http://www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk/
Their "Nail Bomb" humbucker might be the ticket! Yeah? No? :cool:
I hope I could get their stuff via mail-order to Las Vegas.
Edited to add: In case my first post is too muddled, I'll sum up what it is I'm after in plainer speak. Keep in mind: Fender Strat, H-S-S. I will get another guitar if my Strat can't be modified to what I want.
Basically, I do care about the low end for the metal/hardcore rhythm stuff but I want to focus on the high end. Not in a way that's all clean and clear like Vai or Satriani doing arpeggios on the 20th fret or whatever, but... well... in a way that hurts people and makes them want to kill me.
I often use an aluminum "Firecracker" slide and mostly play lead, usually with a hard pick, sometimes with a soft pick, and often with just fingers (looking to get some of those "AlaskaPik" thingies). Sometimes I use two picks like Dick Dale (the surf guitar king).
Also, I love playing on an archtop because I can finger the [bleep]in' thing all the way, nearly falling off the stool because of how into it the thing allows me to get... but I hesitate to get one for the following reasons:
1. I guess they're supposed to be all clear, clean, warm, and jazzy, something that belongs in an intimate high-dollar jazz club in uptown Chicago... as opposed to a blood-spattered medieval torture chamber in Slovakia where boorish American tourists lured in by foxy Euro-babes meet their grisly unenviable ends (guess which locale my guitar would belong in... :D ).
2. I'm worried that if I had big nasty Skull-Exploder Soldering-Iron-Through-Their-EarDrums brand humbuckers put on it, it would get all warped and fouled up and not sound good at all.
3. Don't know if those big thick jazz strings can produce the sound I want. I do know that they somehow work for fingerin' (pizzicato?). Don't know if big huge thick strings would foul up a bolt-on neck. The reason I fear that is because a metalhead friend who went to school for guitar playin' told me that those Zakk Wylde signature strings are so heavy that you have to put them on a neck-through guitar or else the thing will bow like a Chevy LUV trying to carry your 800 lb. Uncle Boom Boom's titanium coffin to his final resting place.
4. Don't know if a regular solidbody could be modified to be good for fingerin' like an archtop. Maybe some kind of semi-hollow or something?
5. Still wanna see if these AlaskaPik thingies will make a difference on my Strat.
6. I must have the weirdest needs of any guitar player I've ever met. If you think this is bad, you should see what I'm trying to accomplish with my bassplaying! I just know I can build a 5-string fretless with enough punch for thrash/noise/hardcore/metalcore/deathgrindpukevomit. But then I guess that's for another forum! :D
Anyways, I must apologize in advance for all this needless verbiage, especially since this is my inaugural post. I can be rather compulsive when it comes to the written word. Also, I've just been going in relentless pursuit of what I want... 'cuz if I'm gonna blow all this cash, I want to get my money's worth and then some. Man, it's like heroin... the more you get into it, the more you need.