Anybody Use Rail Pickups In Your Strat?

[Bloozcat]

Are rails & blades the same thing?

There are single blade designs like the Charlie Christian type. Not exactly a strat on steroids type of sound though.

Yeah, blades were what they were called when they first came out. Now, they seem to be called rails most of the time.

When I bought my Bill Lawrence L-150 back in the mid 70's, it was called a blade (single blade), because there were two stacked coils. Later, there were dual blades when some construction went to side-by-side coils.

[marnold***]

Marnold, what is wrong with low output per se? If you need to trash the front end of the amp that could be down with, say, a clean boost.

Nothing inherently. My point was that it simply was the worst of both worlds. It was low output with nothing even vaguely resembling single coil tone. It was a humbucker without any "oompf" (that's a technical term). If it had output in the range of my Screamin' Demon (~10K), then we might be talking. If it had any Tele twang at all, I could see some value. IMO, if a Tele bridge doesn't twang at all, what's the point?

Conversely my Area 61s, while they have roughly the same output as that rails pup, have single coil tone to spare and are hum-canceling. Instead of being the worst of both worlds, it's the best of both worlds. I wouldn't hesitate to put an Area 61 in the bridge of a Strat. I wouldn't want that particular rails one ever again. I've also tried a Tele with a Dimarzio Virtual Hot T in it and liked it quite a bit. Plenty of twang, no hum.

I had a friend who had (I think) a Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge of a Strat. It sounded great for metal/hard rock. It didn't sound anything like a typical Strat bridge, but in that guitar for that player, that wasn't the point. I think I prefer the sound of a full-sized humbucker to a single-coil sized one (as far as humbucker tones go), but that's why my Floyd is an HSS