Thinking of replace my pick-ups

[Wombacca]

I was playing my mates les paul and strat the other day and ive decided that my squire is just not cutting it. Sounds pretty bad. I was thinking of getting a real strat but as a poverty stricken uni student i cant really afford one at the moment.

Would changing the pick-ups make much of difference?, Can anyone recommend any brands or any advice would be great.

Cheer;s

[Jstickley]

In a strat ive always liked Duncan Hotrails in the bridge and middle position with a Coldrail in the neck position.

Will give you a nice tone, and will cut down on a little bit of the hum ;)

Jesse

[Harley]

my squire is just not cutting it. Sounds pretty bad.
Bassy, Trebly, thin, muddy? So much sound can be changed with just height adjustments, wax potting or wax removal, adding back plates, different capacitor, different pot values(250K, 500K, 1Meg) etc. Also, experimenting with pure nickel, nickel wound stainless, and pure stainless strings will greatly effect tone. I usually expire all these options before seeking out replacements. These are all inexpensive experiments, or free.

One of my favorite neck-pickups is one I dug out of a cheap, $50 import guitar. It replaced a custom-wound $250 Joe Barden neck-pickup that's usually rated #1 in these Teles. I just used this to illustrate that price doesn't always dictate better sound.

You Strat guys have it SO easy.:)

I see dozens of wired pickguard assemblies for sale every week. It would seem to me that having the ability to simply replace your current pre-wired pickguard with someone else's, or a new one, would be a great convenience. There's many listed on Ebay right now. These are usually assemblies that came stock on people's guitars but they wanted something different.

Here's a current assembly wired with Tex-Mex's-
http://i19.ebayimg.com/06/i/000/8d/a7/3f45_1.JPG

One with H-S-S configuration-
http://00ea4e2.netsolstores.com/LOADEDPICKGUARDS/405w.jpg

[bobthecow]

Im about to put some vintage fender noiseless pickups in my squire.

[Harley]

Im about to put some vintage fender noiseless pickups in my squire.
Make sure you find out if your pickup cavities are deep enough to accept the Vintage Noiseless. THOSE PICKUPS ARE TALL! Realize that they are actually 2 single-coils sandwiched together, unlike a standard humbucker where the coils rest side-by-side.

My friend's American Telecaster weren't deep enough to accept them. The pickups touched the strings at their lowest setting. They worked in my '52 American Tele, which had deeper cavities, and I used them for a couple months.

[Bigsnake]

Make sure you find out if your pickup cavities are deep enough to accept the Vintage Noiseless. THOSE PICKUPS ARE TALL! Realize that they are actually 2 single-coils sandwiched together, unlike a standard humbucker where the coils rest side-by-side.

My friend's American Telecaster weren't deep enough to accept them. The pickups touched the strings at their lowest setting. They worked in my '52 American Tele, which had deeper cavities, and I used them for a couple months.

So the Noiseless are basically humbuckers? Do they not have as much attack as "real" single coil pick-ups?

[Harley]

So the Noiseless are basically humbuckers?
Yep, stalked humbuckers.
Do they not have as much attack as "real" single coil pick-ups?
Not these Tele versions, but the Strat ones are supposedly a totally different dog. Many at the Fender Discussion Page love 'em.

Here's 82 reviews on the Vintage Noiseless Strats. At HC, a "sound" rating of 9.2 is very good with that many reviews. (http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Electric+Guitar+Pickup/product/Fender/Vintage+Noiseless+Strat/100/1)

Reviewers of the Tele versions only average an 8, but with just 18 reviews the data isn't as accurate. I would have given the ones I had a 7 myself.

[bobthecow]

the guy at guitar center said they should fit.

[bcrich]

I was playing my mates les paul and strat the other day and ive decided that my squire is just not cutting it. Sounds pretty bad. I was thinking of getting a real strat but as a poverty stricken uni student i cant really afford one at the moment.

Would changing the pick-ups make much of difference?, Can anyone recommend any brands or any advice would be great.

Cheer;s

I agree with what everyone else has said with the exception, first you need to know what kind of sound your after. Just replacing the pickups without knowing anything about them or what type of sound they produce could be a bad move. I have a mid 80's BC Rich Assassin and it has one of BC Rich's early BDSM humbuckers and 2 single coils. Although I love the sound of the neck possition single coil, I am tired of the humbucker , it doesn't have enough crunch for me. So I have decided to replace JUST the humbucker with a Seymour Duncan SH-6 distortion pickup. I have researched every avenue for the pickups I wanted and Seymour Duncan will be the winner not Duncan designed as I hear they are crap. If you are only replacing one or 2 pickups then you first must find out if the new pickups will be compatible with the older ones. Sometimes just changing the pots will fix this but not always. That was my problem at first, I initially wanted to go with an EMG HZ81 active humbucker but was told because the 2 single coils are NOT active pickups the EMG is not compatible with them. SO I am going with the next best thing for sounds good to me. On another note if you are not sure how to change out your pickups HAVE A PROFESSIONAL DO IT.