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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
50's/60's/modern tone?
Maple or rosewood neck?
High gain or clean?
Price range?
I've always loved Bare Knuckle pickups for example - but I'd recommend Apache's if you had a 50's maple neck Strat, whereas I'd go with Mother's Milk if you had a 60's rosewood.
https://tonerider.com/category/pickups-for-strats/
Pure Vintage be good general set.
The Chris Buck set and variances seem to be liked.
If you're looking for lowish output I'm not your man, as I tend to go for slightly hotter pickups.
I've had shit loads of strat pickups I reckon somewhere around 30 sets from various makers and went through a stage of swapping them out just to try something new.
However, I got bored of that after a few years... most aftermarket pickups are generally very good. So I'd just decide on a budget, and a rough sound and then either choose a hand wound job, or machine wound.
At the cheaper end of the scale, I had some good results with entwistle, and in particular Vanson, who make excellent pickups.
slightly more expensive, Irongear pig iron's were my favourite. I do like the toneriders as well although I prefer their tele pickups over their strat pickups.
Best I have heard in a long time
Foleys Big Iron Low Wind are superb
Fat 50s with a Bare Knuckle Sinner neck pickup at the bridge also superb
Everybody's preference will be different
Personally I like 54 styled pickups, Bare Knuckle Apaches are really good for me. If you want something vintage with a bit more modern hifi EQ and power Harmonic Design make killer pickups, the vintage 54 is a step in that direction the Vintage Plus is even more modern and powerful but still have that "vintage" sound to them.
I've just got a prewired guard, with Tex Mex pickups in which are pretty nice. Excellent value considering they come with decent pots and switch etc. Was about £140.
My other strat has Seymour Duncan ssl-6/Fender select. Have also had BK Irish Tours / Mothers Milk.
Happy with the Tex Mex for now, they hold their own against my other strat and previous sets.
If I was going to spend more I'd possibly try Mojo or Lollar, or more likely get another set of Bulldog sweet 62's which are excellent, and half the price of the former brands.
At various times my Stonetones Strat has had a Nightfighter A2 humbucker and also a prototype Oil City Liquidator big pole Strat single coil in the bridge.
My 1993 Fender ST-62 Stratocaster Reissue MIJ is in need of some "oompf". Rosewood board and alder body. As I'm swapping between Les Pauls and a Strat something with a higher output is needed but still with a vintage feel. From my research so far 60s is what I'm after, more midrange and less glassy than the 50s. This is my gigging guitar through tube amp and pedals, no modellers.
I've looked at Oil City, Klopman, Radioshop, Lollar, and Lindy Fralin so far but I'm starting to get overwhelmed with all the details of Alnico 5 and Formvar wire! I'd love to hear more about your experience Thomas!
Very bright!
Bulldog Texas Floods are very very nice, and at £150ish a set new much better value than Bare Knuckle which have gone silly price for what they are. I've got a set of the bulldogs in a rosewood neck strat and they sound absolutely fantastic. In another strat I've got a set of BK irish tours (which replaced some BK slow hands), and they also are great but I bought them 2nd hand when the prices weren't bonkers. I wouldn't bother with BK now for the price as they're not any better than the competition imho. I prefer the Bulldogs and the BK Irish tours to Oil City Stonetones, Lindy Fralins (think it was the bluesy set), Catswhisker, Wizard, and various other handwound pickups and the other non handwound ones I've bought over the years.
Cheaper than that then I'd look at the Irongear pig irons or vintage ( if you want something less hot), or a set of Kent Armstrong tweed's or vintages if you can find them second hand. They are seriously good pickups. Even with these slightly hotter pickups you can get some absolutely sparkling sounds out of a clean amp. They're all really good pickups though and should get you in a good place..
Cheaper than that.. Any of the Vansons will be ok to get you going.
Saying that at one time I did put the stock pickups back into an old Tokai Springy sound.. And they sounded absolutely fantastic.. I guess the difference was the pickup height must have just been spot on, so experiment with changing the height as you can get some very different tones out of the guitar with that. if you get a slightly hotter set as above, you can make them sound less hot by lowering the height of the pickups, you just need to get the balance sounding right to your ears.