Hey.
I'm swapping out some Tex Mex pickups on an HSS ash Strat - they're not bad, but I know I can do better. They have some nice gritty sounds when you dig in, but lack the luscious, shimmering, pingy, ultra-clean tone I love best from Strats. Think Mark Knopfler, clean SRV (Lenny, Riviera Paradise), or Joe Satriani's cover of Sleepwalk (not his own stuff). I mostly play in the 2- and 4-notch positions, and use an S-1 switch to either add a coil from the humbucker to position 4 or to add the whole thing to position 2 - I like the warmth and richness this adds to the tone.
So I'm going to replace them with, I think, a Fender Fat 50s in one position, and a Seymour Duncan Antiquity Surfer in the other. As close as I can get from behind a screen, I've identified those as two pickups that sound like they have complimentary tones for my purpose. The Fat 50s for roundness and body, and the Surfer for sparkle, spank and finesse. Without the former I'd worry it'd sound too thin (I really don't like cold, clicky Strats), and without the latter I'd worry that the brilliance and shine wouldn't be there and things would get plain middy.
What I can't decide without some first-hand experience is where to put each. My thought at first was to put the Fat 50s in the middle, to make each notch-tone as full as possible, and figured the Surfer wouldn't stand up as well to a humbucker. But then I wondered if maybe the Fat 50s would sound harsh in the middle rather than the neck, and maybe the Surfer would be the 'Strattier' of the two, and it'd be better to have that dominating the tone in the middle, with the Fat 50s in the neck (where it seems a lot of people think it belongs).
The reason I'm asking all this and not just buying and trying them out is that I need to figure out where each is going to go before buying them, so I can select polarities on that basis. This is the first time I've done this, so any help or experience would be very much appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
I'm swapping out some Tex Mex pickups on an HSS ash Strat - they're not bad, but I know I can do better. They have some nice gritty sounds when you dig in, but lack the luscious, shimmering, pingy, ultra-clean tone I love best from Strats. Think Mark Knopfler, clean SRV (Lenny, Riviera Paradise), or Joe Satriani's cover of Sleepwalk (not his own stuff). I mostly play in the 2- and 4-notch positions, and use an S-1 switch to either add a coil from the humbucker to position 4 or to add the whole thing to position 2 - I like the warmth and richness this adds to the tone.
So I'm going to replace them with, I think, a Fender Fat 50s in one position, and a Seymour Duncan Antiquity Surfer in the other. As close as I can get from behind a screen, I've identified those as two pickups that sound like they have complimentary tones for my purpose. The Fat 50s for roundness and body, and the Surfer for sparkle, spank and finesse. Without the former I'd worry it'd sound too thin (I really don't like cold, clicky Strats), and without the latter I'd worry that the brilliance and shine wouldn't be there and things would get plain middy.
What I can't decide without some first-hand experience is where to put each. My thought at first was to put the Fat 50s in the middle, to make each notch-tone as full as possible, and figured the Surfer wouldn't stand up as well to a humbucker. But then I wondered if maybe the Fat 50s would sound harsh in the middle rather than the neck, and maybe the Surfer would be the 'Strattier' of the two, and it'd be better to have that dominating the tone in the middle, with the Fat 50s in the neck (where it seems a lot of people think it belongs).
The reason I'm asking all this and not just buying and trying them out is that I need to figure out where each is going to go before buying them, so I can select polarities on that basis. This is the first time I've done this, so any help or experience would be very much appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
