Please help me pick some pickups! HSS Strat!

[SgtSling]

Hello I am getting together the parts for my dream guitar. I started with a featherweight hollow body Strat (HSS Routed) from Warmoth. The body is paintedand ready to go!
The neck is a Flame Maple strat neck from Warmoth with stainless steel frets and and a LSR roller nut.

I am buying all the hardware and pickups to finalize the build...
now the hard part... pickups!

I have spent hours listening to the clips here....

I really like the Black Dog and VH'2...and the rebel yell.
Not sure which one to get...

Which bucker should I mix with which single coils?

I play medium gain stuff  (ZEP, ZZTop, Boston, Rush, Sabbath) with some Hendrix and SRV thrown in for good measure.

I want this guitar to ROCK! I don't want a thin vintage sound. I want the bucker to just pump out the thick riffs like milkshake and the neck and middle to sound mellow and bluesey...

Any recommendatins...
Anything else I need to consider..


Also.. I live in the US. Is there anywhere that sells prewired pickguard loaded with BKPs?

[PhilKing]

I have a couple of BK HSS sets, and for what you are describing, I might be tempted to go with a Crawler/Irish Tour set, which would give you a lot of range with a good drive on the singles (SRV), or a Rebel Yell/Mothers Milk set, which has more midrange push from the HB, but a more vintage hot single coil sound.

You really need to know how the guitar sounds accoustically too.  The hollow will mellow it a bit, but the maple neck will be brighter.  I have a hollow Strat with an Irish Tour set in it and it works great, but I also have the Apache's in a maple neck Strat and I think that is my favourite.

I didn't suggest the Apaches because with the hollow body I am not sure how they would perform, but if you really want the thicker mid sound, then the Black Dog/Slowhand mix migh also work.  However if your guitar is dark sounding then I wouldn't go this way, I would go RY/IT in that case.

Sorry if I gave you a lot of options, but the accoustic sound of the guitar is hard to guess from your description.

[Philly Q]

I've never owned a hollow-body Strat, but I do have a Thinline Tele and although it's more resonant than a solidbody, the tone is less focused - it's more "open", with much more noticeable bass and treble.  Even though you don't want a vintage sound, I think it might work better with lower-output pickups rather than something powerful with tons of bass and/or treble.  Then again, I assume the guitar will have a trem, which will tend to reduce the bass a bit.

What I'm trying to say is, it's a bit hard to predict what your Strat is going to sound like, so rather than lay out big bucks in advance on BKPs, I wonder if it might be worth putting the guitar together first, maybe with some really generic Strat pickups and a PAF-style humbucker (if you happen to have such things lying around   ).  Then you can figure out what's "missing" from the tone.

[SgtSling]

I've never owned a hollow-body Strat, but I do have a Thinline Tele and although it's more resonant than a solidbody, the tone is less focused - it's more "open", with much more noticeable bass and treble.  Even though you don't want a vintage sound, I think it might work better with lower-output pickups rather than something powerful with tons of bass and/or treble.  Then again, I assume the guitar will have a trem, which will tend to reduce the bass a bit.

What I'm trying to say is, it's a bit hard to predict what your Strat is going to sound like, so rather than lay out big bucks in advance on BKPs, I wonder if it might be worth putting the guitar together first, maybe with some really generic Strat pickups and a PAF-style humbucker (if you happen to have such things lying around   ).  Then you can figure out what's "missing" from the tone.

The Lindy Fralin unbucker is supposed to be great forhollow strats.. I was hoping to go the BNP route...
decisions....
 :?

[SgtSling]

anyone?

[Philly Q]

I think it might be best to discuss it with Tim and the guys at BKP.  

Because it's quite an unusual guitar it's hard to know what's going to work.

[SgtSling]

i just emailed  sales@bareknucklepickups.co.uk

I want something that sounds like the blackdog clips I have heard!

[tremblox]

I'm not sure to what extent the guitar materials are gonna affect your choice here and as far as I can read you haven't said what your body wood is. I can however tell you what has worked well for me. I have a Don Grosh Retro Classic (strat copy), with an alder body, nitro finish and a rosewood board, in a HSS configuration. While its not a hollow body machine it does have a swimming pool route which goes towards giving it some hollowbodyness:).  It's also very resonant and light at about 7 pounds due in part to the use of titanium hardware. It is harmonically very complex and has a very long sustain.

Ok the combo that has worked very well for me is a Mule bridge (Tim does them in an F-spaced version) combined with 2 Apaches. Now there are certainly vintage tones to be had here but a number of the players in your list  were using stock tones at the time (now vintage!), e.g Hendrix. The Apaches are as bluesy as you like, they are full and rounded and never harsh,  while the Mule punches well and is suitable for clean and medium gain sounds ala Zep, ZZ-Top, imho. Also the pickups combine very nicely together - bridge and neck for example give an almost hollow bodied jazz boyx type of sound and bridge and mid retains a level of funky quackiness. If you want more gain then by all means try a more powerful humbucker. I personally would chose to add a pedal to the mix.

I realise that this is almost no help to you at all. I had to chime in because you seem to want a serious rocking machine but as far as I can tell the only pickup that has to deliver a wee-bit more is the bridge humbucker.  

Hope you make a good decision: Tim is certainly the right guy to talk to. You can't go wrong with Bareknuckle. It may interest you to know that the original pickups I swapped out were a Tom Holmes and 2 Lindy Fralins and I have no regrets.  

  cheers,
          tremblox