Custom HotRod Strat Build.

[DrNomis_44]

Have you tried any of those Tonerider pickups? I haven't but I often use Irongrear pickups in my guitars. They are a very similar concept to Tonerider - UK designed but built in China, and I've seen very similar comments about both of them on UK guitar forums in the past. There are certainly better pickups, but it's that question of paying three to five times more for maybe a 10% improvement. And sometimes it's not an 'improvement' but just 'different'.

The Irongear 'Blues Engine' PAF-style pickups I put on my Flving-V to replace the nasty Gibson ceramics are just the job for that guitar. I'm also got covered versions of those to put in my ES-3. The vintage Tele types of theirs I put on my Mexican Tele when the pickups on that (TexMex models) went very microphonic, sound slightly better to me than the originals, and the neck pickup sounds really nice and full, and not weak as some Tele neck pickups can do. I did fit a set of the Irongear vintage Strat types to a friends cheap Squier, which sounded just about OK, rather than the change I was expecting, but it might simply have been the guitar. Some guitars just seem to sound bad whatever pickups you put in them.

Haven't tried the Toneriders yet, but I'm definitely interested in giving them a go in a future guitar build, might even get a set of Tele Tonerider Pickups to go in the 51 Tele kit that I want to order soon.

[wazkelly]

Was readjusting the PUP heights on the EX-1 yesterday that has Tonerider Alnico IV's installed and once I had finished they sounded equal to or possibly better than the Epiphone Ceramic Plus ones in my Slash AFD Les Paul. I then compared them back to back with the Entwistle Dark Star Ceramics installed in my Son's Hot Rodded Strat Copy in a H-S-H setup and found them very trebly and almost too bright & brittle but the Toneriders had all the right midrange tones you expect from a hot humbucker and also had better single note articulation. Stands to reason that if spending 50% more you should end up with something better and that truly is the case in this instance.

Cannot comment on their single coil guitar PUP's as I have Wilkinson's in my Tele.

[Simon Barden]

Wilkinson single coils have a good reputation over here too. I have friends who swear by them. My only gripe is that their moulded logo on the plastic covers (or bobbins or metal covered pickups) means that they really need replacing if you want smooth covers. I smoothed their logo off the bobbin coils of a Vintage (brand) LP copy I bought on eBay on behalf of a friends' son, but it's hard to do it 100% invisibly.

[Simon Barden]

I have a dislike for ceramic pickups. They are fine if you want a high output pickup for metal and aren't going to be playing anything that requires a nice clean tone, but I normally want something more versatile. Though I do have an Ibanez RG where the bridge pickup is a Kent Armstrong M-Bucker double hot ceramic pickup. 27k dc resistance! My mate Max (who is an out and out shredder) got Kent to make him up a four-bladed humbucker when Max was a Fender UK demonstrator and Kent was doing some design work for Fender. Kent liked the result so much that he then put them into his standard pickup line. Max fits them to all his Ibanezs.

Almost all digital amps don't have enough headroom to cope with the output, so you get nasty digital clipping as a result (not nice). We tested it recently on a Kemper Profiler, and found that this does have an input gain attenuator, which on its maximum setting, didn't clip.

It's rather too full-on for me, and I'll probably swap it out for something quite less extreme, but it's saving grace is that it's four coils in one pickup, so you can tap it down to a single blade if you want to, though you need a whole lot of mini-switches (or switched pots) fitted to do so.

[wazkelly]

I hear your point Simon and yes I did coil tap both PUP's to give a bit more flexibility. Amp settings can tame these wild beasts to a certain degree and I have other axes for more mellow sounds if these ones are cooking too much for any particular setting or genre.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:

Next fortnight, I'm going to be looking at ordering a set of new pickups, pots, etc from Realtone Music for my HotRod Strat, I was thinking of ordering a couple of Kent Armstrong Dual-Blades to replace the neck and middle Single-Coils, and a Tonerider Rocksong to replace the Bridge Humbucker, do you think these pickups will work fine together in my HotRod Strat?, the Dual Blades are Humbuckers (i.e. noise-cancelling) in a Single-Coil sized package, the pots currently being used in the HotRod Strat are a set of 24mm 250kA (log) CTS pots, I'm going to be replacing the 24mm CTS 250k Log volume pot with a 500k Log mini CTS pot, and the two 24mm CTS 250k tone pots with two 250k log mini CTS pots, reason being is that the body-routing clearances under the scratchplate are pretty tight, I had to shave off some of the body wood in a couple of places, just to be able to get the scratchplate installed.


I want to install noise-cancelling pickups in the neck and middle positions so that I don't get any hum when those pickups are selected, also, I want those pickups to be a bit more beefy compared to standard Single-Coils so that they balance well with the full-sized bridge-humbucker, I'm not too worried about losing some of the Strat tone cause my Marshall is a bit bright in the Overdrive Channel anyway.


Here's a pic of my HotRod Strat, all up and running in a playable condition, it is leaning against the front of my Marshall amp, on top of my amp is my SLO50 amp chassis that I'm working on building:

[wazkelly]

Het Doc, that came up looking good and has a Floyd style trem too.

Cannot comment on PUP compatibility other than blades do have a beefier sound than stock single coils and have one in the middle of my son's H-S-H hot rodded strat and it actually sounds better than the bridge humbucker.

[Simon Barden]

You could go Kent Armstrong all the way and fit an M-Bucker Cool Blades in the bridge position. This is still a very powerful pickup, but having two x four-wire leads (it's basically two dual-blades on a common base) you would have the ability to select just one of the dual-blades if you wanted to match the sound and output of the middle and neck pickups, and then select both of them for a louder output. You'd need to add some mini switches or some switched pots to do it, but it can be done.

[Dedman]

I have Armstrong blades in the Community Prototype build I did, just one of the doubles (humbucker size) and a single size, I used a freeway 6 way switch and a push/pull to give me 7 combinations. I think it's too much, they sound great on their own but start mixing them or hit the ALL combo and ...I can't think of the words to describe it...overpowering? If I was a shredder who loved gain and drive in bucket loads I might like it but they don't suit me, not in this combo anyway. I think I'll replace them with Toneriders or similar and use them in 2 separate axes further down the line.

Doc, the strat looks great, well done mate!

[Simon Barden]

I know what you mean about too many options. The RG I've got the hot M-Bucker in also has a SD P-Rails in the neck (which has single coil, P-90 and humbucker configuration options). My friend wired it up for me but it's all a bit of a mystery as to exactly what each combination is, and two of them sound exactly the same. To get better options I'd need to add some mini-switches. I think I'll take the M-bucker out, fit a standard humbucker in the bridge and just have the switching controlling the P-rails options.