In my last post, I talked a little about good sound on a budget. Specifically regarding several articles I had read recently about well-known artists who use low end guitars both on tour and in the studio. That got me thinking about my own situation. A while back I won a Fender American Standard Strat in a Fender giveaway. The guitar is a classic piece of work; I am just not a big fan of the single coil sound. So for several months I have been speaking with guitar shops about possible trades to get into something with humbuckers. This has been a pretty discouraging undertaking so far. For the most part, even though the guitar is like new and sells for $900-1000, guitar shops only want to give around $300 in trade-in. I am not going to trade a $1000 guitar for a $300 guitar, just on principle. So, up to now, I have held on to it and it sits in its custom hard side case in my closet.
So, taking a bit of my own advice, I have started looking at upgrading the stock single coil pickups with after-market humbuckers. I am intrigued by the humbuckers that are the same size as the single coil pickups, allowing me to upgrade without having to replace or alter my pick guard in any way. My research so far has revealed that I can get into a set of Strat humbuckers for $200-300. Even cheaper than that, I can buy a single bridge humbucker for less than $100 and have it installed for about $15 so I don’t have to mess with any soldering myself and screw anything up. I am also looking into upgrading my pots. Just for the record, up until about two weeks ago, I had no idea to what the term “pots” was referring. Now I know that “pots” is short for potentiometers, aka….. your knobs. Pot’s sounds cooler… Anyway, I have read that when upgrading from single coil to humbucker pickups, one should upgrade the tone and volume controls to higher capacities. Another cool option in to get push-pull (aka. coil tapping or coil splitting) knobs. This allows you to change whether your pickups operate in parallel or in series. By changing these settings, you can alternate between single coil and humbucker tone. It really makes for a win/ win. I can upgrade to having a humbucker available, without losing the single coil sound if I need it in the future. New pots run about $15 and another $15 labor to have them installed.
Long story short, instead of going out and spending a thousand dollars on a guitar with humbucker pickups, and taking a $700 bath on my new Strat, I can spend a little over $100 and make it into the guitar I want it to be. Now the challenge is figuring out which pickup to buy. That’s OK, it gives me an excuse to go on guitarcenter.com and look at a bunch of stuff that I don’t have the money to buy!
Keep rockin’ and have fun.
Remember….. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast!!
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