Yeah......... I'm beginning to think that maybe Apachea are the way to go. I've been trawling around the forum archives looking up previous threads and audio samples of the various strat pickup sets, mainly apaches and Mother milk. The general consensus seems to be that mothersmilk work best with a rosewood neck (are they considered bright sounding pups then ?) and Apaches work best with a maple neck, which I understand is the era of strat that the Apaches are aimed at.
Obviously there are many factors to take into account when selecting the right 'pups, even down to whether my guitar is naturally bright or dark sounding....... but from all that i have read I think the Apaches will give me a good classic clean strat tone to start off with in my maple '57 reissue. With that foundation I can go on to get various levels of distorted/dirty tones etc. through choice of amp/amp settings, pedals etc.
I dug out an old issue of Guitarist from a few years back which had an early review of BK pickups, they gave a thumbs up review of Apaches and mules. In the interview with Tim he points out that with weaker Alnico 3 magnets you get more sustain and can crank the amp up a little more.
Has anyone tried the none reverse wound "standard" Apaches ? I know they are nosier but how much noisier is noisier ? Again, back in the interview with Tim he says that especially the inbetween positions sound so much better than on reverse wound coils. Is it worth the trade off ? I assume early 50's / 60's strats were none reverse wound 'pups so all the guys playing on vintage strats seem to cope with it.
