Best strat pickups for jazz

[p1p]

The ideal candidate would still have that jingly/glassy strat tone when tone knob is all open. But will give that full,
warm tone without losing all the clarity when the tone knob is rolled off a bit.

This is why I suggested the 57/62s, if you don’t want to lose the strat character but want something warm and full. I should also say that I used these with a ‘62 wiring scheme and .1 uF tone cap.

[Tal_175]

This is why I suggested the 57/62s, if you don’t want to lose the strat character but want something warm and full. I should also say that I used these with a ‘62 wiring scheme and .1 uF tone cap.

Have you compared them with Fat 50's? They supposed have fatter mids and lows apparently. One might think that would get you even closer to Jazz tone?

[p1p]

Have you compared them with Fat 50's? They supposed have fatter mids and lows apparently. One might think that would get you even closer to Jazz tone?

Tone is entirely subjective, so you just have to try them out. Go to your nearest shop and play a bunch of strats. I think some models come with Fat 50s?

Dont forget the amp is going to shape your tone just as much, if not more on a solid body.

[neatomic]

tele neck pups are wound unique... low k with thinner #43 wire...also tele pup has metallic cover....two big tone game changers

without that, there is no tele neck pickup!


cheers

[Tal_175]

Tone is entirely subjective, so you just have to try them out. Go to your nearest shop and play a bunch of strats. I think some models come with Fat 50s?

Dont forget the amp is going to shape your tone just as much, if not more on a solid body.

Some may have Fat 50's but I don't think it's easy to find 57/62's on stock set ups.
Tonal characteristics aren't subjective whether one likes them or not is subjective Trying them in person is best, but I think some salient features of pickups can be described so educated guesses can be made. Which is likely why you seem to strongly favored 57/62's based on my description.

[christianm77]

Take the neck off your Strat and bolt it onto a telecaster body.

See, I observed the op rules.

[Tal_175]

Take the neck off your Strat and bolt it onto a telecaster body.

See, I observed the op rules.

That rule did incredibly very well to fend off an enormous amount pressure for as long did. Finally showing signs of cracking.

[Tal_175]

The point is I hate fusion. I'd listen to top 40 country before I listen to fusion (it's scary how little I am exaggerating).
What happens is, when I play jazz with my strat every now and then (not always) I hear fusion. I feel like throwing the guitar and wiping off my shirt when that happens.
When I play Tele (I rented one for a month), it never sounds like fusion (unless you have chorus pedal. So I want the get that it-doesn't-sound-like-fushion-unless-of-course-you-put-some-chorus property in my Strat as well.
In the mean time I want strats unique single coil voice retainable.
What I do now with good success is, I boost lows and low mids with two mostly transparent boost pedals (one Klon type). Turn the treble off a bit. That thickens strat enough to avoid fusion with careful picking. But my pick ups are the more thin and trebly 54's. So what I'm trying to find out is, if there is other "straty" pickups that would get me there better and easier.
So, 57/62's and Fat 50's seem promising so far.

Note: I already have a Jazz box. That's why I don't want to lose the sonic capabilities Strat offers. But I also want to be able to enjoy practicing jazz with my strat.

[Stringswinger]

Some may have Fat 50's but I don't think it's easy to find 57/62's on stock set ups.
Tonal characteristics aren't subjective whether one likes them or not is subjective Trying them in person is best, but I think some salient features of pickups can be described so educated guesses can be made. Which is likely why you seem to strongly favored 57/62's based on my description.

I suspect that you are looking for a traditional jazz tone more than a "Tele" tone. Neatomic is correct that a Tele neck PUP is a unique beast, but most great Tele jazz tones that I have heard (Bickert, Scotty Anderson etc.) were from guitars that had a humbucker rather than a Tele lipstick PUP.


I had two 62 reissue Strats with the 57/62 Pups. With flatwound strings and a solid state amp, the jazz tone was there in spades. I sold the guitars because the necks did not thrill me. I love the American Standard Strat neck. The modern Strat PUPs are (to my ears) incapable of producing a traditional jazz tone. I had an American Standard Strat with two humbuckers that got a great jazz tone, but it had a heavy body. The neck PUP was a Duncan 59 (Fender's PUP of choice for a neck humbucker PUP in a modern Strat). So I found an American Standard Strat with a light body, a great neck in a color that was pleasing to me and put a Duncan 59 in the neck position and get great jazz tone with a very comfortable Strat. But I considered the 57/62's. They are not expensive and easy to sell if you do not love them.

