Pickup placement & making your guitars sound similar

[deeaa]

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?

[oldguy]

Sell the nonconformist entity. It will always resist being assimilated.

[deeaa]

Sell the nonconformist entity. It will always resist being assimilated.

I've actually thought of it, but alas, it's one great guitar built by a great luthier and me as a joint venture...everything custom right down to body size and slight changes in forms, although it's a strat lookalike still. Anyway, could not get a price I would be happy about for it. I guess I might be able to sell it for circa 600-700 or so, but it'd not be a good deal. Would have to shell out three times that much to get a strat as good and still it wouldn't be so unique.

All I need to do is get some more sparkle on it and reduce the low end some and it's fine.

Or then I'll just only use it with my Tech-21 rig on which it sounds terrific, never live with my other guitars & the big amp rig.

[oldguy]

It was a joke anyway.......don't sell off guitars........they're always hard to replace. And in your case that one would be near impossible to replace.
There a tons of ways to change tone on an axe. You've already hit on pickup placement. You can do other things as well. Brass bridge saddles and nut brighten sound to a degree. I'm sure there are some wiring mods that would brighten the sound, but I'm not a big fan of active pickups, so I don't have much advice there. On passive pickups a value change in the pots can have a big effect on tone. And as you've stated, you could always replace the pickup with a brighter sounding one. A simple EQ pedal would seem to be a quick and easy way to make this axe sound more like the others. But as you've stated numerous times you don't like pedals (or delay or distortion) mucking up your sound, , so I guess that's not a viable solution either.

AAMOF, I have different guitars because I like them to sound different, so I'm probably not qualified to be giving advice anyhooooo.........:notme :nope :D

[Ilovecheapguitars]

AAMOF, I have different guitars because I like them to sound different, so I'm probably not qualified to be giving advice anyhooooo.........:notme :nope :D

that's how I've always seen it. different guitars, different sound, different songs. just my .02 .

[piebaldpython]

Keep the strat as is and take it live with your Tech-21 (I have the poor man's version of the Tech-21, a Behringer GM110 and like it alot) and run the T21 directly into the board or PA.

Since you co-built the Strat, you must have built it the way you wanted it....so I'd leave it alone. MHO.

I have a smokin' custom curly maple lap steel with 2 dis-similar humbuckers in it that goes from smooth and silky to a screamin' banshee. IF I ever get another custom lap steel, the next on would have either single coil tele-style pups or P-90's or maybe a combo of the two. Just for the difference in sound that I'd get along with a different open tuning to play it in.

[kiteman]

that's how I've always seen it. different guitars, different sound, different songs. just my .02 .

Exactly. :french