HSH or HH

[Nicktarnow]

TDPRI members im looking for your opinion on the guitar im building. I am planning on putting the Golden age pickups in it. You know the ones Stew Mac sells. Are these pickups any good? I am also debating whether or not i should put a single coil in there too and rewire it.




All opinions are welcome!

[Strat62]

You can get some really sweet tones by splitting the buckers and mixing them up with a center single coil, like a Vai JEM with a 5-position switch. Throw in some push-pull pots and you can get series parallel/reverse phase as well. Once I figured it out, I've split the coils on all my humbucker guitars. I haven't tried any of StewMac's pups, but I'll bet they're a nice economical alternative to the classic stuff.

[guitarbuilder]

I thought I had an article about stew mac pickups, but I don't. They were highly rated in a shoot out a few years ago in VG magazine.

[Mojotron]

I have found that the coil splitting sounds best when you combine a split/parallel neck pickup with a humbucking bridge pickup - or the other way around; or, 2 split/parallel humbuckers together. Combining with a center pickup just never really sounded right to me - it's not really a good strat sound. The exception I have found is the Dimarzio HS-2 - but that's a stacked pickup so the magnetic field is more like a single coil anyways...

[Ironwolf]

I like the HSH combination; I've built two of them so far. I don't split the humbuckers, however. What I do is use a Strat 5 way switch wired normally and a push/pull pot to turn the bridge pup on and give me a neck/bridge combo, or all three pups on.

[fishtownmike]

I do remember reading good reviews on them.

[Nick JD]

Originally Posted by Strat62

You can get some really sweet tones by splitting the buckers and mixing them up with a center single coil, like a Vai JEM with a 5-position switch.

+1. Split the HBs and use the rear bridge coil and the middle for the Strat position 2 sound ... and the front neck coil with middle gives position 4 Strat sound. Still humbucking too.

Just having a middle single coil pickup between two HBs - the middle position will sound dead and lifeless after the neck and bridge.

[Strat62]

The Jem-style may not be a true Strat sound, but it sure sounds sweet to me!

[StratSvante]

my strat that i modded has HSH with a push-pull pot that splits both humbuckers and the normal strat 5 pos switch, works great and i get my stratish sounds and les paulish sounds:)