If you do not want to go to a humbucker, you should try the 57/62's. I think you will be well pleased.

[Tal_175]

I had two 62 reissue Strats with the 57/62 Pups. With flatwound strings and a solid state amp, the jazz tone was there in spades.

Thanks. I am very tempted with 57/62's. When I was reading about it I found out that Fat 50's seem to be an even fatter version of 57/62's. Then I became unsure of which one to get. Do you have any experience with Fat 50's? I'll listen to some sound samples online. Sounds like either would do.

[Stringswinger]

Thanks. I am very tempted with 57/62's. When I was reading about it I found out that Fat 50's seem to be an even fatter version of 57/62's. Then I became unsure of which one to get. Do you have any experience with Fat 50's? I'll listen to some sound samples online. Sounds like either would do.

I have never tried the Fat 50's. The thing I really liked about the 57/62's is that the reverse engineering of the vintage PUP caused Fender to make a PUP that is optimized for a wound third. Modern Fender PUPS (and most boutique Strat PUPS are made for a plain third (and for good reason, I would bet over 95 percent of Strat players use a plain third these days). Assuming you plan on using a wound third, you should make sure that the Fat 50's have the same pole pieces as the 57/62's before trying them. Having an unbalanced third string sucks either way.

[rabbit]

I owned an American Standard Strat ( approx. vintage 2001, in 'Hot Rod Red' ) with a whammy & Maple 'board.
Bloody wonderful!

The weight became onerous for my injured shoulder so it went to a pal.

Yes, the instrument largely defines the tone.

Still, you must play jazz into it to get jazz out of it. (Flat wounds and an accommodating amp help.)

The pal I sold it to is 47.313 times the musician I am, made a living playing in country cover bands
( on a Tele! ) and inadvertently taught me the importance of how you address the string and also
control tone with the fretting hand.

Am not here to suggest that Tal_175 shouldn't try new pickups; hell, sounds like fun!

Manly men can play jazz on a Strat. Cowboy up, pardnerz.


P.S.:

the Tele is Satan's toy, I know 'cause I've owned two (but it's your Eternal Soul )

[oldane]

You haven't mentioned your choice of strings, amp and picking style though this means more to the final tone than the PUs.

FWIW, on my Strat I have come a long way towards a "jazz tone" with the stock Strat PUs, medium to heavy flatwounds and amp/EQ settings favoring a more midrangy tone. Like you, I have blocked the tremolo. The location and way of picking also means a lot, especially with PUs as narrow as on the Strat. When picking over the neck PU, used as the only PU, I get a very sweet and mellow tone. Like others have said, roll off treble to taste on the guitar or the amp (but not too much or you'll loose definition). A Polytonish amp will get you close to your goal with fewer tweaks than a Fenderish blackface, but even the sound of a blackface can be modified either on the amp itself or with a good external EQ pedal.

I'd try modifying those factors before spending on new PUs.

[Bach5G]

I’ve chased a jazz tone on my Strat for years. Closest I came with regular pickups was a set of Tex Specs mounted low. I’ve got 57/62s in a Strat right now but am likely to replace the neck pickup with a DiMarzio Area 58 I found on my guitar shelf. The wound/plain G is a problem, seemingly less so with the DiMarzio and it’s noiseless. The mid and bridge just thin out even more and I don’t use them.

[p1p]

Are there any specific players' tones you're leaning towards? Might help us with your search.

[Tal_175]

You haven't mentioned your choice of strings, amp and picking style though this means more to the final tone than the PUs.

FWIW, on my Strat I have come a long way towards a "jazz tone" with the stock Strat PUs, medium to heavy flatwounds and amp/EQ settings favoring a more midrangy tone. Like you, I have blocked the tremolo. The location and way of picking also means a lot, especially with PUs as narrow as on the Strat. When picking over the neck PU, used as the only PU, I get a very sweet and mellow tone. Like others have said, roll off treble to taste on the guitar or the amp (but not too much or you'll loose definition). A Polytonish amp will get you close to your goal with fewer tweaks than a Fenderish blackface, but even the sound of a blackface can be modified either on the amp itself or with a good external EQ pedal.

