Want to buy a strat, or might just take an old squier and put some new hardware in.

My question is what kind of pickups should I be looking for? There are so many options like:

-texas special
-fender standard
-noiseless
-vintage noiseless?

Drowning in options here.
I play a mix of rock, blues, alt rock, and shoegaze jam.

My current amp is a Vox AC15 if that helps.

I have never regretted installing a prewired pickguard with Lace Sensor Hot Golds in two different Strats. If you get the hot bridge pickup option, you have a very versatile guitar in your hands.

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Stuff I use:
Standard Strat with Lace Hot Golds; Standard Ash Tele; Fulltone OCD, Line6 M9
My Music

I'd want a powerful and dark hum cancelling single coil in the bridge for some of the rock solos and the shoegaze stuff. Seymour Duncan Hotrails are pretty much the standard. Another popular choice is the Lace Sensor Red and I like the Dimarzio Tone Zone-S.

You might want to mix and match, a true single coil like the Texas Special or something from Rio Grande pickups or a vintage style hum cancelling like the Heavy Blues from Dimarzio in the neck. Maybe another slightly hotter pickup in that vein in the middle and then a powerful hum cancelling in the bridge. You could do a true in the neck, medium powerful and powerful in the middle/bridge. You could go for a P90 emulator somewhere like the Dirty Harry and Dirty Harry Jr. from Rio Grande.

Companies like Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio and Rio Grande have alot of pickups in their product line that hit many different sounds. Just generally speaking, Seymour Duncans are fairly bright, Dimarzios fairly dark and Rio Grande a bit in the middle and more 'vintage' sounding. There are exceptions of course, SDs Hot Rails is pretty dark, the Dimarzio Area pickups are very bright and Rio Grande's railgunner is a very modern sounding single coil.

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Talking about wireless pedals...

Hot Rails are stacked humbuckers. Go to a shop and play a few different set up Strats. The only opinion that matters is yours.

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Stage Guitars: '80s Thin line LP Custom, '70 LP Standard, '83 Squier Black Headstock Strat w/ Dan Torres pickups, '59 Black Danelectro DC, sometimes others.

Pedal Board: Nady UHF 10 -> TU2 -> Rocktron Big Crush -> 70s MXR Phase 100 -> Cry Baby -> Bad Monkey -> Early '80s Rat -> Early '80s Ibanez CS 9 -> Ibanez DE 7 -> Behringer Dr 100 Stereo Reverb

Stage amps: '63 Blonde Tremolux w/ two original 2X10 cabinets with a '60 Ampeg Rocket/18 watt VTB Marshall clone/ Epi VJ into a Mashall 1965A

go high output with your pups cause you can always dial them back when you don't need it and crank it when you want.

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Hamer Sat2 or Jackson JRR-94 Rhoads>Laney gc80a or hc25(practice).

Hamer(standard tuning) Ernie ball Slinkies
Alvarez Dana Scoop (standard tuning) D'adarrio 10's
LTD EC200qxm (standard tuning) EB Slinkies

Fralins in a Strat are pretty much the be-all-end-all of life. I honestly could not ask for a more pure tone

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My solution to overwhelming quiet

The Responsables

I probably sound like a stuck record when it comes to Fralins but I concur most heartily!

I take the approach here, especially with Strats: I much prefer to have low/medium output pickups and then boost them if need be. As pickup makers increase windings and magnet strength to get a higher output, they sacrifice clarity and sparkle. Some people may dig that but not others, especially if you like clean sounds.

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Crustaceo ergo sum

I was pretty much waiting for you to chip in; I figured if I set the Fralin bait, sooner or later you'd come sniffing around...

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My solution to overwhelming quiet

The Responsables

I'm so predictable... *sigh*

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Crustaceo ergo sum

I can only comment on the Hot Rails since that's what Ive got in my strat. Its a great bridge pickup if you're trying to get rid of the trebly sparkle (sometimes ice picky on certain settings) that strats can have in the bridge. It will make it capable of handling a lot of distortion and remaining clear and powerful, so its great for metal and other heavy music. However it almost completely 'sanitizes' the natural strat sound and can make it a bit boring sounding if you don't need all that power.

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Fender Strat
Fender Blacktop Tele
TB FX Loop/Channel Switcher > (in loop) > Mojo Hand Analog Filter > EQD Dream Crusher Fuzz > Subdecay Liquid Sunshine > Frazz Dazzler > Line 6 M9 > EHX Memory Toy > (end of loop)
Soldano HR50+

Rig Thread

I think going with the hotrails in the bridge is a good choice because it gives a much beefier distortion sound, and the neck and middle still have that great strat clean. I think there's a bit of a problem if you can't get enough treble for cleans out of those two positions.

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Talking about wireless pedals...

When I overhauled my 2002 Squier Affinity Strat (which involved getting it a brand new one-piece birdseye maple neck, new pickups, and rewiring the entire guitar), I weighed my options carefully. At the time, a Seymour Duncan or DiMarzio single coil pickup cost around $250 each. While they may be renowned for their performance and tone, getting three of these was way out of my budget.

I wound up getting a set of Fender "Mod Shop" Samarium Cobalt Noiseless (or SCN) single coils. Fender still doesn't have these on their official website, but they make them in four packages: 3 single coils for Strat, classic single coil and lipstick single coil for Tele, and sets of two for Jazz Bass and P-Bass. I really like the tone of all three single coils, wether used individually or in "humbucking" mode (switch positions 2 and 4) The neck pickup is a bit hotter than the other two, and that's fine by me. The only negative comment I have regarding these SCN's is that the back sides of the pickups are sealed, so you cannot adjust the pole heights.

I figured at the time, and I still do believe, that if you're going to use a Strat, you might as well take advantage of it's three single coils, the 5-way blade selector switch, and if you've got a synchronized tremolo bridge, you might as well use it to its full potential. I applied the following mods to the circuitry when I did the wiring work myself, and added two DPDT switches to the pickguard:

-Classic Strat Wiring (the basics)
-Tone for Bridge Pickup mod
-Treble Bleed mod
-Phase Reversal Switch (for my middle pickup)
-Kill Switch mod

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'09 Gibson Raw Power SG Special "Plain Jane"
'01 Squier/Warmoth Strat "Saskatchocaster"
Generic P-Bass clone "Rebel Bass"
Norman B-20 (6) Acoustic

Boss AB-2 -> Boss CS-3 -> ISP Decimator -> Boss DS-2 (with footswitch) -> Marshall Bluesbreaker II -> Boss FBM-1 -> Ernie Ball VPJR -> DigiTech RP-300

Roland Jazz Chorus 90 (2x10)
Fender Chorus DSP (2x10)

My favorite Strat set:

Dimarzio Fast Track 1 bridge
Dimarzio Area 58 middle
Dimarzio Area 67 Neck

Very, very clean & articulate. Very, very versatile & almost truly noiseless. Plus relatively affordable. The setup is especially interesting coupled with a 7-way switching system and the Creation Audio Labs Redeemer Circuit. The Redeemer is a very low impedance buffer/load correction preamp that does not add gain to your signal but keeps it intact all the way up and down the frequency range no matter how much cable you use. My 7-way switching adds a push/pull control to give access to the neck/bridge & all-on options.

-Stickle

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