Bridge Pickup for an Alder Strat

[darkbluemurder]

Hello everyone,

After I had such good results with my HD bridge and CS neck I have another candidate for a BKP upgrade. It is an alder bodied strat with a maple neck and rosewood fretboard. It's lightweight and resonant, maybe a little shy in the mid mids and upper mids. It has just one humbucker at the bridge. The bridge is a vintage style Fender vibrato.

I play everything from country rock (OK, not with this guitar :)), blues, southern rock and hard rock and 80s metal (but nothing heavier).

The pickup that is currently in there is not bad (it is a slightly overwound PAF type - no BKP - at 12k) but a little bland. I am looking for a more aggressive tone from this guitar with more power and output. However, Bass should be tight and highs not be harsh. I also don't want overbearing midrange.

I was looking at the contemporary range with NB, CS and HD as the prime candidates but I am open to other suggestions.

What do you suggest (otherwise than calling Tim)?

Thanks and kind regards,
Stephan

[PhilKing]

Painkiller or Cold Sweat comes to mind for tight bass.  The other that mighr work because of the range of what you play is the Crawler.

[badgermark]

Holy Diver! Trust me, they are perfect in alder bodies. I have had mine in a strat, and currently in a tele, it's my number one and it perfect.

[darkbluemurder]

Cool, thanks a lot!

So out of my selection the HD and CS were recommended plus Crawler and PK. NB was not yet recommended.

After having listened to Antag's bridge pickup shootout it seems that HD, CS and PK would all work since the guitar in question does not appear to have harsh highs.

The HD's forte is in the low midrange, right? It seems that my guitar has enough of that so I probably will go for a different pickup.

Cheers Stephan

[Dr. Vic]

Hum.... I do not think a ceramic humbucker is the right choice for your music. I think an A5 pickup is just what you need, and maybe not the highest in output. 

The Crawler is not a bad call for the kind of music you mentionned. It is a very versatile pickup (from blues to metal).

BUT if your guitar already deliver a good amount of low mids AND if you say you want to have an aggressive tone with tight bass, you better have to consider the Rebell Yell. That's the one I would recommend here to cure the shy mid voice of your guitar, as you said. This pickup is really straight talking and cut the mix with a good dose of agressive mids  :twisted:

(And maybe if you are open to more suggestions also have a look at the Black dog and even the Riff Raff who may also bring you where you want, no problem, even if they have less output...)   

[Antag]

+1 on the Holy Diver suggestion.  It's absolutely wonderful in alder-bodied guitars - so full, warm, organic, fat & punchy.  Just wonderful :)

One other comment - didn't we establish in another thread somewhere that the HD you have is probably the old-spec one with a ceramic magnet? (or am I thinking of someone else?)  Just thought it worth mentioning because the current spec alnico HD is a bit different from that...

[darkbluemurder]

Antag,

That was me. I meanwhile established that the pickup I have has an Alnico magnet, not a Ceramic.

If we limit the choices in the contemporary range to Alnico we have HD, RY and Crawlers as the main recommendations. Given the fact that I want more upper mids I will look at RY and Crawlers.

Cheers Stephan

[Dr. Vic]

NB was not yet recommended.

Not sure if this one would be a good option for you (you seem to play more on blues/rock stuff than metal), but as you say now :

Given the fact that I want more upper mids.

Then, in addition to the RY, you would also have to consider the NB (maybe instead of the CR), imo.
The NB is also a very versatile pickup, like the CR but with more upper mids and edge I think. In a nutshell consider that the CR goes from blues to metal, whereas the NB does it reverse way from metal to blues.
 

[darkbluemurder]

In a nutshell consider that the CR goes from blues to metal, whereas the NB does it reverse way from metal to blues.
 

Thanks, this was the most helpful comment so far! That rules out the NB. Still a lot of pickups to choose from but that certainly isn't bad if I cannot go wrong with any of them  :)

[darkbluemurder]

Hi,

I have not pursued this in a while but when I saw a Holydiver bridge with F-spacing and short legs on ebay I simply could not resist ...

Meanwhile I had replaced the original wimpy PAF-like pickup with a DiMarzio Breed I had lying around. While this was a step up from the original I still had problems with that set up: the guitar turned into a one-trick-pony, it had some rizzy highs I could not get rid of, and when I turned up the mid control on the amp (a Marshall modified for high gain by myself) the sound got very nasal.

Enter BKP HD Bridge: has about the same output, maybe a little less, has none of the fizzy rizzy icepicky highs but sounds open and clear, cleans up well with the guitar volume down. Turn up the mids on the modded Marshall and the sound steps forward but without any nasalness whatsoever. As a next test I plugged the guitar in a more vintage sounding amp. It sounded good there, too. That BKP HD is in a totally different league and feels like it belongs in this guitar. True 80s hair metal feeling.

Once again thanks to all for your suggestions - HD was spot on but I am sure that the others would have worked equally well. And thanks to Tim for a great product - there are lots of makers to choose from as regards PAF-types but for top quality handwound high output pickups the air gets thin.

Cheers Stephan

[ericsabbath]

glad it worked for your other guitar too

one of my favorite models