BeachPirate
New member
I was out in Oregon for a month visiting family over the holidays and picked up an American Deluxe HSS Strat with trem, roller nut, and locking tuners. I have been uh...lusting after one of these for about 2 months now and got lucky and found a used one in a local Portland guitar store.
Well I plugged into my brothers brand new Marshall JVM 410h and 1960 cab (I have the same amp at home and when we cranked one up at the local Guitar Center he couldn't take that I had him out amped with this Marshall half stack and he bought one hehehe) anyway so I plug in and...well I was not very impressed with the stock pups. Geeze I had the S1 switch even and the middle pup was mud in every position, the neck was blah, and even the full size humbucker in the bridge which sounded the best out of the bunch kind of buzzed. Yuck!
So never having swapped pups before I did a little research and decided to swap in some SD pups. The pup sound samples on the website were quite useful, I spent a few hours listening to those and decided to go with a JB Jr Bridge in the bridge, a JB Jr neck/middle in the middle, and a Coolrails in the neck. Oh and I went with a Jr in the bridge because the HSS black pearl pickguard was on backorder everywhere and I had to go with the SSS pickguard.
Wiring was easy with the SD instructions inlcuded with the pups and when I plugged this rig into the mighty JVM HOLY SMOKES this strat now sounds fantastic, talk about tone the difference was quite obvious! It made my brothers Gibson SG sound aweful.
I went with a simple 5 way switch as I had set the entire stock pickguard assembly asside and built a whole new pickguard assembly with new pots and switch. Not only does every switch position have a unique tone now all 5 positions sound great!!!
I didn't honestly know how much of an improvement to expect, it was nice to get a lot more than I anticipated so right on Seymour Duncan, nice pups, plus they look cool! :notworthy
Charles
PS: Yeah, like my brother would let me out pup him, yep we swapped a SD JB and a Jazz into his Gibson SG a few days later. lol
I'm home now and this is my rig,
Well I plugged into my brothers brand new Marshall JVM 410h and 1960 cab (I have the same amp at home and when we cranked one up at the local Guitar Center he couldn't take that I had him out amped with this Marshall half stack and he bought one hehehe) anyway so I plug in and...well I was not very impressed with the stock pups. Geeze I had the S1 switch even and the middle pup was mud in every position, the neck was blah, and even the full size humbucker in the bridge which sounded the best out of the bunch kind of buzzed. Yuck!
So never having swapped pups before I did a little research and decided to swap in some SD pups. The pup sound samples on the website were quite useful, I spent a few hours listening to those and decided to go with a JB Jr Bridge in the bridge, a JB Jr neck/middle in the middle, and a Coolrails in the neck. Oh and I went with a Jr in the bridge because the HSS black pearl pickguard was on backorder everywhere and I had to go with the SSS pickguard.
Wiring was easy with the SD instructions inlcuded with the pups and when I plugged this rig into the mighty JVM HOLY SMOKES this strat now sounds fantastic, talk about tone the difference was quite obvious! It made my brothers Gibson SG sound aweful.
I went with a simple 5 way switch as I had set the entire stock pickguard assembly asside and built a whole new pickguard assembly with new pots and switch. Not only does every switch position have a unique tone now all 5 positions sound great!!!
I didn't honestly know how much of an improvement to expect, it was nice to get a lot more than I anticipated so right on Seymour Duncan, nice pups, plus they look cool! :notworthy
Charles
PS: Yeah, like my brother would let me out pup him, yep we swapped a SD JB and a Jazz into his Gibson SG a few days later. lol
I'm home now and this is my rig,
