Neck Hot or Cool rail with high gain Marshall

[dogman]

Hi guys, I have been trying to get my HSS strat to be able to get a good searing neck lead pup. I have a JB in bridge and two vintage rails. The VR's are not doing it for me. I replaced pots to 500K, and rewired them in series and still not what I hoped for, to bassy and flabby. I want a neck pickup that will sing with a sc tone but on my high gain channel on my Marshall DSL. the marshall is eq'd to my Les Paul with a bridge SH6. So my question is Hot or Cool rail or somthing else. I'm leaning to the hot rail because higher output and more midrange but not sure if the midrange will help or hurt to get more of a sc tone. Thanks any suggestions would be a big help, if I buy another pup I want it to be the right one this time. THANKS

 

[Nagash]

Re: Neck Hot or Cool rail with high gain Marshall

If you want a single coil tone, you're not going to get it from rails. Maybe if you split them but still, rails do not sound really like single coils. I might suggest the SSL-5 and SSL-6 (Custom Flat/Custom Staggered) as higher output true SC pickups, but I couldn't tell what they would sound like in your guitar. I remember having played a guitar with the SSL-5 in the neck once, it sounded really good but I didn't play any leads (I play them on the bridge pickup exclusively).

If you want real SC tone, Rails and Stacks will not be your best choices. I hope the two I just suggested will help you to go further !