suggestions please - Strat pickups - DSL401 amp - vintage sound

[DeadlyChicken]

Hi, I am new here ;)

had several hearty recommendations for Bare Knuckle replacement pickups and the forum seems to be a great place full of useful posters, so hopefully someone can help ;)

OK so I have a stock mexican strat, its a couple of years old brought in Australia, playing through a Marshall DSL401 amp, again stock and this is a new model.

I have found that I can get a fairly close Hendrix red house type of sound without too much messing around.  But I have found that it is easy to get a muddy, wooley or muffled sound with this combination. 

I really want that clarity and richness that Hendrix got in his tone even with it sounding pretty heavily overdriven at times, it still also sounds cleanish and there is great clarity depth and richness to the sound.

I am wondering which way to go with the pickups.  First I was thinking about mixing and matching various types of pickup  ( I quite like the look of strats with a varied style pickup .. shallow I know :p ) but I really want the set to work well together, i.e. I guess that means having a calibrated set, and as sound IS more important than looks I am happy to go with the bog standard look pickups as long as they work.

I use the neck pickup mostly at the moment and the middle some, with very little use of the  bridge pickup ( once I have sound I am happy with on the neck and middle the bridge ends up sounding a bit squeelie and thin )

I play blues and classic sort of rock stuff mostly

The only other thing I have been tossing about is a bridge pickup that is a single coil sized humbucker that can be split to give the origional strat tone, or a thickened tone for some power chord stuff ;), or  wiring in the second tone knob to alter the tone of both the middle AND bridge so I can shape the sound a bit more.  I am not sure if either of these ideas is really workable.

So what suggestions can I get from the house ?? :)  mothermilk ones soudned nice on the few clips I have heard,  a friend has the Irish tours and said that thye loved them, but they were going for a more varied sound rather than a more vintage strat sound, so I am thinkinig that these might not be for me ?

anyway thanks for any help ;)

[Denim n Leather]

Welcome.

Irish Tours will probably scratch your itch.

[38thBeatle]

Welcome to the forum. If you want the classic vintage Strat then think Apaches for 1950's (ish) and Mothers Milk for 1960's. I have the former and an acquaintance of mine has  the latter. I don't think I can make a helpful comment upon the difference (they both sound very Strattish to me) as I wasn't able to spend a great deal of time A/Bing them as I didn't have mine with me when I played his but Elliott here on the forum has both and can probably give you a better opinion.

[AndyR]

Yeah welcome :D

I have the ITs - but like your friend I was going for a more varied sound? I wanted "vintage", which I do get, but I mainly wanted the slightly hotter "strat doing blues" tone without having to use pedals and wotnot. They do that for me very well.

I still think ITs might work for you - they've certainly given me a bridge pickup I use a lot now. However, I tend to set my amps up for the middle pickup and then tweak it until it's got a reasonable compromise across all 5 positions. The neck is important to me, but possibly less so than some folks - I can get a lot closer to the "fruity" hendrix neck tone out of my ITs than I usually do, but its at the expense of what I want from my middle and bridge.

My gut feeling is that Apaches or Mother's Milks might be better for you? - but that's purely based on my own suppressed GAS  for another strat with "vintage" in spades, I haven't any actual experience of them... :lol:

[Andrew W]

I really wouldn't write off the Apaches.  I have a Highway One Strat with them in and I find them great for classic rock and blues tone with a lovely rounded clarity when you back the volume off.  I assume you've already gone through the uploaded mp3s in the "Players" section?  I found that incredibly useful when making my decision.  I'd initially felt I wanted Mother's Milks but after a good listen and a bit of consultation with Tim Mills I actually ended up getting Apaches with a plate under the bridge pickup to give it a bit more wallop.  I'm more than happy with my choice.  My guitar has the maple finger board by the way; if yours is rosewood you may want to choose something else.

[grimbly]

I think personally you are on a bit of a sticky wicket with the Amp, I used to have one of those and really couldn't get the sound I was after from it.

However, you might find this will help your quest for tone.

Take a patch cable and plug one side into the SEND and the other into RETURN. Turn the effects channel up to about 12 or 2 and you'll find your amp provides an interesting more rounded tone.

[juansolo]

I think personally you are on a bit of a sticky wicket with the Amp, I used to have one of those and really couldn't get the sound I was after from it.

Likewise.  I pulled the standard "goldback" driver out of the DSL401 and put a 16ohm Vintage 30 in there. The V30 made a vast improvement over stock. In the end though I ended up selling it and moving on to other things.