Hot Rodding My Mother Milk Strat

[rperks]

Hi

I have a Fender strat that has been loaded with Mothers Milk singles for a number of years.  However, I miss having the flexibility of a bridge humbucker in this guitar.

I'd appreciate your input on a few options:

- convert this strat to a HSS and drop in a VHII into the bridge.  I'm going for that brown sound type of setup.

- to avoid all that hassle with pickguards and the like, how about one of the hotter strat single coils like a Cobra in the bridge?  Would this work, good idea or completely bad?  Would it get me into the ball park of a HSS without a major pickguard mod and how would it blend with the Mother Milk in Neck and Middle?

- switch all three pickups to something like a Trilogy set?  Would make for a much more rockier strat with my Marshall amp.  I'm planing on getting another guitar this year also so that could be one that is more vintage vibe as the one I am considering moding would be better suited due to it's trem and locking tuners.

- Any other options on the other hotter single coils in the bridge?

Cheers
Rich

[Nolly]

I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all to go for a higher output bridge single coil - I have had a Trilogy Suite bridge paired with ‘63 Veneer Board middle and neck (‘63s are quite close to the Mother’s Milks) on Tim’s recommendation and it works really nicely. You don’t feel at all that the bridge is dominant in output, it’s just going to have a more beefier sound. A Cobra or Sinner would be even thicker/hotter, but you should still be able to keep the relative pickup output under control by height adjustment.
That said, no strat bridge single coil will sound like a humbucker. So much of the sound comes from the pickup  position and angle that you’re never going to get the same effect as a traditionally placed bridge humbucker. If you truly want a humbucker sound, I think the only option is to actually install one.
Finally, is your guitar wired so that the bridge pickup has a dedicated tone control? If it has vintage wiring, where the bridge  pickup only sees a volume control with no tone, I’d change that right away - just having the load of the tone pot on the bridge pickup signal will take away a considerable amount of harshness, then of course by rolling the control off a bit you’ll get the darker tone that in fact can sound a lot like a hotter pickup would.

[b.gandt]

I agree with Nolly that a hot single still won't sound like a humbucker, but if all you want to do is kick out the rawk more, a hotter single does work well.  The only BKP singles I've used are of the P90 variety, but I did use a rather hot bridge single many years ago, and it did indeed kick out the rawk. 

That said, you can get some useful variety out of a humbucker by  wiring it series/parallei/single.  I've done that in the past with great results.  And, of course, the sound of an actual humbucker.