One of the joys of being a guitarist is that you have the opportunity to upgrade or hot‑rod your instrument relatively easily, simply by swapping out parts or changing the wiring. You need to be able to make basic soldered joints and to operate a screwdriver — and if you have a basic multimeter to check the pickup coil resistance and wiring continuity, so much the better — but other than that, very little DIY skill is required. Having been sent a set of IronGear's Texas Loco pickups to try out, I thought it would be useful to write up my experience of installing them, and to include some more general tips on changing pickups along the way.
The blue wires of the original pickup have been removed from the switch.This particular Stratocaster pickup set uses traditional waxed cloth‑covered lead‑out wire, which actually makes the installation relatively straightforward, as this type of wire is easy to strip (you just push back the fabric sleeve after cutting to length), and it doesn't burn easily if you're a touch clumsy with a soldering iron! PVC and coaxial cables require greater care when stripping and soldering, but the general principles described here apply to most pickup exchanges, whether dealing with single-coils or humbuckers.
Stripping Down
You can access the pickups and wiring on many Gibson or similar solid guitars by removing the strings and backplate, but Strats need the pickguard removed, as the pickups and circuitry mount directly on it. If you have a neck with an overhanging 22nd fret, you may also have to unbolt that to remove the pickguard, in which case check for shims in the neck pocket and replace these as found during reassembly, because your action may otherwise end up being too low or too high.
There's usually enough cable inside the guitar to let you remove the pickguard without unsoldering it from the output jack and grounding wire, but place a cloth under the pickguard once it has been removed, to avoid the risk of scratching the guitar body.
Always make a note of which pickup wire is connected where — and if you're in any doubt, take a photo. On a standard Strat, the black ground wires from the pickups are usually soldered to the rear of the volume pot, and the three hot wires go to the selector switch. These are the only wires you need to desolder. Where the replacement pickups use screened cable, take care not to solder the screen too close to the point where it separates from the inner cable(s), otherwise the heat might melt the insulation on the inner cable(s), causing a short.
If you're also planning to screen the cavity with copper foil (a good plan — see SOS October 2007 for more on this), solder the copper strips to each other to ensure electrical continuity, and also ensure that the copper is connected to the ground point (rear of the volume pot), or it won't work!
To avoid the risk of shorting out the wiring on the back of the selector switch, stick a piece of plastic tape or other suitable insulator over the copper beneath the switch. Check that the pickups are working before screwing the pickguard back onto the guitar by gently tapping the pickup pole‑pieces with a screwdriver, with the guitar plugged in. Go through the pickup selector positions and make sure that the appropriate pickup is 'thunking' when you tap it. If not, you have got your pickup lead-out wires swapped around on the selector switch — so refer back to your original notes or photos. Take care during reassembly that all the wires go back into the body channels, otherwise your pickguard won't sit flat on the body.
Don't Be Phased
The new IronGear pickups are now in place with all the wires connected.
Where you're replacing one pickup, you may need to check the phase relative to the existing pickups. For example, a modern Fender Strat has a middle pickup with inverted magnets and a reverse‑connected coil, so that it acts as part of a hum‑cancelling pair when used with either of the other two pickups. Note, though, that early Strats used three identical-polarity pickups, which offered no hum‑cancelling benefits, and some players prefer the slightly different sound this produces.
If you assemble the guitar and there's a phasing problem, you'll notice it when you have two pickups active at the same time: the sound will lose a lot of low end and become very thin and nasal‑sounding. Beware that some replacement pickups are wired the opposite way to the current Fender standard. That's not a problem if you're replacing the set, but can cause phasing problems if you're only swapping out individual pickups. On a Strat, you can check if the polarity of the new pickups matches the existing ones by holding the pickup pole‑pieces against those of the same-position old one. If the magnets repel each other, the pickups have the same magnetic polarity.
With replacement humbuckers, you'll need to follow the manufacturer's notes, as wiring colours differ depending on whose pickups you buy: companies such as DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan have comprehensive information on their web sites. Most humbucking models have four output wires (two pairs for the two coils) plus a screen or ground wire, and the notes will tell you which two wires need to be linked to put the coils in series (the normal way to wire a humbucker). You can also switch these to ground, using a toggle switch or pull‑pot to create a coil tap, if you'd like the option of a single‑coil sound.
