| I have never changed pickups before. I had a strat, and considered
changing the pickups to Duncans but I ended up selling it to raise
money for a P.A. system. Anyway, I think the best way to reduce
the hum is to use a humbucker which will definately change the sound
of a strat. If you were to use a quarterpounder, you would probably
notice a little more hum than a stock pickup due to the larger magnets,
greater number of windings, and because it's still a single coil pickup.
There may be some tricks you can do like use a pickup in the middle
position which is reverse polarity from the other two and set them
up for common mode rejection. I think Seymour Duncan talks about
this in his pickup literature. I know he sells pickups that are
reverse wired. If you want to get an idea how various pickups
sound you could check out an ESP strat which has EMG's, a Schecter
strat which has Schecter's pickups, a Bill Lawrence strat, etc,
etc. This won't tell you exactly how it'll sound in your guitar,
but it will give you a rough idea how it will sound, and also
allows you to compare one pickup to another. If you are close
to Marlboro, Mr C's has lots of Strat copies from different
Manufacturers, and would be a good place to compare.
You could also leave your strat stock and try using a noise
gate, or something else to lose some of the noise.
Mark Jacques
LM02/Marlboro, Ma.
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| I put Semour Duncan Hot stacks in my strat...no more hum. Stacks
are a humbucking pickup that sounds like a strat pickup and fits
in the original holes with no modification to the guitar..it osunds
great, just like a strat, has reasonably powerful output and doesn't
hum. Dimarzio also makes a humbucking strat replacement pickup
but I have no firsthand knowledge of it.
dave
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| ditto on .2
I too, put Seymour Duncan Hot stacks in my strat and no more hum.
To me, it sounds just like a strat, and I don't have any batteries
to mess with. I credit noters like Dave for helping me with the
decision. Check the note file on pickups.
Tony
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I realize that I'm a little late on this topic, but here goes...
I have the EMG active setup in my Strat. It's got the best sound
(and sound variation) that I've heard/played. I don't know much
about the pickups (ie stacked or what) because they were in the
guitar when I bought it. At that time ('84) they were pretty
expensive, about $300, I think. They have a 9v under the pickguard
which has to be changed about every 6-9 months. That's kind of a
hassle but the tone and variety is absolutely fantastic!
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