Trying to make a decision on which pickups to buy when I’ve hardly ever played a strat! Please bare with me. There’s a couple of things going on. I really prefer A3’s in teles, tried A5’s and find them too direct, less smooth, notes ‘seem’ to ring out more with the A3’s. I play mostly clean, very guilty of laid back lush blues noodling.
Now, teles and strat are difficult beasts but do the qualities of what I like about A3’s in my Tele transfer over to a Strat?
I’m a bit confused as I recently got an email back from Don Mare saying he would never, ever use A3’s in a strat, just all wrong, not enough magnet strength particularly on the high strings. His words.
But, there are lots of builder that use them in strat pups. Thoughts and advice welcome.
Cheers
Comments
All my pickups are generally A3, including the ones in my strat.
I'd say go for it, and order from mojo pickups :-)
Yes, they will. Go for it. A2 seems to be more common in strat pups in my experience though. Lollar Blondes are very sweet.
Ignore Don Mare. I had a set of his pickups and hated them. Way overrated.
My advice? One of the great UK builders on here, such as Mojo or Oil City will give you great advice and see you right.
There are so many variables in Strat pickups I always think its important to find a set on a demo to get an idea or ball park of what they will sound like.
These recently caught my eye and I liked the clean sounds on this video checking on the site these I think are A3
Fender did try A3 in the pickups for the Highway1 series Stratocaster. They compensated for the weaker magnets by overwinding the coil.
Consider the Seymour Duncan Five-Two model.
https://youtu.be/6faNLEUgca4
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/89942/caspercaster#latest
Looking at the Mojo site I really like the idea of his Special Strat set, A3’s but wound a trad hotter than the 50’s set.