Guitar Chasers

Changing pickups in your plank is almost as good as a new guitar.

That’s a fact. But if you fail to exercise a little caution, that new sound from your old axe could stink.

Here’s the scenario—Earl runs out and buys a trio of hot (your favorite brand) pickups for his Squier Strat because that’s what his musical hero uses, and after sweating through the installation, and even a new set of gourmet strings, his tone has turned to mush. Next Earl reasons, “Well, it must be the amp. Next week I’ll score that (your favorite amp) I’ve been looking at, then I’ll smoke all the axe-dudes.” The following week Earl’s new tone is loud mush.

The story could go on and on. Earl should have invested a bit of time experimenting with his new pickups. This fact cannot be overstated.
If you picked out the axe you’re now playing, then you probably already knew what sound you were looking for. New pickups offer a reasonably inexpensive way to either focus your sound or to blindly wander through the tone candy store.

There are so many variations possible that we won’t even approach the subject of “which is best”. Instead we’ll just offer some helpful ideas to ease your journey through pickup madness.
One important matter: If your axe is very old, all original, rare, expensive or can be considered “vintage” in any sense, please think twice before changing anything. Almost any modification you make to a guitar will erase it’s “vintage” qualification.

Focus Your Sound with New Pickups

If you are already happy with the sound of your current setup you should take a moment to reconsider. What if your favorite tones had a bit more volume and sustain? What if your meanest blues lick could suddenly break into those wonderful super high harmonics with no effort? What if you could get all sorts of new tone surprises and still have those old, comfortable, predictable tones to boot? New pickups can do this for you.
Each pickup manufacturer’s catalog is the best place to begin looking for pickups that sound like your current ones, but offer something more. You most likely want to replace the pickups only once, so it will pay to do some serious research prior to the purchase.

Brand new, good quality pickups can often be found for less than fifty dollars, and it’s o.k. to just replace one at a time… be open minded and willing to try different tone settings on your amp. Adjust, re adjust until you find out what works best for you.

Are You A Purist?

When it comes to single coil pickups (Strat style), many players feel that only magnetic pickups offer the pure, crisp tone they crave. If this is the case with you, don’t even think about Lace Sensor pickups. I personally think lace pickups are a good idea, they offer more of what I prefer, but they are different.

Another idea to consider is the stacked humbucker, many of which have a good single coil tone with the benefit of quiet operation. They fit in a standard single coil mounting.

For Strat style guitars with both humbuckers and single coil pickups we usually prefer the humbuckers with a softer, less intense sound. Hotter humbuckers cause a dramatic and sometimes inconvenient volume increase when switching back and forth between pickups during live performances.

New pickups in your old guitar can provide you with almost any style of tone. If you choose carefully you can zero in on exactly the sound you seek. Or, if you prefer, you can just randomly buy new pickups and surprise yourself with whatever tones result.

Where pickups are concerned there’s simply too much of a good thing. You can now make any guitar sound almost like any other guitar. No matter what pickup is installed, you won’t know if you like it until you actually use it for a while.

Don’t expect a new pickup to immediately sound right with the same amplifier settings as you used before. Invest the time finding the new sounds available.

Shootout Summary

We tested these seven pickups in a 1998 Yamaha Pacifica 112 using string sets: 10’s and 11’s

#1. DiMarzio Blues Trio, consisting of one Replica Gibson Humbucker (bridge position), one Strat Standard Replica, one HS2 Stacked Humbucker.

#2. Genuine Fender American Strat Standard w/ staggered pole pieces.

#3. Fender Japanese Strat (neck pos.).

#4. Fender Mexican Strat (middle pos.).

#5. Ibanez V-1 Humbucker (bridge pos.).

This group of pickups provided a few very nice trio options, and several combinations that didn’t work well together.

While the DiMarzio Humbucker was the most powerful, it was a bit harsh played clean and a bit nasty sounding when overdriven. It also doesn’t mix well with any of the other pickups (the “in between” position was always too treble and harsh).

The Ibanez V-1 humbucker worked nicely as a lead or rhythm tone source. When overdriven it offers smooth distortion with a willingness to rocket into double harmonics if you so desire.

For our middle position pickup, we’ve pretty much settled on the DiMarzio HS2 stacked humbucker. It offers a good single coil tone with no noise, and has more volume than any of the single coil pickups. It works well when coupled with the Ibanez hum or the Japanese Strat pickup.

The American Strat pickup did sound good in the middle position but it didn’t combine well with the humbucker.

The Mexican Strat pickup would be our choice of middle pickup if it had enough macho for leads. It offers the most “quack” tone when coupled with either the bridge hum or the neck single coil. By itself the tone is jingly sounding—almost like a twelve string, good for rhythm, bad for solos.

The Japanese Strat pickup resides in the neck position. It is the only one of the group with the proper magnet spacing for the neck position (it would work in the middle also). This one offers the most volume of the single coil choices. It has a full, soulful and bluesy tone. Good for lead soloing.

The DiMarzio Strat replica may have a little more volume and attack than the American Strat pickup, but they sound similar. Both of these offer the true Strat tone, but are not so useful when combined with a humbucker or a stacked humbucker.