Upgrading a Stratocaster, Suggestions on Electronics?

[rockstarK9]

I have a crappy Yamaha Strat wannabe I got in one of those $200 starter kits you get from Guitar Center about 6 xmas' ago.

The guitar works just fine and the wood isn't warped, so I figure I would turn this into a little project, sand/refinish the neck/body, replace the pickups with win, ect.

I was thinking about putting in two P90 pickups in my guitar in an attempt to get an Interpol-ish sound (Paul Banks plays a Les Paul Custom). But looking into it, because of the way strats are setup, it doesn't look like that's gonna work.

So, is anyone in the know about stats? Can I get a rec for some good pickups (preferably affordable)?

[reachforthesun]

patrick h. might be your best bet for strat pickup advice, but my general advice is to examine the cost to benefit ratio of the project... you may be better off investing your cash in a new guitar all together and start from there (i.e. Agile, Xaviere, etc.)... not sure if that helps!

[rockstarK9]

I figured since I've never done guitar work before, I'd start on this crappy little guitar, if it goes well I might build a nicer guitar.

The body is agethis of course, the neck your typical rosewood/maple. I've read a lot of people comparing woods and it seems like even though agethis is a cheaper wood to use, it's really not leaps and bounds tonally different from mahogany.

I've seen and have been concidering complete pickup/pickguard setups at GC for around $200, but I'm sure those aren't that amazing though. I'm just not familiar with what pickups sound like what, or which are shit brands/good brands.

[reachforthesun]

i know what you mean - i have switched over to playing LP style guitars mainly, so I've been replacing single pickups rather than a set in a pickguard... seymour duncan makes good pickups and they have a pretty wide variety to choose from. i'm always on harmony central's review section to find out how other people are using the pickup and what their impressions are.

[patrickhowell]

Paul from Interpol uses a Gibson Les Paul with some kind of humbuckers, but I couldn't find out what ones they are... Daniel plays an Epiphone Casino with P90s. They both use Fender Twin Reverb amps.

Really there is just an infinite amount of things you can do to mod your guitar... it just depends on what sound(s) you want, and how much work you feel like doing... i.e. would you be okay with routing out the body cavities and pickguard to fit different size pickups? Do you want to wire extra switches to get more possibilities out of one guitar?

[rockstarK9]

I'll have to check that out, thanks for the reference.

[rockstarK9]

Paul from Interpol uses a Gibson Les Paul with some kind of humbuckers, but I couldn't find out what ones they are... Daniel plays an Epiphone Casino with P90s. They both use Fender Twin Reverb amps.

Really there is just an infinite amount of things you can do to mod your guitar... it just depends on what sound(s) you want, and how much work you feel like doing... i.e. would you be okay with routing out the body cavities and pickguard to fit different size pickups? Do you want to wire extra switches to get more possibilities out of one guitar?
I was thinkin about using p90s, but because strats seem to have the pickups installed directly to the pickgaurd as a whole piece, and the cavities, i didn't think that was possible because of the size differences.

To be honest, i didn't really sit there and measure exactly the size of the p90s and the cavity already carved into the body yet (i really should in retrospect, and will) but initial impressions lead me to believe i can't do that, or if i can, there will be excess space left? If that is the case, would/could i fill in the extra space with something? Would the filling or lack of effect the overall sound? And also the bridge is build to have a whammy bar (not sure the technical name) but because of that there's also a cavity in the back for the coils, would i need a new bridge or need to fill that cavity as well?

I'm going to be researching these questions, but I thought I'd try to get some direct opinions on this instead of ghetto rigging something I don't fully understand and end up wasting the whole guitar, lol.

[patrickhowell]

Depending on the pickup routing in your guitar, you might have to use a router and cut more wood out of your guitar to fit full-size P90 pickups, but if you like the sound of P90s, there are a few companies that make strat-size P90 pickups. This would let you use your original pickguard and require no routing on the body of your guitar. Check out the SP-90 pickups at http://vintagevibeguitars.com/windows/sc_90Win.html

You could also mix and match to achieve more unique sounds out of one guitar, and there a lot of cool switching options available... it really depends on what kind of tones you want. Also, what amp are you playing this guitar through?