As the name suggests, Fender Texas Special Strat pickups are designed to give you that Texas Blues sound. If you’re looking for replacement guitar pickups and you’d like to get a sound similar to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bonnie Raitt, or Johnny Winter, then these are recommended. Texas Special Strat pickups start with staggered Alnico 5 […]
The Seven-Sound Strat Modification is an easy way for you to give your guitar more tone versatility, and despite its name, you can make this mod on any type of guitar that has three pickups and a five-way switch. The five-way switch already gives Strat players plenty of versatility in tone. Position 1 is the […]
To fully understand what we’re talking about when we say single coil and double coil, we’ll first take a look at the different parts of a pickup and see how they work together to produce a guitar signal. Then we’ll examine single coil and double coil pickups, the differences between them, and why you would […]
Why a Mini Toggle Switch? A humbucker pickup contains two coils, and with a simple modification, we can use a switch to “shut off” one of the coils, causing the pickup to sound and act like a single coil. The choice to use a mini-toggle switch is purely aesthetic; you can use absolutely any kind […]
This article will cover how to wire a humbucker pickup so that it can be split into a single coil, using a push-pull pot. For the split you need a four-wire humbucker; you cannot split a two-wire without first modifying the pickup itself. Each coil has a Hot and a Ground, and a determination must […]
In this article, we’ll start with the basics of guitar pickup wiring by examining what it means when guitar pickups are wired in-phase, out-of-phase, series, or parallel. The first thing we’ll need to do is understand a little about how pickups are made and how they work.
Rock Telecaster Bridge Pickups The Fender Telecaster is actually a great guitar for Rock. The twangy sound fattens up nicely when run through some overdrive or a fuzz pedal. Even though many people consider the Telecaster to be a country guitar, many great Rock players – including Jeff Beck, Mike Campbell, John 5, Richie Kotzen, […]
Perhaps your guitar tone is getting stale, or perhaps it never sounded that good to begin with. Well, before you buy a new one, review this post and put some thought into upgrading your pickups instead. If you play Rock or Metal through a Stratocaster then this information should be especially useful to you.
Many people think of the Fender Telecaster as a Country or Rock guitar but the Tele is actually quite good for playing the Blues. Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Albert Lee, and many other great Blues players played a Telecaster. The combination of the biting, gritty, bridge pickup mixed with the warm, smooth tone of the […]
It’s possible to upgrade your guitar at a reasonable price: change the pickups. Quite often, the results can be significant, especially with lower-priced guitars in which the quality of the pickups is questionable. It is possible to get the sound you are looking for simply by selecting the right pickups rather than buying a new […]
The Seymour Duncan SHPR-1s P-Rails is a P-90 and a Strat Pickup in a Humbucker-Sized Package. So, first things first: If you’re looking for a full-fledged humbucker, go out and buy a full-fledged humbucker. Just wanted to put the whole “…well, it’s not really a real humbucker” argument aside. This pickup is meant for folks […]
Telecasters are great… probably my favorite guitar of all. But when your Tele is stock, chances are it came loaded with vintage-style pickups. Depending on your rig and your style of playing, this may translate to noise (i.e. the dreaded 60-cycle hum), or in the case of the bridge pickup, a somewhat brittle tone, and […]