After reassembly, you'll need to adjust the pickup height. Most manufacturers have recommended pickup‑to‑string spacings, so look these up and use them as a starting point. Neck pickups receive a hotter signal than bridge pickups, because the string vibrates over a wider excursion as you move further from the bridge. Some pickups are wound to compensate for this, but check that the output from neck and bridge pickups is subjectively similar. If it's not, adjust the pickup heights until it is: usually the bridge pickup ends up closer to the strings than the neck pickup. Next, check the balance across the strings; you'll often find that the pickup needs to be a little closer to the strings on the treble side to even things up.
With Strats, don't be tempted to get the pickups too close to the strings just to achieve a hotter output level, as the close proximity of the magnets can affect the vibration of the lower strings (particularly on the higher frets), making them sound out of tune.
Tone Engineering
The result you get from any replacement pickup depends to a large extent on how your guitar sounds when not plugged in. The combination of neck and body timber can make a huge difference, even between supposedly identical models, so if your guitar has a thin, bright sound when unplugged, you might try to balance the tone by using warmer‑sounding pickups than the ones I've used here. Conversely, if the acoustic sound of the instrument lacks top, a vintage-style pickup without the extra windings (a lower resistance) might work out better. Paul White
IronGear Texas Loco
Stratocaster Pickups
The IronGear Texas Loco pickups I used in the main article are designed in the UK, but manufactured overseas to keep the cost down. They come with mounting screws and springs (old‑school purists may prefer short sections of silicon rubber medical tubing in place of the springs), and are offered in a choice of black, white, mint green and 'parchment'. IronGear researched the vintage originals and matched the Alnico V magnets, 42 AWG enamel‑coated wire, fibre base-plates, fabric‑covered lead‑out wires and coil resistances as closely as possible.
It's fairly obvious they're going for a Texas Special vibe, which essentially means a stock Fender pickup with a few more turns to bump up the output and lower the natural resonant frequency of the pickups. The pole spacing is designed to ensure correct under‑string placement for the three different pickup positions (bridge 52mm, middle 50mm, neck 50mm). The magnets have a slight height stagger to suit modern string-gauges, and a quick magnet test against my Mexican Strat confirmed that the pickup polarity is the same, with the middle pickup designed to offer hum cancellation in the second and fourth switch positions.
Fitting the pickups posed no problems. The wire stripped easily by pushing back the insulation, and it's stiff enough to hold its shape. Similarly, the pickup covers fitted the holes in the pickguard (taken from a Korean Squier) without binding. Once the pickup heights were adjusted, I had to raise the treble end of the pickup by a couple of millimetres to even out the string levels, which is typical of normal Strat setups.
I've experimented with a lot of Strat pickups, and the only affordable models that had already impressed me were by Tonerider. The main difference between the Tonerider and IronGear pickups is that the former have scatter‑wound coils, resulting in a lower self‑capacitance (which translates to a slightly higher resonant peak), whereas IronGear use precision winding machines, making the turns neatly layered: which is best really depends on your tonal tastes.
I'm not a fan of Fender's rather bland Tex Mex pickups, but I really enjoyed the Texas Locos. The wiry twang is there, but so too is an underlying warmth, with a slightly compressed‑sounding mid-range, and those extra turns make the sound a hint more assertive. The slightly hotter bridge pickup makes it punchier and easier to balance, but the harmonic complexity of a good Strat pickup is retained. They also deliver exactly the right 'hollow' sound in the second and fourth switch‑positions. By comparison, some competing pickups manage to be bright and punchy, but are too bell-like in their delivery, creating an exposed, rather uninteresting sound that I find a little clangy or grainy. Single‑coil pickups are always susceptible to hum, but I had no problems in the studio, as long as I kept away from the computer and amp.
At just under £75£75 (roughly $110) plus shipping per set, they're good value: you could spend three times as much and get only a small further improvement in 'authenticity'. These pickups deliver a musically satisfying tone that should make a huge improvement to a budget Squier or Strat clone, especially if you're after that Stevie Ray sound. You can see the different models available and listen to some audio clips on the IronGear web site (www.irongear.co.uk).