tex mex pickups

NoQuarter

Anyone know how the tex mex pickups sound? ive seen a few youtube vids but its hard to tell.

im looking for the classic vintage strat sound, SRV little wing style, would they be my best choice or are there any others i shoud be thinkin of??

cheers!

Blackhorse Slim

king-stew wrote: »

Anyone know how the tex mex pickups sound? ive seen a few youtube vids but its hard to tell.

im looking for the classic vintage strat sound, SRV little wing style, would they be my best choice or are there any others i shoud be thinkin of??

cheers!

The Texas Specials have a more vintage tone IMO, although they have a hotter output than the Tex Mex. Worth a look, but they cost about twice as much.


Edit; One other thing, make sure you're using heavier strings, at least 11s. You're not going to sound like Stevie using 9s!

Blackhorse Slim

Oh, and you're gonna need one of these;

Dord

It's just a tubescreamer with fancy graphics.

Johnny Storm

I'm not familiar with the Tex-Mex pups but I did have a Strat with Texas Specials. IMHO they are not particularly vintage Strat sounding. They strongly emphasise the mid-range. AFAIK they are specifically designed to get the cranked SRV sound.
I'd LOVE to get one of those pedals

NoQuarter

well im not looking for SRV's exact tone, just a nice strat sound,i can afford the texas specials so would they be a better investment than the tex mex??

have a Pod XT Live so i have a bundle of tones in that bad boy anyways.

i use 10's and wouldnt change them as im happy with them!

any other pickups worth a look??

any seymour or dimarzio ones i shoud look at??

Johnny Storm

Personally I didn't like the Texas Specials because to my mind they were not Stratty enough.
Unfortunately there's bazillions of different strat pups to choose from.

There's a bunch of sound clips on this page
http://www.acmeguitarworks.com/Strat_Pickup_Sound_Clips_W1.cfm
Sadly to my ears they all begin to sound the same after about 2 mins :pac:

If you have a read of the pickup (pup tent) forum on fenderforum.com you may get some good info (buried among the nonsense)

FWIW I have a Strat with Seymour Duncan APS-1's which I like.

Doctor J

If you're really feeling fruity

http://www.fralinpickups.com/stratstyle.asp

http://www.kinman.com/html/myProducts.htm

A mate of mine got a set of the Kinman Woodstock pickups, very tasty indeed, more stratty than you can shake a stick at.

punchdrunk

with the exchange rate so good,you'd be mad to to get these!!!

http://www.curtisnovak.com/pickups/stratocaster.shtml

BostonB

I think I prefer the Custom Shop '69's myself.

NoQuarter

im so confused

theres just so many!

BostonB

Johnny Storm wrote: »

Personally I didn't like the Texas Specials because to my mind they were not Stratty enough.
Unfortunately there's bazillions of different strat pups to choose from.

There's a bunch of sound clips on this page
http://www.acmeguitarworks.com/Strat_Pickup_Sound_Clips_W1.cfm...

I thought that page was very handy. I don't have a strat, but if I was buying one, I'd just pick the ones that sound most like the players I like the sound of. Which is Hendrix, Robert Cray. While I like people like SRV and Rory Gallagher and others. I'm not that interested in a guitar with their sound.

Doctor J

BostonB wrote: »

I thought that page was very handy. I don't have a strat, but if I was buying one, I'd just pick the ones that sound most like the players I like the sound of. Which is Hendrix, Robert Cray. While I like people like SRV and Rory Gallagher and others. I'm not that interested in a guitar with their sound.

The thing is, all those guys played standard strats with standard pickups, the tone was in how they played, not what they played.

BostonB

Doctor J wrote: »

The thing is, all those guys played standard strats with standard pickups, the tone was in how they played, not what they played.

I half agree with you. Lots of the greatest guitarist have had favorite guitars that sounded better than all the others they had. Many reasons why. All these pickups do is try to replicate the pickup part of that. Yes you've got to do the rest.

Davao8000

The tex-mex pups are standard on the Jimmie Vaughan Strat (MIM) so I guess reviews of that strat will tell you whether they are vintage or not etc.

