Dull Guitar? Try new pickups
Let me tell you a story that is not particularly unique but remains worth telling.
About 25 years back, I was in my local guitar shop and fell in love with this faded green metallic Strat from Fender Mexico. It had a really nice acoustic body tone, guess I got lucky on the wood, and the neck was terrific. The factory setup I recall was mediocre, and after buying it, I decided to replace the stock pickups and the tuners. All in all, not a big deal on an inexpensive guitar that fit my hands well.
Except I made a mistake.
At the time, I thought, mistakenly, that Fender pickups would be the right answer and after consulting with a few folks went with a set of Fender Vintage Noiseless. They were better than the stock pickups, but I never really felt compelled to play and so the guitar spent the next decades mostly in a rack except when I wanted to see if it was still not quite right.
While I own more than enough guitars, I wanted something to play in my office when needing a short mental health break from endless conference calls and meetings to get my mind back working, so I thought of the green Strat. Tried it with the little Yamaha THR 30 II, a little amp that I find pretty darn useful.
Yeah, no joy.
Thus I decided that I could sell the greeny and try for a better low cost guitar, or have a go at the pickups. I have been near completely successful with pickup replacements. While I have tried a great many, I have never been disappointed with anything from Bare Knuckle, Jason Lollar or Lindy Fralin. While doing some research I found a set of Fralin Real 54s in stock at a fair price and as I have Fralins in my ‘65 Jazzmaster reissue and my ‘51 Precision Bass reissue thought that I would take a shot.
I ordered them and they arrived in a couple of days. Since I vaguely recalled that the Vintage Noiseless had come with pots and the like, I decided I wanted fresh everything. The tech who does work for me, Kevin Martell of The Arts Music Store, told me of a mod that would via a push pull get me more pickup combinations, so since he was replacing the pots and caps anyway, I told him to go ahead.
Fralin Real ‘54s
Kevin called me to tell me that the guitar was done and that he thought it sounded outstanding. Because he is very particular, he noted a number of other tweaks he had done to the guitar involving the bridge which he said was better than many of the bridges on American built Strats and some thoughts on the set up as I wanted a Jeff Beck style vibrato bar setup. He also said that I would be blown away by the Fralins especially in a loud tube amp. Due to work conditions and the reality that my daughter works nights, I have not yet plugged in a turned up a tube amp. However, I do have some really fine Fender setups in both my Helix and my Kemper, both of which take headphone outs. A set of Focal headphones (oh so very good) completed my first play session.
Fralin characterizes these pickups as glassy and articulate. I cannot argue with this fact. While I do not own a real ‘54 Strat, I have played one in the past through a vintage Fender brownface amp and these pickups evoke memories of that guitar. They are definitely brighter than some other Strat pickups and Fralin says that they are wound a bit hotter than their other vintage Strat pickups.
They use USA made Alnico 3 magnets and the middle pickup is wound RWRP for noise cancellation. It works a charm, the only time I got noise was when the RAT was engaged, because let’s face it, the hairy little beast is noisy. The neck is rated at 6K and the bridge at 6.6K. I did play a bit with pickup height to get the tone where I liked it best. The set that I bought have staggered pole pieces laid out for the 7.25” radius of the neck that is on that guitar. There are no baseplates on these pickups. Kevin had recently installed a set with the baseplates and he preferred the ones in my guitar.
Wow!
Talk about opening up the guitar! No effects, all the knobs at five and a little bit of reverb, and this is a completely different instrument! It is open, quacks and spanks as needed, and when pushed through a Centura or a RAT sounds exactly like I would want. I like the ability to mix the dry signal with the overdriven signal myself and while most pedals of this type do not offer this (except the recently released Origin Effects Revival Drive Hot Rod Edition - I am on the waitlist) this is possible on the Helix and the Kemper. While both units are attached to higher end FRFR systems, again volume was a limiting factor so far. As it is for many of us these days.
The Strat had a questionable 5 way switch so Kevin swapped that. The new one is completely silent and there is clear distinction in each position, with no mud at all. The new tone controls and capacitor change help as well as the Fender ones turn to mud when you roll them right off, not so for the replacements.
In fairness if you are just swapping pickups, it’s a job that you can do yourself with a simple soldering iron. Since the guitar had not been checked by a professional technician in over 20 years, I was happy to pay to have the work done by a professional. Kevin is also much more picky than eye and unsurprisingly does better work than I do.
My conclusions
By going with a set of better pickups, from a maker highly respected for his work, particularly his single coil units, I turned a meh guitar into an amazing guitar. I have to tell myself that it’s still going on a hook in my office because it is so good now, I was starting to rethink things and put it in the guitar playing / recording room. Won’t do that. Once my daughter heads out, it will get a workout in my wet dry Fender amp rig (a new build - ‘65 Blackface Twin for dry and FSR Blues Junior for wet) at what I will euphemistically call proper volume. Want to improve your meh guitar? Better pickups, installed by a professional tech along with a proper setup can do that.
Thanks very much for reading and until next time, peace.
