A quick transformation...

[Simon Barden]

Someone pointed out how much my Dave Gilmour Strat had gone up in value since Dave auctioned off his guitars and Fender had to stop making them. Some of them that have been left unused (a crying shame) can now go for £10k, whilst a played one like mine can go for £6k. Not a bad increase when it cost £2800 in early 2011.

But it got me back into playing it and putting together some Gilmour-style pedals, which then got me watching the concert videos and which then led to his red Strat and feeling my life was incomplete without one.

So I bought a 1996 Japanese 1950s-style Strat in Candy Apple Red and the EMG DG20 loaded scratchplate and simply put them together.

The Black Strat and pre-op red Strat together, along with the yet-to-be-fitted scratchplate:


And the post-op red Strat:



I had to fill and drill a few holes for the pickguard as the EMG scratchplate needed more screws. The neck got a levelling and fret profiling and the jack socket got a Pure Tone socket fitted. I also fitted a Hipshot Tremsetter (my own choice as I'd been impressed with the ones I'd fitted to a friend's guitar) and made a shortened trem arm.

It's got a chunky '54 D-shaped neck (according to the stamp on it), though I detect a touch of 'V' to it.
The EMGs are active pickups (3 of their SA model), so there's a battery hiding under the scratchplate. The controls are different to a standard Strat's Volume/Tone/Tone arrangement (despite the same knobs being used) and has a volume/EXG/SPC arrangement. The EXG is EMG's mid cut + treble and bass boost control, whilst the SPC is EMG's mid boost control.

My old white Chandler Custom Strat (a famous music shop in Kew, London, sadly now defunct) from the 80s had EMGs and had the SPC presence boost control, but I wish I'd had the EXG fitted as it brings the clean but rather flat sounding EMGs to life. With judicious use of the EXG and SPC controls, I can make the red Strat sound like the black Strat!

[McCreed]

Good to see you back Simon!
I like the red strat (and the black one!). I have never owned active pickups so know very little about them.

[Simon Barden]

They are generally low impedance pickups, with a much smaller number of windings than a standard pickup. They are almost always a noiseless design, even the single coil styles. Output level is determined by the amplifying circuit, but is generally set to compare with passive equivalents, though some guitar pickups for the metal market can be a bit hotter.

With the pickup output being low impedance, they aren't really affected by cable length, amp input impedance or volume pot resistance as there is no resonant filter circuit that runs external to the pickup. And being active and low impedance, they don't need high resistance pot values between the signal path and ground for volume, so the pots are normally 25k or 50k depending on the manufacturer's choice. The lower the resistance, the lower the overall noise pick-up of the circuitry.

And noise is very low indeed, so much so that there is no need to ground the bridge and strings - which makes the guitar safer to use if you sing and there's a fault on the amp or PA. With your body not grounded, there's a much higher resistance path to ground, so any shock current you get will be orders of magnitude less than if the strings were grounded.

The pickup's filter response is actually almost flat, slightly curved with a gentle hump in the mids and not a lot of treble roll-off. This contrasts with the typical resonant peak response of a passive pickup that either emphasises the treble in single coils or mids in humbuckers.

So on their own, played clean, they can seem a bit lifeless in comparison to passive pickups, but good platforms for more driven sounds and for effect-based sounds.

Which is where the various tone shaping and boost add-ons come in in. You've got a battery in the guitar, so you might as well make use of it with some active controls.

The EMG EXG control is a treble and bass boost control, with a bit of mid cut thrown-in for good measure. With this you can create an EQ shape that's very similar to a standard passive pickup, so from sounding clean but bland, a setting of somewhere about 5 on the control gets a single coil SA sounding very like a passive Strat single coil. Above that it goes a bit OTT for my taste when playing clean, with too much treble, though with effects and/or drive it may come in useful.

The EMG SPC is a mid-boost (despite it being called a presence control, the boost is really centred in the mids), akin to the mid boost control in the active Fender Clapton circuit, though not quite as powerful, but still enough to give you lots of extra drive and thickness for solos. Makes a single coil more like a humbucker and a humbucker like a much more powerful humbucker.

EMG also do an RPC control, which is a treble boost control, with a small amount of bass cut. Presumably for making a humbucker sound more like a powerful single coil (or for a single coil to sound really bright!). And an AB 'afterburner control which is a simple +20dB full frequency signal boost.

Their bass range controls are mainly centred around what I'd call 'normal' active EQ combinations, treble & bass or treble, mid and bass controls, plus active blend pots.

[McCreed]

Thanks for that info Simon.
I don't know why, but I always just assumed active = hot. Probably because a lot of the metal guys use them (???). I see now that's not necessarily the case.

[Simon Barden]

No, not always hot.

Because they are very noiseless pickups, they are good when you are using really high gain as you don't get any of the amplified hum that you can get with even good humbuckers, So any noise is from the pedals or amp.

But I do think you need to use some of the tone controls available to get the best out of them if you want classic sounds.