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Hi there. I just bought a Strat copy (SX) and will buy some pickups soon. This is my first strat-type guitar and I know little about the pickups.

I'm not looking for vintage 50s-60s start sound. I want a hot Strat than can play nice cleans, blues and hard rock without the hum. I looked at the tone chart and it looks like a combination of Hot Rails(b) Vintage Rails(m) and Cool Rails(n) would fit the bill.

It's just the bridge that I wonder about. I read pretty bad reviews of the Hot Rails being very muddy. Should I go with something else, maybe like a Little 59 in the bridge? I'd like to get a vintage humbucker type of sound for the bridge but I'd like to keep the 3-single pickguard for now... unless someone convinces me it's better to buy a real bucker for the bridge. I just don’t know if the cavity is a H-S-H or quot;swimming poolquot; type to allow it.

The Strat copy is Alder with a maple neck. What's your experience of the Strat bridge pickup? Are the humbucking options any good or should I go with a real humbucker if the guitar allows it?

Thanks in advance.

What kind of tones are you looking for? The pickups you mentioned are not very faithful to the 50's-60's strat tones. For that, I'd say a set of SSL-1's or APS-1's would do you better.

I put a hot rail in my brdige and I am very happy with it - never thought it sounded muddy.

As I said, I'm not looking for a vintage 50s-60s Strat sound. Sorry the typo may have you confused on the meaning of my sentence.

That's why I pick the rails. I want a Strat for hot blue and hard rock. And hopefully that provides great cleans, not necessarily quot;glassy cleanquot; like a vintage Strat.


Originally Posted by Sly_D

I read pretty bad reviews of the Hot Rails being very muddy. Should I go with something else, maybe like a Little 59 in the bridge? I'd like to get a vintage humbucker type of sound for the bridge but I'd like to keep the 3-single pickguard for now... unless someone convinces me it's better to buy a real bucker for the bridge. I just don’t know if the cavity is a H-S-H or quot;swimming poolquot; type to allow it.

The Strat copy is Alder with a maple neck. What's your experience of the Strat bridge pickup? Are the humbucking options any good or should I go with a real humbucker if the guitar allows it?

I recently pulled the hotrails bridge from my stew mac parts strat (swamp ash body, rosewood board, 250K pots) and dropped it into my Agile ST802 (alder body, maple board, 500K pots) and it went from a somewhat muddy, dark pup, to a more percussive and meaty pup. The top end still rolls off, but I also have a tone control connected to it, and I may get rid of the tone control on it to get more top end out of it.

Lil 59 at the neck, in both guitars as well, currently with no tone control on it in the Agile, went from pretty muddy and almost unusable to pretty vintagey sounding and pretty useable.

The hotrails and lil 59 are sort of EQ opposites: the hotrails has a big percussive midrange with some top end rolloff and a tight low end, and the lil 59 has a pretty big mid scoop with a bright top end and a round low end.

The Agile was routed HSS. I'd rather have a real neck and bridge buckers because it opens up the pickup selection a lot more. Stew mac's HSH pickguard fits pretty well with only one screwhole off on the lower horn.

Thanks a lot Chill, great info. Considering this is Alder with a Maple neck and that my Traynor amp is on the bright side, I suppose the Hotrails will sound pretty good in there. And reading quot;percussive midrange and tight bottom end with a high end roll-offquot; turns me on really bad

I'll see... buying s StewMac pickguard was what I had in mind... probably H-S-S... or maybe even H-S-H. It will all depend on how I'll like single coils really. Although I can expect the stock SX to sound like crap. They probably won't be a good example of single coils.

Cool Rail in bridge and neck.. Vintage Rail in middle would be my choice

Yes, I read that often Istanbul... with its 5/4/5 EQ, the Cool Rail seems to be pretty balanced. Thanks for sharing. I still have time to think about all this.