I'd try modifying those factors before spending on new PUs.

Yes, these are fairly basic techniques to achieve the Jazz tone. Aside from these I have 3 booster type pedals (2 Klons and one spark booster) to cut trebles and add fatness to lower mids (My strat is particularly trebly and the cab in tone knob must have low rating as it doesn't cut much). In the end I can achieve fairly convincing fat dark jazz tone.
However, there is a limit to achieving tone via signal processing, strings and technique. To my ears pickups do matter. It's hard to get the tone consistently across all the dynamic range and attack intensity.
Thanks to the suggestions in this thread, I decided to get a 57/62 type pickups. Looks like Fender intruduced a new Custom Shop Fat 60's pickup which appears to be similar to 57/62's but with slightly more power and less treble.

[christianm77]

I like Nir Felder’s tone and he plays a strat

The tone on his album Golden Age is not fusioney

[ugarte]

Personally, after trying lots of things in both Strats and Teles I would recommend looking at a strat sized humbucker (not a stack). Plenty of options out there and you don't have to pay Barden prices (unless you want to).

[Average Joe]

You can get there with regular strat pickups. Nir Felder have already been mentioned. I understand that's a stock MIM strat.

Another option would be something like Lace Sensors. Chris Crocco get a good sound out of those. If his guitar is stock, then it's most likely the Lace Sensor Blue, a sliglty thicker sounding pickup

[BeBob]

I’ve chased a jazz tone on my Strat for years. Closest I came with regular pickups was a set of Tex Specs mounted low. I’ve got 57/62s in a Strat right now but am likely to replace the neck pickup with a DiMarzio Area 58 I found on my guitar shelf. The wound/plain G is a problem, seemingly less so with the DiMarzio and it’s noiseless. The mid and bridge just thin out even more and I don’t use them.

I also have an old set of Texas Specials mounted low, and I think they are surprisingly good for the jazz application. I agree the low mounting position is key to getting that sort of tone. What is interesting is that my Texas Specials aren't quite the same as what Fender now sells as Texas Specials, so a caveat emptor warning applies to anyone who may be shopping:

I bought my T-S back in the mid-90s on a Bonnie Raitt Strat. Liking the tone of those pickups mounted low, I decided to order another pair for a partscaster Strat build. The new production Texas Specials were very different from the old ones. They're so different that I think Fender should have changed the name on them, because what they're manufacturing as a T-S today isn't all that close to what they manufactured as a T-S 20+ years ago. This gives me serious doubts about the ability of Fender to manufacture anything consistently over a sufficient span of time.

The old (1994-1995) Texas specials had a mild "vintage stagger" orientation of the pole pieces, but the pole pieces didn't protrude out of the pickup cover very much and the stagger was subtle rather than extreme. Being a vintage design pickup, they were manufactured by Fender to be optimized for a wound G on a 7.5" radius. Deploying them on a 9.5" radius with a plain G, the G string was mildly predominant, and the B and E strings were mildly subdued. With my low mounting position the difference was so mild that I never really noticed the volume difference, I just picked harder on the B and E strings and compensated without ever thinking about it.

Things are very different with the new production 1997 Texas Specials. These pickups also have a "vintage stagger" but the protrusion of the pole pieces is extreme. It's almost as if someone at Fender has taken the "vintage" thing to a hyperbolic marketing extreme. With the new T-S the predominance of the unwound G string is absurd, and the diminution of the B and E string is so profound that it's just not possible to compensate for it by lowering the pickups and by changing my picking style. A plain G is just ridiculously loud and the B and E are ridiculously quiet on a 9.5" neck. They're not even close. This effect was even more pronounced when I mounted a compound radius W* neck onto a band new 1997 American Special Strat body with the new-style T-S pickups, and a bridge that was set-up for a 9.5" radius neck. The guitar was simply unplayable and the pickups were simply unusable, so I got rid of them.

For a while I had trouble realizing just why the new T-S sounded so bad. When I picked up my old Bonnie Raitt Strat, I noticed the very subtle G/BE volume difference that I never really perceived before. The low mounting position and the more subtle stagger in the pickups rendered the volume difference inconsequential. With the new pickup design the difference was not inconsequential. It was so profound that it caused me to go looking for, and find, a problem in my older Strat that I hadn't been consciously aware of until now. The problem is that the "vintage" stagger being used on the current T-S pickups is even more extreme than it was when the pickups originated, to the point that the new pickups are just unusable. They're certainly unusable on any guitar that's equipped with a modern (read:flatter) fretboard radius.

