deeaa
December 13th, 2009, 03:19 AM
I've been pondering how to make my strat sound more similar to my other axes.
It seems to me that the pickup placement is the most important factor in setting the basic tone on an electric.
My Davette is strat scale but Gibson-style bridge and thus the pickup lies only a tad over 1/3 inch from the saddle bits.
My V is naturally Gibson scale and on that the pickup/saddle distance is pretty much the same.
The V is much heavier and with a thick all-maple neck but these two still sound basically the same, the Davette is a tad more 'SG' in bite being so light & small & the V is slightly 'thicker'.
But then the strat...with the same pickups as all my axes, it's bridge design sets the pickup almost the same distance from the bridge edge, BUT as in any strat, the actual saddles are way farther in the bridge assembly, effectively doubling the distance between the saddles and pickup or more, making it closer to a full inch from the saddles.
And the difference in tone is striking, the strat sounds way darker and duller than the other two, and there's way more bass to it.
So my problem is how to render the strat sound more like the others...I'm thinking changing the PU on it to an 81 (all my guitars have an 85 in the bridge now) as the 81 is usually much more trebly/piercing, too much so usually but maybe it'd work on the dark strat.
Other possibilities would be to use much lighter strings and then floating the bridge maybe...is there any way to use some caps or something in the tone section to make it brighter?
I really hate it if my guitars sound different from each other, I want them to sound as much alike as possible.
Any ideas?
It seems to me that the pickup placement is the most important factor in setting the basic tone on an electric.
My Davette is strat scale but Gibson-style bridge and thus the pickup lies only a tad over 1/3 inch from the saddle bits.
My V is naturally Gibson scale and on that the pickup/saddle distance is pretty much the same.
The V is much heavier and with a thick all-maple neck but these two still sound basically the same, the Davette is a tad more 'SG' in bite being so light & small & the V is slightly 'thicker'.
But then the strat...with the same pickups as all my axes, it's bridge design sets the pickup almost the same distance from the bridge edge, BUT as in any strat, the actual saddles are way farther in the bridge assembly, effectively doubling the distance between the saddles and pickup or more, making it closer to a full inch from the saddles.
And the difference in tone is striking, the strat sounds way darker and duller than the other two, and there's way more bass to it.
So my problem is how to render the strat sound more like the others...I'm thinking changing the PU on it to an 81 (all my guitars have an 85 in the bridge now) as the 81 is usually much more trebly/piercing, too much so usually but maybe it'd work on the dark strat.
Other possibilities would be to use much lighter strings and then floating the bridge maybe...is there any way to use some caps or something in the tone section to make it brighter?
I really hate it if my guitars sound different from each other, I want them to sound as much alike as possible.
Any ideas?