Best pickups for Highway 1 Strat.

[Bluesman]

The Highway 1 Strat. LH comes with 3 vintage style pickups with staggered
poles, alnico magnets. I saw reviews that say that they ain't that great, particulary the one at bridge. They also say that the one at the middle do not have reverse polarity wich makes it noisy.Personnaly, I love the cobalt samarium noiseless pickups at middle and bridge. They have a tone I like.
If I change the bridge pickup for a humbucker, witch one does sound the best with these single-coil pickups? I want a bridge pickup that doesn't sound too bright on clean and that goes well with alnico magnet or noiseless.
I would prefer to change the bridge pickup only cause if I change the 3 of them, the cost is beginning to be high.
Finally, I hope I can put a humbucker that fits in the bridge hole.
Can you light me up on this and tell me what do you suggest to do.

 

[STRATDELUXER97]

Re: Best pickups for Highway 1 Strat.

The Highway 1 strat is in fact able to accept the bridge humbucker...Look into the Tremspaced 59 as a great bridge humbucker to cover alot of styles or...You can go with the Fender PG+. This pickup has an A5 magnet like the 59 but is brighter and has more midrange aggression....

If you were to look at a second pickguard I just put together,it has a Surfer neck and middle with a Duncan Hybrid in the bridge..The Hybrid is a PG screw bobbin mated with a Custom slug bobbin..This gives me a series humbucking reading of 11k...I went even further and put a mini switch so I can get a 7k split tone and also a 3.5k parallel tone..The Hybrid would have to be made by someone that knows what they're doing..

Other great bridge fullsized humbuckers for the strat would be the CC,C5,and the SD..

John
http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/st...e=http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

 

[Jeff_H]

Re: Best pickups for Highway 1 Strat.

If you want something that is not too bright for the clean tones, and is really warm and fat overdriven then the Custom Custom is the ticket. I have one at the bridge of my double fat strat and I absolutely love it. It will go well with your other single coils, and it even splits fairly decent.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Best pickups for Highway 1 Strat.

You guys are mentioning all of my favorite pickups!

The '59 Trembucker & Custom Custom Trembucker especially.

Two pretty differant sounding pickups but my two favorite Duncan bridge humbuckers.

The Custom Custom would be hottest, have warmer, smoother highs and much stronger mids. Being a little hotter in output than the '59, the CC would also have a stronger tone for coil splitting. I use them both but have a slight preference for the '59B or '59TB, especially in Strats with single coil neck and middles.

I think the APS-2 single coils would be a good choice for the neck and middle pickups, as would John's suggestion of the Antiquity Surfers...or even Texas Hots. But the APS-2 seems louder to me than the Antiquitys and might be a better choice if using a bridge humbucker instead of a bridge single coil.

Lew