[rich2k4]

So after spending a while analyzing how I use my guitars, and what I use in different situations, I've come to the conclusion that an HSS strat is the best for me. I am tired of maintaining multiple guitars.

I like a very wide variety of music, and noodle around with everything. Anything from chicken pickin country, to wes montgomery style jazz, to John Mayer/SRV blues, to pop from all decades, to a wide variety of high gain tones, grew up listening to Nirvana and early 2000's alternative/nu metal.

When I play anything with distortion, I ALWAYS use the bridge pickup, and I prefer that it is a humbucker.

When I play cleaner stuff I 98% of the time stick to either a neck single coil, or neck + middle.

So far for all of this I have to change guitars, but now want it all in 1.

I want a good balanced pickup set for a HSS configuration, with 5 way selector switch. Maybe I am asking for a lot, but I don't want there to be a massive volume shift between pickups, even going from single coil to humbucker.

One thing about single coils that I will mention is that I prefer them to be very loud. I have a 1988 American Standard Strat, no clue what pickups are in it but I believe it's the stock alnico 5's that I heard are pretty high output in strats from those years. I to this day have never played another strat that has sounded as full, bell like, and loud as my strat. Maybe the tone from other starts is the true strat tone, but if that is the case, I don't like them. Every single strat I have played in stores sounds extremely thin and trebly compared to mine. Even telecasters. I have a couple of american standard telecasters and when I play them side by side against my strat, same amp settings, when I plug in the strat, the tone is instantly louder and more full. I am afraid of taking my strat apart in fear of losing whatever magic it has, but I am still on the hunt for single coil that can rival it.

I am actually on the hunt for a early 2000's American Fat Strat Texas Special/Lonestar Strat, which has the 2 Texas Special pickups and the Pearly Gates Plus which was only made for that guitar.

I am hoping this model can give me what I am looking for in terms of versatility.

Perhaps there is a better pickup set? Advice is welcome.

[corypheus]

Hi,

It's definitely a tall order, but it's possible, with some compromises. The PG+ is basically an A5 Pearly Gates, it definitely does everything from blues to old school metal, if you don't need it for very technical and tight stuff, it's great and versatile, and if you like it's sound you have it sorted.

With a lot of gain, however, it's not a very tight pickup, it is pretty bright but sadly not the tightest, very fast playing on the lower strings can get inarticulate with high gain, although this can be slightly dealt with raising the pickup screw on the bottom string. If you need it for the more modern techie stuff, and this part of the sound has a priority to you - you could change the bridge humbucker to something else with a little bit tighter bottom end and perhaps slightly more output, and still have it super versatile.

Plenty of very versatile pickups -- Norton, AT-1 or even Evo2 from DiMarzio… Custom series from Duncan will do anything from jazz to metal, Bareknuckle the Mule(s), VHII or Rebel Yells will do as well. Pick your poison… they all sound different, but they all will do everything you can think of, provided you have the right kind of amp/simulator to back it up.


Texas Specials are awesome overwound single coils (yeah, they're reasonably loud), and they're great for everything you can throw at them (sans metal of course, they're at their core still single coils). If you ever feel the need, you could switch to a single-sized humbucker in the neck if you want the neck humbucker sound as well as singlecoil from the same position. If you feel the need, Satchtrack is great if you want both the humbucker and singlecoil sound from it, because it sounds like a real humbucker but also have an excellent split sound, Injector is great for fat powerful loud shred sounds - but like I said, if you don't plan on adding tons of gain on the middle and neck, stick with Texas Specials, because they're really great pickups, and can cover a lot of ground.

Lastly, amp has a take on it as well, a high gainer like a Dual Rec or 5150 won't have issues sounding super aggressive even if you're running 36th Anny, and I doubt anyone would comment SuperD's clean sounds bad from Fender Twin or JC120, so it should be put into perspective. If you use modelers/software/profilers, my experience is they react better to tighter and louder pickups then they do otherwise.


With all this said, I'd first buy the guitar, and try it out, and find out if you're satisfied or you're missing something.

Cory

[darkbluemurder]

With all this said, I'd first buy the guitar, and try it out, and find out if you're satisfied or you're missing something.

+1.

If you want to get rid of the single coil hum, the Injector neck would be a good replacement for the Texas Specials.

Cheers Stephan