Fender N3 too dark for me

[luckneto]

Hey guys!
I have a fender american deluxe 2010 hss with a jb in the bridge and fender N3 in neck/mid.
The guitar is alder body and 1 piece maple neck.
The fender N3 sound too dark for me.
Im thinking about to change my pickups to a vhII/irish tour set.
Will i solve my problem changing N3 for irish tour?
What about mothers milk?
And the s-1 system of my strat? Will work with the new pickups?

Thx!

[Elliot]

ITs or Mother's Milk would both work - depends how much output you want.  Neither are dark.  Obviously, ITs are hotter, and therefore have more mid-range emphasis whereas Mother's Milk are like traditional  mid-1960s Strat pickups.  Both sound great to me.

As to the S1 - look at your pickups but I think on a HSS S1 system the neck and middle single coils have an third green wire - so you need to ask for one of these to be added to your pickups at purchase. I also think the humbucker on an S1 system has a coil split and an extra wire to control that. 

The best thing to do is look at the set up inside and talk to BKP about it.

The schematic is here http://support.fender.com/service_diagrams/stratocaster/010-1500_02Aupg1_SISD.pdf

[Telerocker]

I have a Fender American Series HSS. I was disappointed by the pickups and the S1-switching didn't add any juice for me. Took it out, rewired it to bridge, autocoilsplit on the fourth position, middle, middle-neck, neck. CTS-pots and clothwire. Ready to tock.

I got a VHII and Mother's Milk in that one. It works with the rosewood fretboard, taming the bright topend of the MM's. They sound superb, quite woody and glassy. Genuine early sixties-tones. For you guitar I would IT's bec of the maple neck.

My custom swampash strat (MXG, made by Patrick Eggle), has a Crawler and IT's. Like Elliot says they are a sort of overwound MM's. Fuller, more grit, but they clean up very nice and you can squeeze some nice Chili Peppers-tones out of them.

Btw, the VHII splits good with the middle-MM, but the splitted Crawler and middle-IT does a better job for me.