HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

[Mr.Stratocaster]

Hello!

Please anyone help me with pickup selection for my new guitar!

The guitar is Warmoth vintage strat copy. Body is Northern Hard Ash (heavy wood), neck is maple and fingerboard is scalloped maple. Vintage tremolo. I've read that Northern Hard Ash is very bright sounding wood. Maple is also bright sounding, so it seems that guitar by itself is VERY bright sounding. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The guitar has DiMarzio pickups installed (Evolution, Virtual 2 Middle, Virtual 2 Neck). I think the sound is too ear-piercing, too bright with no real body. Maybe it's because of bright sounding pickups in bright guitar, I'm not sure.

I've read Duncan's guide "How to pick a pickup" and the main trick there is to choose warm sounding pickups for bright guitar and vise versa. So, for my guitar I think I should select pickups with Alnico II or Alnico V magnets, no ceramics.

I'd like to go active, so I'll select SD LiveWire Hot Set, EMG Alnico singles, or maybe some warm sounding DiMarzio passives with EMG Afterburner to "activate" them. I play metal and I want bridge position to be great for argessive riffs, with lots of clarity (I think about HS-3 with more fat sound). Neck position should be extremely articulate, for solos, sweep-picking and playing clean. I dislike full size humbuckers so I'll select stack or single coil-size humbuckers.

SD LiveWire Hot seems to be the best for bright sounding guitar. It has Alnico II magnet (pole-pieces or rails?) and it's high-end is rolled down.

I'm not sure about how EMG will sound it this guitar, but I liked EMG-SA in poplar strat with rosewood fretboard.

Can anyone suggest me the way to go ? Thanks very much!

 

[Leveller]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

Well if you would consider passive pups the hot rails is extremely powerful and pretty dark too. I've no experiece with duncan actives..

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

I really like my EMG DG20 set in my ash strat (maple neck, vintage trem).

That set can go from big & fat to razor sharp with minor knob tweaking.

 

[shogunlegend]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

all you need is an sa set with the spc control to fatten it up like a humbucker. to be quite honest, active pups seem kind of bright to me at times. i use a virtual vintage solo pro (as opposed to a virtual vintage solo which is brighter). it's got a real nice vowel like character to its tone that makes it sound really nice and sweet OR quite nasty if your want.

the output is pretty good on the pro too. you might want to check that out. i did have an evolution in my strat bridge too, but i didn't think i was getting all the tone i could have out of it. it's not a bright pup by any means though. dimarzios are typically top heavy with a lot of mids. i find that they typically sound better with scooped mids. the solo pro, however sounds good with high mids which is what i like. it gives it a thick and souldful tone and adds a little resistance to the pick attack which can be effective for more expressive soloing.

 

[erikm5150]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

are you using 500k pots?
maybe just switching to 250k pots would do the trick.

 

[veryhungrycaterpilla]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

I really like my EMG DG20 <snip>
That set can go from big & fat to razor sharp with minor knob tweaking.

+1

 

[shogunlegend]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

you need 500 k pots with the solo pro. i'd say 250 with the solo because they're brighter and thinner with 500. in my personal experience, most pickups sound better with 500k pots. that's only with the large variety of pups i've tried. fender pups, for instance, seem to like 250k. texas specials i think are one of them, but the alnico 3 pups are quite good with 500. if you want really great tone with a lot of character, you should check out the virtual vintage solo pros. i typically prefer dimarzio single coils over duncan, except i like duncan humbucker better than dimarzio humbuckers. go figure, but i think there's a lot of people like that.

 

[Mr.Stratocaster]

Re: HELP! Choosing pickups for super-bright sounding strat

Yes, there is 500kOhm volume pot inside this guitar.
Thanks for help!!! I'll try 250k in nearest future.

Does anyone have opinions about how SD LiveWire Hot will sound in a bright sounding strat ? I really want to give that pickup a try.