Single-coil guitars vs. Humbucking - Maintaining your Tone?

[Jamie]

Hey,

Did a good search on the forum but found nothing - perhaps some people would like to share their experiences.

I generally play live with a Patrick Eggle twin-humbucking guitar (Seth Lover pickups). Its very high-output, and my backup is another Eggle fitted with a Seymour Duncan JB/59 combination. This second guitar is slightly lower in output, but this doesn't bother me much.

However I sometimes want to use a Strat - for certain things it has the perfect tone.

My amp's a Rivera M-100 btw.

Now I get what I would consider to be excellent tone from the Rivera with my main guitar - a good, vintage crunch, which I can easily ramp up to a lead sound with enough sustain for me at least with a boost of the volume control, a switch to the bridge bucker (which wails, btw all those of you agonising over which DiMarzio to try) or dropping in a little compression & EQ to the effects loop - gives me plenty of options.

If I drop to the backup guitar, I get very similar tones, a bit more refined both at bridge and neck, which is excellent as far as I am concerned.

However - if I want to use the Strat I have a real problem. Everything changes - and why wouldn't it?

Even plugging into the low impedance input on the amp, there is nowhere near enough gain to produce comparable tones. (Its a USA Standard btw).

The clean volumes are indistinct onstage, it drives the mics half as hard, and the gain channel isn't driven enough to distort anywhere near like with the other guitars.

So what I am looking for is advice on a solution to this that somebody else might have tried - anybody experienced this?

I thought maybe a GE-7 that got switched on with the Strat to provide a boost. Or maybe I should switch pickups to Lace Sensors, or Texas Specials? I don't wanna mess with the sound of the thing too much and had hoped somebody else had some ideas....

Thanks,

Jamie

[darren wilson]

You could try hotter vintage Strat pickups, or maybe just try one of these.

[Algiman]

As you mention, an EQ pedal is definately the way to go. You'll be able to boost the output to match your other guitars.

[Jamie]

I have a GE-7, will have a play aboot.

Darren that booster looks a lot more attractive now than it did when it first came out, maybe I should snap one up now while the GAS is running.....

[The Dark Wolf]

Darren, you think exactly like I do. I was going to suggest the same thing. Just boost that signal, and away you go. That thing looks like a handy little device.

[Two hands31]

I know Seymour-Duncan makes a "Pickup Booster" pedal that basically lets you boost the volume of your pickups to make them match your other guitars at the push of a button. Not sure how well it works though.

[Mr Orange]

Hey Jamie, if you have stock pups on the strat, ditch them ASAP! They're most likely causing the problem of muddy sounds.

Try Duncan stuff. I personally have strats loaded with SSL-1s (Vintage Staggered) and SSL-5s (Custom Staggered) respectively, and I like them.

THey won't give you that humbucker thump, but SSL-5s should give you enough gain for lead sounds as well. I've had no problems getting nice lead tones with SSL-1s into my Rivera R100-212, either... and I don't even crank the preamp gain! (it's set around

[Jamie]

I don't want the humbucker thump, tho - I want the Strat for a single-coil strat sound.

Its not muddiness thats the problem, to my ears at least the tone is sweet, just the output so unbelievably low.....and that would be fine if I didn't have to completely rejig all amps, pedals etc. just to use the damn thing when I generally use bucker-equipped guitars.

I love playing about with pups so will give it a go anyway! Ditto the booster pedal.

Hey - they can always come back out again.

On a subnote does anybody know of any cunning little mini-connector blocks that save you resoldering to install new pups? That would be a great idea!