyd (recessed)

...and was wondering about a good pair of humbuckers for this all-maple guitar. I like to play early/mid 80s metal: Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, Exciter, Accept, W.A.S.P., Metal Church, Armored Saint, Megadeth, Grim Reaper, Venom...the usual suspects. I love the look of Strats, especially with maple fretboards and CBS pegheads, and I want to turn this guitar into a firebreather

Thanks!

[jeremy]

if i was building a 80s metal ax, id go duncan distortion neck and bridge. if you wanted brighter/cleaner options, id use a super switch to get the neck pup in parallel and maybe a split coil option

[Mincer]

Maple is generally pretty bright, so if a Distortion might make it too bright in the end, look at something like the Black Winter.

[zionstrat]

Mincer is absolutely right, Maple is bright however I've got a maple parker night fly that absolutely loves a JB bridge.. no mid-range spike.

The only negative from my perspective is that you can't clean it up.. but I don't think you're looking for cleans..

[AdrianSD]

JB trembucker bridge / jazz neck? I've been wondering about the JB mid-range push ongoing drama. Could it be that, more often than not, the pickup is set too close to the strings and people don't pay enough attention to this? I found JB is quite picky when it comes to how it sits relative to the strings and if I get the height right it that particular guitar it really sings, the boomy and loose bass turns into a very nice chunky tone and with an overdrive pushing the front of the amp it can really deliver. I don't know, I find the JB can do 80s and 90s metal very well, then again everyone hears things differently.

[zionstrat]

Adrian, in my experience, the JB behaves differently in different guitars... Off topic. I think it proves that wood can have a tremendous impact on tone.

But yes JB is much like the destroyer and good with metal.. bass is a bit less tight if that's important.

[soulforger]

I had an Kramer American Baretta I bought new in 1986, solid maple body, maple neck, rosewood fb, came stock with a JB and sounded fantastic so I never tried anything else! Maple can be bright but it can have good beefy low end as well, if yours tends brighter one of the warmer JB "types" like JB2, RTM, or a Tone Zone would probably sound killer, also a Super Distortion would do great things!

[YukonGreg]

Thanks for the replies! At a local guitar shop, they had Blackouts in stock, so on a whim I bought the Blackouts Metal for the bridge and the AHB neck model. I installed these yesterday and hol-lee-sheet! I wanted to turn this Warmoth Strat into a firebreather and I got what I wanted, no joke. The bridge model has the expected nuclear output, but I was floored by the full assault of mids. Thick, grainy, growly f'ing mids. I LOVE IT. Harmonics out the arse and sustain that goes on and on and on. I have a push-pull 25k volume pot to switch between the output levels for some variety. Lots of fun.

In the maple body, they have a nice tight chunky low-end and the highs are not too strident at all (to my ears). The tone has lots of focus and tightness. The neck model has beautiful, clear clean tones and sounds great for neck solos. I plugged straight into a Marshall 2203 (w/ 6550's) and no front-end boost/dist/overdrive is needed. Overall, the Blackouts sound "modern" but I can still get those old-school metal tones with ease. Mission accomplished

[Mincer]

Fantastic! Thanks for the review!

[GuitarDoc]

Congrats. Sometimes when you do things on a whim, the pieces just fall together and create something magical.