brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

[nepalnt21]

ok now that i have narrowed my wiring down to like 2 or 3 (with another option coming up) i thought i would look at my pickup options. i want this to be a standard strat type deal, but very, very versatile. i play everything from funk, to reggae, to punk, to classic rock, and even some hard rock like chevelle. one i was thinking was cool rails neck, duckbucker middle, and either hot rails or lil 59 bridge. what i want is a fairly bright neck good for chords, solos, etc., and a nice twangy strat- like middle, with a crunchy bridge pickup that has a good midrange and bass, good for power chords and what not. the reason the lil 59 is there is because i was thinking maybe the hot rails was too hot for what i want, because i use the bridge pickup on my strat a lot, not only for crunchy, but for clean too. i was also considering..... :wall: dimarzio (only because they have a good sellection of sigle coil sized rail pickups) but i dont know a thing about them. any suggestions?

 

[Artie]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

I can't make recommendations per se, but just tell you what works for me.

I'm loving the Cool Rails bridge and neck. Great cleans, good grunge, and they mix well with anything I've put in the middle: Hot Stack, Classic Stack, SSL-1, SSL-6, etc.

Its a great combo.

Edit: btw - still working on the Brian May thing. I'm just not happy with anything I'm coming up with.

 

[tone4days]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

if you bend strings at all when you solo .. and if you solo using the middle pickup .. i think you'll like a VR better than a duck .. the teeny tiny pole pieces of the duck do not have a physically wide enough 'field of view' .. so sometimes the bent note goes 'out of range' and results in a very noticeable volume drop off ... given that the tonal properties of the duck and the VR are essentially identical, you'll get the same killer tone with a VR without this drawback

just something to think about
good luck
t4d

ps - i think you'd like the lil 59 over the HR in the bridge for the versatility you describe

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

thanks. bump, also.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

My nitefly has a JB in the bridge a Dmz Cruiser in the middle and a coolrail in the neck and I've learned to love them after a few adjustments from my Joe Barden Strat (now livign comfortably at home

The JB splits very well and dmarzio was a real surprise- Extremely high quality and very good sound for a middle pup- The cruiser seemed a bit hot at first, but I backed it down and it gives me a nice bump up when I need a little more push than the 3 or 4 positions.

But what really makes a superb strat to me is the ability to roll off the 2nd coil of dual rails with spin a split- It keeps the hum rejection and adds a bit of bass to the regular strat sound-

And one more trick- If you want to add an entirely new set of very cool 'phasy' kind of sounds, wire your roll offs to the same pot and you real get a variable 3pup on combination that I've had on my Zion for years- The best way I can describe it is select the bridge pup but get just a touch of the 2 or 4 poistion feeling, or select the neck and get a touch of the 2/4 sound- And yes, the 2/4 sound is even more extreme with this very simple mod-

After Artie explained how this mod was actually working, I went back to my parker and added a defeat on a push pull pot, and all swithces back to absolutly standard strat at that point-

To sum it up, dual coils are graet, spin a split is superb, and I think the 'super blend' sound I just described is out of sight. Good luck-

 

[Artie]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

To sum it up, dual coils are graet, spin a split is superb, and I think the 'super blend' sound I just described is out of sight. Good luck-

Yeah, I disconnected that "mod" from my Strat while I was playing around with some other switching options. I definitely miss that "tone". I'm gonna put it back. Even though I'm only using it with two pups, instead of three, its a worthwhile sound.

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

would the spin-a-split be overkill on my already complicated project? im probably going to do the wiring myself, and i have no expirience. im gonna have to practice a lot before i do the big project.

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

what about the hotrails neck for the bridge position?

 

[zionstrat]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

would the spin-a-split be overkill on my already complicated project? im probably going to do the wiring myself, and i have no expirience. im gonna have to practice a lot before i do the big project.

you will have to remind me what wiring you went with but spin split is easy and the combined pup version is even easier

for traditional spin a split, all you do is dedicate a pot to roll off, you bring the cetner leads from the humbuker together there and the pot grounds them out- one of the easiset mods out there-

Of course if you want to keep them separate you dedicate a pot to each pup or find a tripple pole pot

That's why I love the 3 pup spin on one pot- You are really blending all the pups, but it's easy to wire and you can use a push pull to bypase the effect as I did on my parker-

heres the tread where artie expalined what was going on if you are interested-
https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=37199&page=1&pp=20&highlight=artie

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

you will have to remind me what wiring you went with

i am going to do a variation of the brian may wiring, but with an added switch for switching from parallel to series. i havent picked one particular way yet. im going with some variation of the above pickups mentioned, and im still working on how to work the tone/ volumes.

 

[Young Angus]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

Just to give some insight on dimarzios, i have a warmoth strat (beautiful guitar) with two virtual vintage blues dimarzios in the neck and middle, and a virtual vintage solo single in the bridge. These are stacked singles but the tones i can get out of this combo are unbelievable! Its notch positions, especially position 2 (bridge/middle) just has so much quack but also heaps of balls at the same time, and they can all be used on high gain and they are clear but thick at the same time, and the only clean i dont like is the bridge by itself but ive never liked strat bridge clean tones...too harsh!

When i first bought it second hand with those pickups i thought id definitely change them out, but after playing it for a bit i found that its a fantastic combo for a strat, heaps of tone and versatility.

Just thought id say that because im pretty sure not many people here will say much about dimarzios

As for duncans, i think the idea of a pretty hot single like a hotrails in the bridge is a good idea, along with a pretty tame pickup in the middle and a not so hot one in the neck. I think a rails set made up of a bridge hotrails, middle vintage rails, and neck cool rails would be a very good combination.

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

hey i just got an idear! what about EMG single coils? anyone use those? i like their distorted sound, but how are their cleans?

 

[nepalnt21]

Re: brian may's wiring, part 2: pickups

Just to give some insight on dimarzios, i have a warmoth strat (beautiful guitar) with two virtual vintage blues dimarzios in the neck and middle, and a virtual vintage solo single in the bridge. These are stacked singles but the tones i can get out of this combo are unbelievable! Its notch positions, especially position 2 (bridge/middle) just has so much quack but also heaps of balls at the same time, and they can all be used on high gain and they are clear but thick at the same time, and the only clean i dont like is the bridge by itself but ive never liked strat bridge clean tones...too harsh!

yeah im looking at those too, but more on the lines of rail pickups, or other dual coil pickups for single coil slots.