A large part of the problem is that people demand "vintage" specs without actually understanding what "vintage" specs actually bring to the table. They do this because "vintage" has become fashionable and today's corporate marketing caters to the fashion trend. Fender responds to the silly consumer demand for "vintage" pickups, even when they are to be used on modern flatter-radius instruments, by giving customers what they ask for instead of designing an appropriate solution that works better. As a result in an era when people will pay more for gear that is marketed as "vintage" than they will pay for gear that is properly designed to modern standards, a mismatch of this type becomes inevitable.

I think it's absolute lunacy that Fender is manufacturing pickups whose "vintage stagger" is optimized for a wound G being played on a 7.5" neck, when the majority of the playing public doesn't even own guitars with 7.5" necks or play with wound G strings. Going one step further, it's absolute lunacy for Fender to market "vintage" pickups designed for 7.5" neck radii when the smallest radius that Fender even manufactures for general production is 9.5". You can't even buy 7.5" without going to the Custom Shop. That's right, even the 2018 American Original 50s and 60s instruments come with a 9.5" radius neck and a plain G, but have pickups that are designed for a 7.5" and a wound G. Why does Fender insist in selling pickups that are designed for a 7.5" radius / wound G when the closest thing that they sell is a 9.5" radius / plain G? It just makes no sense.

To me it would make a lot more sense if Fender actually manufactured "vintage" repro instruments where the pickups and the necks were optimized to perform well together. But they don't. The current production T-S pickups are a particularly good example of a bad design, while the older ones weren't that bad.

[Stringswinger]

I had two Fender American Vintage 62 Strats with the 57/62 pups. One had a 7.5 radius while the other (the "hot Rod" version) had the 9.5 radius. A plain G on the 9.5 radius was terrible, a bit worse than a plain G on the other guitar with its 7.5 radius to be sure. But a wound G sounded just fine on both guitars.

[BeBob]

Oops. There's a typo in my last post -- my new set of Texas Specials was wound in 2017, the same year as the Am Spl Strat that they came on. I mistakenly typed 1997. In a nutshell, I was rambling on about how Texas Specials of today aren't that similar to those made in the 90s. Sorry for the error.

[lammie200]

Not sure how this would fit into the OP's plans, but I really like the Lace Holy Grail HG-1000 that I have in my Strat. I have the whole set, BTW. Noiseless with a 54-ish sound. I think that noiseless/humbuckers in a single coil form factor get a bum wrap sometimes. I like these a lot. Look stock as well - no logos.

[Tal_175]

Not sure how this would fit into the OP's plans, but I really like the Lace Holy Grail HG-1000 that I have in my Strat. I have the whole set, BTW. Noiseless with a 54-ish sound. I think that noiseless/humbuckers in a single coil form factor get a bum wrap sometimes. I like these a lot. Look stock as well - no logos.

What I had on mine was fender 1954 special design pickups. They are I think the extreme end of the strat sound. Which makes sense since it's 60 anniversary edition strat. Reissue-ish model with some modern features (like compound neck). Thin, glassy very scooped and sweet sound combined with Ash body. Beautiful in it's own right.
What I was looking for was the other end of the spectrum of strat pickups. I think I found that in the new custom shop Fat '60s pickups. They have mellow highs with a slight hump in lower mids. Much darker sound, fatter and a little hotter. Still strat though 100%.
My goal wasn't to have a straight-ahead jazz strat. I have an ES-175 already. I just want to take breaks from it after long practices and switch to the more comfortable strat. Switching guitars makes subtle changes is the muscles that you use, so you get a more fresh start. I wanted to get my strat closer to Jazz sound (within the strat range) so with slight tweaks in Eq and boost I'll get a good tone while still have the strat sound when I want it other times (for blues and funk and with OD), if that makes any sense.
I also ordered a chambered/semi-hollowish strat body with f-holes and Alder body from Warmoth for like 200 dollars. I'll swap it with the original body and see how it sounds.

[felicia]

Hello,

I have a 1992 mexican strat that I would like to improve in order to attain a clean tone like a 1960 stratocaster. Is there a clear option in pickups? My budget can go to $400.
thanks!

Felicia