One of the reasons I love Seymour Duncan is because they like to tinker with pickups to the nth degree. This single coil set is great for players who are looking for a budget all-round Strat tone that’ll please every producer you work with. The midrange had a nice scooped character which could still cut through a dense mix. Suddenly my clean sounds no longer had a nasty low-mid bump, and the highs sounded open without being overwhelming. When I plugged my guitar in I was very pleased with the sound. At that time I already had a Bare Knuckle humbucker in my Strat, but could these single coils be just as good? After a few emails with Bare Knuckle‘s very helpful customer support team, I was confident that these pickups would solve the issues I was having.Įven though they are not expensive, the Old Guards are handmade in the UK by the same people that deal with making custom pickups for high profile guitarists such as Misha Mansoor, Rabea Massaad, and many more. Luckily for me, Bare Knuckle had just come out with a budget pickup line. Because no one wants to hire a guitar player that has to spend a whole day dialing in sounds.
But the longer I waited, the more gigs I missed out on. Something had to change, but money was tight so I knew I had to save up for a long time. I spent way too much time in the control room with the producers trying to get rid of all sorts of nasty peaks with a parametric EQ.
When I started out in the session world the stock pickups in my guitar really didn’t cut it. As long as it sounds good and you’re happy then that’s all that matters! What Are The Best Single Coil Pickups For Strats? You might like the bridge single-coil from one set, but you prefer the neck and middle pickups from a different set. I will be focusing on pickup sets, as they are often calibrated to work well together, but I highly encourage you to mix and match to see which Stratocaster pickups work best for you. This will make positions 2 and 4 on the pickup selector (most often used for clean sounds) noiseless. (Les Paul players can check out our guide to the best Les Paul replacement pickups here.)Ī small heads up when assembling your own set of pickups is that you should consider a reverse-wound middle pickup. If you want to read up on the different pickup types I suggest you check out this article, which talks about the different pickup types, and when they are used. Available in black, this pickup will drop right into place without any modifications to the guitar.Aftermarket pickups have been around since the 1970s, so it can be a pretty daunting task to find a pickup that will suit your needs.
The Hot Lead Stack is designed to take into account the slanted bridge position of the Telecaster, and its coil has been tweaked accordingly. So, this should help your leads cut through the mix the way your stock Tele would, while still allowing the rhythm guitars to be thick and heavy. The Seymour Duncan Hot Lead Stack Tele Bridge Pickup is designed for brighter sound, with more emphasis on the mid-range and sustain. This pickup uses four-conductor wiring for parallel humbucking, and split single coil for more tonal options.
The bar magnet used in this pickup is ceramic, which was chosen for its higher output and brighter tone qualities. This leads to silent operation, which is essential in Modern Rock’s extremely high gain amplifiers. There are two over-wound coils stacked on top of each other around a bar magnet, creating a humbucker pickup that is the same size as a single coil. The Seymour Duncan Hot Lead Stack Tele Bridge Pickup is a stacked humbucker, designed with Heavy Rock in mind.