Upgrading My First

[HowToKillAKing]

I have been looking at  a new guitar for a while but being lefty choice is often either slim or more than i am looking to pay!

So...

I was looking at Strats, my first guitar was a Tanglewood Stratocaster and i am currently playing a Gibson SG.
I love my Strat and i still own it.
So really i am looking for advice on upgrading it. I play in a Punk band and so need some new pickups in there, was looking at some SD Hot Rails? They apparantly slide right into any strat.
I came to Warmoth because of the Pickguard choice, thinking of going with a black pickguard ontop of the gloss black finish, not sure whether to go with a matte of gloss pickguard yet though, i don't know what that would look like (perhaps somebody could supply pics?)
Also might be interested in a Warmoth neck but am uncertain of how the joining process would go with it not being an actual Fender.

I will probably think of more questions soon!

Cheers
Sam

 

[HowToKillAKing]

Nobody have any experience installing HotRails into a guitar?

 

[AutoBat]

might be interested in a Warmoth neck but am uncertain of how the joining process would go with it not being an actual Fender.

Most Fender bolt ons are a direct replacement. This being said there is a short list of incompatible neck pockets that Fender has made over the years.
More detail and a list of the incompatible neck/bodies can be found at http://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Necks/faq2.aspx

Changing pickups is quite easy, and if you're sticking with singlecoil sized pickups then yes they are very interchangable.
If you are getting 1 Hot Rail for the bridge and are using 2 singles in the middle & neck then you'll probably want this wiring configuration
http://www.seymourduncan.com/images/support/schematics/1h_2s_1v_2t_5w.jpg
Seymour Duncan has lots of the common schematics available on their website and can be found at http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/
Go down to the For Strat section and plug in what you want and hit Submit.
If you're using any non-Seymour pickups the color codes may and probably will be different.

 

[HowToKillAKing]

Cheers for your help.

The neck might be added later, for now i am just focusing on sound.
The neck that is already on there isn't actually that bad!

Gonna go for some new hardware too, i'll try and get some pics up once i am done!

 

[Firebird211]

I have a hotrails and a vintage rails in a Warmoth built guitar.  I purchased an Allparts pickguard, so you may get different results than me.  I did wind up having to sand and grind the opening out a little more to get these rail pickups to fit.  You may not run into this, and it wasn't too big of a deal anyway.

 

[bagman67]

I picked up a preloaded Carvin pickguard with their twin-rail  humbuckers and installed it on my Peavey Predator strat copy.  I don't know how the Carvins compare to the Hot Rails, never having played the latter, but in their own right, the Carvins are nice - very loud compared to standard Strat single coils, and a damn sight better than the cheapo stock Peavey pickups.  They don't have the high-end sparkle of single coils, so you'll probably want to boost the treble and back off the bass on your amp to approximate that sound.  I'd call this a very cost-effective ($120 from Carvin, probably available for a lot less on eBay)  upgrade to a very inexpensive guitar.

I do like them pretty well, but will likely stick with true single coils in the future until I'm convinced someone's done an adequate job of retaining the high end in the noise cancelling pickups in the single-coil-sized package.