Silence Kid
New member
So I picked up a set of Hot Golds for (what else) my Hot Gold Strat. A few observations:
-They really do quack/twang! Granted this wasn't my primary reason for wanting the pickups - I had experience with a Red/Silver/Blue sensor set in a Strat Plus Deluxe a while back and wanted to capture a bit of that flavor, yet happened across a set of Hot Golds at a good price instead. The Strat Plus had a very mellow, rolled-off sort of clean sound so that would have been acceptable to me. These could almost pass for standard noiseless singles. I sort of understand why Lace talks these up so much on their website.
(I might have to do an A/B recording with my STK-S4n Strat as well as with a traditional Alnico strat I have, but it wouldn't be a straight-up comparison due to some unsurmountable wiring/guitar differences. There are comparison videos on YouTube where I think the Hot Golds don't stand up very well IMO.)
-They still do the focused, bouncy, compressed 'Lace' thing too. And they still have the Pumpkins sort of character if I put any sort of distortion on them; the sustain-y sort of 'sing' with very little mess.
-They need to be set quite high to get the most out of them; contrary to my usual preference to set pickups quite low. Guess the magnetic field is too focused for that. Also - I have the 13k bridge, and there's a HUGE output difference between that and the other pickups. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be so severe. It's more than the difference between the Duncan Hot singles I had in the neck/mid before, and the Duncan Designed rail pickup. In fact- the Hot Gold bridge can clip my crappy Audio Interface quicker than the Duncan Designed Hot Rail.
Pretty satisfied- these are sticking around for now (Some before pics... I did sort of like the black pickguard look, but mint isn't so bad either. Glad I didn't match the headstock to the pickguard as I planned.)
-They really do quack/twang! Granted this wasn't my primary reason for wanting the pickups - I had experience with a Red/Silver/Blue sensor set in a Strat Plus Deluxe a while back and wanted to capture a bit of that flavor, yet happened across a set of Hot Golds at a good price instead. The Strat Plus had a very mellow, rolled-off sort of clean sound so that would have been acceptable to me. These could almost pass for standard noiseless singles. I sort of understand why Lace talks these up so much on their website.
(I might have to do an A/B recording with my STK-S4n Strat as well as with a traditional Alnico strat I have, but it wouldn't be a straight-up comparison due to some unsurmountable wiring/guitar differences. There are comparison videos on YouTube where I think the Hot Golds don't stand up very well IMO.)
-They still do the focused, bouncy, compressed 'Lace' thing too. And they still have the Pumpkins sort of character if I put any sort of distortion on them; the sustain-y sort of 'sing' with very little mess.
-They need to be set quite high to get the most out of them; contrary to my usual preference to set pickups quite low. Guess the magnetic field is too focused for that. Also - I have the 13k bridge, and there's a HUGE output difference between that and the other pickups. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be so severe. It's more than the difference between the Duncan Hot singles I had in the neck/mid before, and the Duncan Designed rail pickup. In fact- the Hot Gold bridge can clip my crappy Audio Interface quicker than the Duncan Designed Hot Rail.
Pretty satisfied- these are sticking around for now (Some before pics... I did sort of like the black pickguard look, but mint isn't so bad either. Glad I didn't match the headstock to the pickguard as I planned.)
