Bridge pickup for a Surfcaster?

[didgeripoo]

Hello all pickup knowledegable folk. Any help you could give me would be appreciated - I know very little about pickups, sadly.

I'm very fond of my Jackson SC-1 Surcaster - it has a lipstick pickup in neck position and a (Seymour Duncan) humbucker in bridge. The humbucker is the bane of my life - it's horrible. I only ever use the guitar with the neck pickup selected, which is a bit of a shame. Ideally I'd like to bung something in the bridge position that would make the guitar sound a bit telecaster-ish. A bit more single coil and twangy - that'd suit the sound of the lipstick pickup a bit better.

Everyone always recommends Bare Knuckle, so is there anything Bare Knuckle anyone could think of that would do the job? Bear in mind I really am rubbish at techie stuff. I don't even really know what a coil tap is. Help! Thanks.

[Keven]

as people here would say, tell us what you want to do with it! body wood? style? amp?

that said, i think a MQ Humbucker sized p90 would be quite rad with the lipstick. a bit fatter than a single coil, but maybe you could ask tim about making it a manhatthan, i recall some jazzier folks liked how it worked so it might be a good option too.

does the surfcaster have a pickguard or are you stuck with a body routed humbucker slot? you could always go for a real tele bridge pickup if you can swap pickguards. but i'm not too knowledgable about them, a lot of folks here are however.

welcome to the community :D

[didgeripoo]

welcome to the community :D

Thanks Keven!

My Surfcaster basically looks exactly like this:



Ashamed to say I have no idea what the wood is. I fell in love with the guitar when the singer in my old band lent me one for a while - picked mine up from eBay a while after. All I know is it was made in Japan! I play through a Vox AC15 (one of the new ones) - the style I play is a sort of cross between reverb-drenched slowcore stuff like Low and spiky slightly overdriven tele-ish stuff like Mew.

I've no idea about pickguard customising - do you reckon it's possible in this case from looking at the above pic? Would be great to stick a proper tele bridge pickup in.

[Keven]

depending on where you're located, you can probably get a pickguard custom made for your endeavor at WD music. in the UK i'm not too sure but over here in canada-america, when a customer asks me for pickguard shapes, i send a tracing over to WD music and they get back to me with a quote, and there are plenty of colors available. so i'm sure that would be possible http://www.wdmusic.com/guards_guitar_index.html

the only hinderance depends on the routing under the pickguard, tele bridge pickups take up more space than humbuckers IIRC because of the angle. you could always stick a strat style single coil too. that solves the space issue.

[tomjackson]

I don't think a Tele bridge pickup would work without the bridge itself as it's part of the twang.  Well it might get you half way there but messing around with new pickguards and possibly routing might be too much trouble to find out.

The BKP Mississippi Queen might be an option but I believe it is quite fat and full sounding.  Definitely worth a look though.

Otherwise TV Jones offer a lot of humbucker sized twang which might be worth a look.  Also a lot of Tele players seem to fit them in the bridge positions.....

[Antag]

AFAIK, the surfcaster body is mahogany, semi-hollow.  The stock humbucker is a Duncan Custom - one of the vilest creations known to man IMHO  :enforcer:

We're probably poles apart musically, but seeing as I've had the misfortune to have a Duncan Custom & hated it too, I'd say almost anything would be an improvement :)

Joking aside, why not a more "vintage" humbucker?  If I'm reading your post correctly, you want something less "rock".  How about a Stormy Monday?

[tomjackson]

AFAIK, the surfcaster body is mahogany, semi-hollow.  The stock humbucker is a Duncan Custom - one of the vilest creations known to man IMHO  :enforcer:

We're probably poles apart musically, but seeing as I've had the misfortune to have a Duncan Custom & hated it too, I'd say almost anything would be an improvement :)

Joking aside, why not a more "vintage" humbucker?  If I'm reading your post correctly, you want something less "rock".  How about a Stormy Monday?

A Stormy Monday would be a definite inprovement but 'telecaster-ish', 'twangy' and 'a bit more single coil' it aint.
I suppose with a coil tap it would be closer but definitely no twang!

[gwEm]

chrome mississippi queen would look marvellous in there, maybe with the manhattan cover option

[didgeripoo]

Thanks for all suggestions folks. My bassist (who is considerably more knowledgeable than me) suggested a P90 originally, so the Mississippi Queen might be a good option. With a coil tap. How do coil taps work, then? I'm imagining some massively complicated wiring.

[Lucifuge]

I can't see from the picture, but AFAIK the humbucker in the Jackson (as opposed to Charvel) Surfcaster  was a "Duncan Designed" rather than an actual Seymour Duncan model. ( Duncan Designed is SD's cheaper range - Duncan Designed is to Seymour Duncan as Squier is to Fender or Epiphone to Gibson.)

Anyway, if you're looking for a pickup with more single-coil-like twang, there are a number of "dual single-coil" pickups available - ie 2 traditional single coils mounted on a humbucker base plate, that will fit in a humbucker cavity.

The ones I am aware of are the Seymour Duncan Stag-Mag, Swineshead AMP (though Swineshead seem to have temporarily stopped making pickups) and Rio Grande also make a range of dual single-coils that are very expensive.