Grateful Dead Music Forum

Hey guys, I should be ordering my Carvin once my Vantage sells! I'm aiming for the DC 145. with the HSH config. I used to hate the strat single coils, but now I love that tone through my amp. I have a mexican strat btw. but when I get the Carvin I want o swap pickups. I'm not going for a jerry tone. I plan on switching the middle pickup for with my strat P/U but for the neck and bridge I am unsure. I want it to be able to sound like my current P/U's (Strat standard) when split. Any idea?

The Joe Bardens are very nice - and you can actually get a little more tele twang in the bridge - but they might overpower the strat in the middle...

Chuckles wrote:The Joe Bardens are very nice - and you can actually get a little more tele twang in the bridge - but they might overpower the strat in the middle...

Yep, I don't have mine wired to coil split but have in the past. They're good, I think they make a "two tone" or something like that's designed for splitting. I got some Seymore Duncan Stag Mags for my new guitar and they're supposed to be built to split.

Counterstriker wrote:Hey guys, I should be ordering my Carvin once my Vantage sells! I'm aiming for the DC 145. with the HSH config. I used to hate the strat single coils, but now I love that tone through my amp. I have a mexican strat btw. but when I get the Carvin I want o swap pickups. I'm not going for a jerry tone. I plan on switching the middle pickup for with my strat P/U but for the neck and bridge I am unsure. I want it to be able to sound like my current P/U's (Strat standard) when split. Any idea?

I'm just curious... have you heard the stock Carvin AP-11 pickup yet? You might be surprised by its output. Just sayin...

I've heard lots of video's on youtube and the tone I'm hearing I don't like. It sounds to acoustic to me for some reason, and they weren't using a piezo. It's almost to sterile sounding.

I've been real happy with the Seymour Duncan P-rails - basically a humbucker that splits to a single coil or a P-90.

Counterstriker wrote:I've heard lots of video's on youtube and the tone I'm hearing I don't like. It sounds to acoustic to me for some reason, and they weren't using a piezo. It's almost to sterile sounding.

What is?

Counterstriker wrote:I've heard lots of video's on youtube and the tone I'm hearing I don't like. It sounds to acoustic to me for some reason, and they weren't using a piezo. It's almost to sterile sounding.

...must be audio/video quality. The AP-11 is anything but sterile or piezo-like.

For what it's worth, I've always heard that humbuckers can't fully emulate the sound of a Strat pickup because the differences in design between the two.

On a Strat pickup, the polepieces themselves are magnets, whereas on a humbucker (at least a Gibson style humbucker and I think most designs offered by, say Seymour Duncan or DiMarzio) the magnets are placed under the plastic bobbin, seperating them physically from the polepieces themselves.

The upshot is that if you wire a coil splitter up to your humbucker, when it put it in single coil mode, it's not gonna quite sound like a Strat or Tele pickup. It perhaps gets close, but some might argue "not close enough".

Likewise, if you wire two Strat pickups up like a humbucker, it's not gonna sound quite like a PAF or a DiMarzio Super Distortion or whatever, just because of the same design differences.

Now some of the things like the Joe Bardens pickups or the various other models that fit into the space of a single coil pickup (like the Seymour Duncan Hot Rails), I'm not sure about. Depending on what design differences there are, those might sound more like a Strat pickup when it's in single coil mode, but I've never had the opportunity to try them out.

Fralin Unbuckers.

Jon S. wrote:Fralin Unbuckers.

+1

Counterstriker wrote:Hey guys, I should be ordering my Carvin once my Vantage sells!

Which Vantage are you trying to sell? I know someone that may be interested.

If you ever find one used, which you prolly won't cuz it took me forever, but I am LOVIN' my EJ Custom Dimarzio bridgebucker in the neck. it is under the Vintage power section on their site if you have interest.