What made you switch out pickups in the first place?

[Archer250]

Boredom lol

 

[JamesPaul]

First, it would have been '83, my new Stratocaster had 3 single coils just like my Bullet S3, and HSH for my Bullet seemed less expensive than another guitar with humbuckers. I wanted a set of Distortions but either the Distortion bridge was scarce at the time or the tech talked me out of it. So it was a Custom/stock/Seymourizer in my Bullet. Then I thought the Semourizer did not have the tonal variety of the Custom, and likely because Randy Rhoads had a Jazz neck, it became Custom/stock/Jazz.

After that, things kind of went off the rails, but as you asked "...in the first place?" I will reign it in and stop here! Well, stop sharing my reasons. I'm not committing to stop swapping pickups.

 

[IMENATOR]

What made you switch out pickups in the first place?

For me it was Helmuth Lemme's book (this was long before the English translation). I followed his schematics to mess with the existing pickups via electronics, but that didn't do it. The book had enough info to realize that different pickups are the way to go. After swapping for the first time I was hooked.

How about you?

I wanted a singing neck tone for soloing with my HSS Strat, now I know the stock ceramic was the problem, then finding the correct bridge for that, the realizing I needed a better amp, then I realized I love different sounds from different guitars, eventually getting a tube amp, now trying to clone it into a ToneX capture. All of that thanks to Dave Murray from Iron Maiden neck tone.