As previously threatened, here’s the first installment in a series on unusual Strat pickup combinations, inspired by a big box of Duncan pickups and a couple of prewired “BYOP” pickguards. I tried a couple of meh combinations that I didn’t like enough to record, but this third experiment seemed worth sharing. Dig this odd combo: Lipstick Tube neck. Alnico II Pro middle. Twang Banger bridge. Comments and post mortem after the clip. Have a listen!
Okay, this should be an interesting experiment!
I’ve scored a box stuffed with wildy varied Seymour Duncan replacement pickups for Strat™ guitars, plus a couple of the company’s just-announced BYOP Liberator Pickguards. (These are prewired pickguard assemblies, minus the actual pickups — “BYOP” stands for “Bring Your Own Pickups.”) That means I can pop in whatever pickup I want to try without even firing up the soldering iron.
No, I’m not going to make comparison recordings of different replacement pickup sets (though that would be a worthwhile project). Instead, I’m going to experiment with unusual/unlikely pickup combinations, searching for something cool and unique.
Will I strike pickup-pairing pay dirt? I guess we’ll find out together!
I’ll also be taking a look at some of the alternate three-pickup wiring schemes we’ve been talking about over in The Secret Room, such as the bridge-pickup on/off switch and the middle-pickup fader option.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear about your experiences in choosing pickups for Strat-style guitars — especially any successes you’ve had in combining pickups that weren’t necessarily intended to go together. If you have a story to share, cough it up in comments!
I have a hunch we’ll uncover some cool new things. Stay tuned.
My ears perked up when I heard about Seymour Duncan’s new 59/Custom Hybrid bridge humbucker. I’d never tried a pickup that combined coils from two very different pickups — in this case, the ’59, a vintage-accurate PAF, and the Custom, long described as “a PAF on steroids.”
I was eager to hear how a hybrid pickup would blend with a vintage-style neck PAF. My test guitar was a Hamer 20th Anniversary retrofitted with Antiquity Humbuckers. (It originally had a JB/’59 pair.)
I had several burning questions:
• Could I could get a hotter bridge tone without losing too much treble definition?
• Would the more powerful bridge pickup overpower the neck pickup?
• Could I still get a delicate, chiming clean tone?
• How would it sound in split-coil mode (which solos the hotter Custom coil)?
• How would the split-coil bridge blend with the neck pickup?
I made some before-and-after recordings. Have a listen:
Just got back from a couple of days at the 2012 NAMM convention in Anaheim. And I’m glad to be writing about it rather than talking about it, because I have no voice left from screaming over several days of unbelievably loud ambient noise. How ironic that we evaluate the musical instrument industry’s new creations in one of the earth’s most acoustically abysmal environments.
Still, I had a blast. I saw tons of cool new things that will appear on this blog as they become available. I got to see lots of old pals and hobnob with great musicians, brilliant builders, visionary designers, and amusing crackpots. Fun was had.
I didn’t prepare anything like a comprehensive report. For an overview of all the product announcements and press releases, just go here. This is just a short video documenting the misbehavior of my friends and colleagues some cool stuff I saw.
Sometimes an antiquated idea can acquire new relevance.
Example: The ancient Fender Broadcaster wiring scheme, in which the guitar has no tone control per se, but the second knob acts as a pickup-blend control. I wired up a guitar this old-fashioned way, with some very surprising results.
My experiment had other motives: I wanted to check out Seymour Duncan’sVintage Broadcaster Set, which replicates those earliest Telecaster-family pickups. And once again, I wanted to see just how much of a sonic upgrade a simple pickup replacement could bestow on a humble guitar: in this case, a cheap, Chinese-made Squier Telecaster.
Check out the results in the demo video.
We got into a discussion about buzzing single-coil pickups over in the lipstick tube thread. Reader Matthew Seniff chimed in with some well-informed observations and remedies. I’ve moved them here so more folks will see.
Another reader had written: “Every time my kids turn on my kitchen light my amp starts buzzing. It’s due to the rheostat that controls it. It’s old but I’m too lazy to change it.” To which Matthew replied:
Sadly, the Mutant Beauty Pageant ended weeks ago. But I suspect you’ll enjoy the pics I received from Lithuanian reader Dmitrij Timofejev. Dmitrij, what does that sideways humbucker sound like? BTW, the is the less radical of Dmitrij’s two guitars.
Lately I’ve been obsessed with mounting boosters inside my electric guitars.
Why bother? Especially when you can just get a clean-boost stompbox and use it on all your guitars? Because:
Two examples: a squeaky-clean boost inside a lipstick tube Strat (which I previously wrote about here), and a dirty little germanium overdrive inside an old Les Paul (a guitar I previously wrote about here).
Listen to the results!
A while back a couple of readers brought up Jimmy Page’s Les Paul wiring scheme, which made me want to set up a dual-humbucker guitar with lots of those tricky series, parallel, and split-coil tricks. Meanwhile, I wanted to do a sequel to my last cheap guitar makeover, but this time with a solidbody instead of a semi-acoustic. Also, I’d been meaning to try a pickup combo recommended by the mavens at Seymour Duncan: a pair of P-Rails combined with Triple Shot Mounting Rings.
So I slaughtered all three birds with a single stone: I picked up a late-’80s Aria Pro II for $200 and retrofitted it with that absurdly versatile pickup scheme. Have a listen!
Nothing says “low budget cool” like a lipstick tube pickup.
Maybe it’s their humble but sweet sound. Maybe it’s the quirky housing. Or maybe just the fact that, for countless Baby Boomers, the lipstick tube pickups of the ’60s provided the formative electric guitar experience.
Whatever the reasons, it’s been a loooooong time since lipstick tube pickups were only appreciated by budget-bound beginners. Just consider the stupendous list of celebrity users.
Anyone who’s ever played a lipstick tube knows they have a unique sound. Several sounds, actually. Despite the extreme simplicity of the design — no pole pieces, no bobbin, just a wire wrap around a bar magnet, stuffed into a metal tube — the old ones really do sound different than most of the modern, Asian-made ones, at least to my ears. The old ones seem more open and sparkly, while the new ones sound thicker and more midrangy, with less of that defining “hollow” quality. Popping replacement lipstick tubes into a new lipstick-tube guitar is usually a significant sonic upgrade.
Check out this revealing lipstick tube demo: