Middle + neck position: 4 pickup choices...

[Pierre]

I'm looking for 2 SC sized humbuckers or single coils for my neck and middle position on my basswood strat.
If I get humbuckers they will be tapped.
At the moment, I play clean on the neck pickup, single coil (I can select neck + middle together but I never do, even for Blues, strictly SC)
On the middle, well I don't know yet, but I found that I get a very nice lead tone. Unfortunately, I need more output to match with the humbucker (which will be a Parralel axis Distortion)
My choices are the Lil' Screamin' Deamon, Hot, Coolrails and Hotrails.

I'm guessing the Hot would be good in the neck? It's a high output strat pickup so it'll be great for Blues and have a big enough output I guess, while still being good for cleans?
But any of the other 3 may work there too... I heard a Lil'SD in a Strat (Alder though, and through a Boss GT6) and it was AMAZING. I don't know how it'd be on a basswood but I heard good things...
Suggestions?

 

[Woodcutter]

Re: Middle + neck position: 4 pickup choices...

I have a CR in the neck (i used a bridge cr) of my squier strat (I think it was an alder body). It sounds awsome. I split coiled it and is great for blues. I personally think the rails keep you from losing volume when you bend a string.

 

[Pierre]

Re: Middle + neck position: 4 pickup choices...

Does it sound more like a humbucker when played clean?
Would the Hot's output be too big and would it distort clean sounds?

 

[LesStrat]

Re: Middle + neck position: 4 pickup choices...

I have HR/CR/HR. The HR in the middle position sounded too much like the bridge HR...the CR in the neck was ok, but not quite what I wanted. So, I switched to HR and CR and VOILA!!! more tonal variety. I also installed push/pull pots so that I can split the coils on each pup.

I love the sound of the HR neck and the CR in the mid. I have no problems with clean or dirty sounds with these pups...but bear in mind that these are HOT pups. I had a problem with them overloading my POD 2.0 and distorting, no matter what the setting. Now I have the POD xt Live, and it has an attenuator switch for such applications.

I say go for it, bro.

 

[Pierre]

Re: Middle + neck position: 4 pickup choices...

I will use them with a POD 2.0 as well, that post got me worried I use the Fender clean models a lot...

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Middle + neck position: 4 pickup choices...

I've got CR in the neck and cruiser in the middle on a mapple nitefly wiht coil rolloffs- Very stratish when coils rolled all off- Neck remains tight and clear even as a bucker and gets slightly bright when rolled back to single coil-

Very surprised at the crusier in the middle- Very good 2 and 4 positions (JB in bridge) at all coil amounts- 3 by iteslf sounded kind of lifeless until I played wiht the band and Then I found it's speciality..It stays a bit quacky but can really cut through much better than 2 or 4 positions when playing clean or lightly crunched so it probalby has more mids than CR-