Pickup ideas

I have a Fender American Strat and im thinking about changing the pickups to get a more distorted sound. i was looking into the Fender hot nosieless pickups and i was even thinging about puting in some emg's 81's but i dont really know how that would work on a fender.......i have an unlimited budget so help me out please

Here's what I did on my most recent Strat project... I got a set of EMG's (81/85). And I got two concentric pots and the capacitors and all that stuff... Then I wired it just like a Les Paul using the concentric pots. This give you the independant volume and independant tone controls without drilling more holes in your pickguard. I also bought a pickguard that was cutout for humbuckers, two pot holes, and a toggle switch. I drilled out the toggle switch hole so I could put a Les Paul 3-way in. It's a pretty clean setup and it works great. I also replaced my single coils in my American Strat with some Custom Shop '69s. They sound great too!

[font=trebuchet ms]If you have an unlimited budget, I would suggest looking at amps and effects, not new pickups.

If you're into vintage stuff, a Fuzz Face or Big Muff can do you right, but they're tricky to dial-in.

I've heard such rave reviews of the Digitech Bad Monkey that I'm going to audition it as soon as I can find one.[/font]

While we're on this subject, can someone please explain the difference between the following brands of pickups: EMG's, Seymour Duncans's and Dimarzio's :)

Well... they're different brands. To someone not familiar with how pickups work they seem the same. EMG is a brand that mostly specializes in high output pickups. They have a series of active pickups that are their most popular ones.... the EMG-81 and 85's are the most common. Active pickups have an onboard preamp which requires a battery to run. This basically means that the pickup powers itself... allowing for great distortion and great crunch. EMG also makes passive pickups (no preamp). EMG-HZ pickups are the passive versions of their 81's and 85's. The DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan pickups are more traditional brands. They make passive pickups. There are differences in the types of magnets they use and whether they use individual pole pieces or a rail piece... how many times they're wound or over wound... so on so forth. It's like Fender to Gibson... They both do the same thing, there are just small differences that make them sound different. Most sites will offer sound clips of each of there pickups. If you're curious I suggest that you check that out to see how they're different. If you're not sure about the way a pickup will sound... just go to a guitar store and pick up a guitar with the specific pickups in it... and plug into an amp similar to the one that you have and try them out.

[font=trebuchet ms]Some tech-talk >here<.

You definitely should look into your options in terms of wiring and control systems. You should also be aware that high-output pickups that are designed and built with distortion as a goal do not offer nearly as much tonal versatility as a more 'mainstream' design. To me, EMGs all sound pretty much the same :p , but a good passive single-coil, or better yet, a 4-wire humbucker, can do it all.[/font]

I am going to get a pair of Duncan Distortions, which i came upon by looking at thier site...www.seymourduncan.com... it gives you sound clips and i think these pick ups with a decent pedal would give u some ripping distortion that would sound badass on a strat.

yea the emg's are really nice but i dont really want to go though all that workto get them in and i just put a new pickguard and i would feel bad that i spent that money for nothing...has anybody heard anything about the new fender hot nosieless strat pickups

I've got a YJM (neck) and 2 H-3s Dimarzio's on order. If you like Malmsteens' sound, this is his most popular setup. Of course your going to munge the signal these coils produce, but remember the first axiom of the pickup: crap begats crap. If you need to DSP the snot out of your finger's art work, I have a small problem with that. You should, IMHO, plug into your favorite head, turn all the wave-shaping knobs hard-left then let the pickups speak alone. And now for the xxxx dollar question -- do you like what you hear?

I can almost garntee 'ya -- if you luv 'em bald-faced, then you'll luv 'em chewed up by whatever Digitech, Boss and other's will do to YOUR signal.

But if you gotta fiddle, and twiddle, eq, dq, flop and fold to get "it", sorry, but I think you'll be finished with that groove PDQ.

Me, I just want to play man. I don't want to waste precious practice time by dialing in/out my pickups' short comings.

I'll write back once I get my new coils installed.