More opinions on the tex-mex pups:

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/just-pickups/32395-tex-mex-texas-specials.html

RICARDO1982

A mate of mine got a set of the Kinman Woodstock pickups, very tasty indeed, more stratty than you can shake a stick at.[/quote]


Second that.. i have them Kinman woodstock pickups in my
strat about 3 years now. They are v.good and are cheaper now
than when i bought them (370euro)(now240) .They have a good clear sound with tone and are noiseless.
http://www.thomann.de/ie/kinman_avn_woodstock_set.htm These ones are the ones i have.

But these have come out since.......
http://www.thomann.de/ie/kinman_woodstock_plus_strat_set.htm
And are probably an improvement depending on what sound you
are looking for

Kinman are a good pickup

spoonbadger

Srv's guitars all had vintage pickups (except one with danelectro lipsticks...).

He didnt use overwound pickups, which is what all those pickups (kinman woodstocks, fender tex mex, fender texas specials etc...) are.This means,that the pickups he used had less coils of wire wrapped around the magnets, so they sounded cleaner,weaker and more "vintage". the p'ups mentioned have more winds, so they have a higher output which means more midrange and overdrive.

If you want to get some authentic stevie tone,the only way to do it is to get a stratocaster, with standard wound pickups, (maybe fender 50s reissue pickups?)......

....then you have to get a fender super reverb, crank the ****e out of it and put a tube screamer through it ....

....and learn how to play like stevie

Doctor J

spoonbadger wrote: »

Srv's guitars all had vintage pickups (except one with danelectro lipsticks...).

Stevie's guitars had standard pickups which just happened to be old

BostonB

Doctor J wrote: »

Stevie's guitars had standard pickups which just happened to be old

Whats the difference?

Doctor J

The way the word "vintage" is bandied about these days it's like there's something special or different about them. Bleedin mojo! There wasn't, all those guys just played regular pickups, that's what I'm getting at. When Jimi Hendrix played his pickups were whatever was in the guitar, they weren't vintage, they were new pickups, stock pickups. When SRV was letting rip in the late 70's/early 80's his pickups weren't "vintage" then. There wasn't the implied fairy shenanigans that old pickups have these days. When you listen to him play Texas Flood or whatever, it's not "vintage" tone, it's pretty contemporary tone for the time the album was recorded. Same goes for Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, any strat guy you want. When those guys were becoming the legends they are they played relatively new pickups which were bog standard. In 1980 a 65 strat pickup was 15 years old. Are people saying "Man I gotta get a 93 strat pickup" these days? Of course not. You wouldn't expect a pickup made in the 90's to be any better than anything Fender are putting out today. Vintage Schmintage

BostonB

"Better" is often subjective. Though obviously you can have a poorly made pickup. But I think its more that they are made differently as manufacturing methods change and that can effect the sound. I think tone comes from the player. But using the right pickup makes that easier. Some people prefer the older sounding pickups. Some the new. If you want to get a older sound using older sounding pickups helps. Thats all. Lots of the great guitarists go through lots of guitars, picking out the ones they like, or using the parts from the ones they like. So its not like they bought one guitar and just stuck with it. Though obviously some did that too.

Asiaprod

RICARDO1982 wrote: »

Have a set of Kinman AVn Blues in my strat. Very nice pickups. Bought them over 4 years ago and they have aged in beautifully. When used with the Kinman 7-way selector harness you get an amazing range of tones from Jazz all the way to Hendrix. They also nail the Dire Straits sound, which is what I bought them for in the first place. Also nice is to order the pre-wired set, it come wired up with pots and s/w, all you need do is drop the whole thing into the guitar and snap together one connector. Could not be easier.
Can't recommend them highly enough.

spoonbadger

Stevie's guitars had standard pickups which just happened to be old

NO no no no no!. I didnt mean vintage as in "old". i meant vintage as in "vintage specs".

I meant that they're standard p'ups as opposed to crazy overwound (or modern...) yokes

EDIT :

In 1980 a 65 strat pickup was 15 years old.

Well true, no-one would care if you said you had an early 90s fender, but there was a huge difference between 1980s strats and 65 strats in terms of quality. But your right, guys like hendrix just used bog-standard guitars back then

NoQuarter

well thanks for all the help lads, ive researched the sites and youtube and listened to the sound samples on the sites and i think im gonna go with the Kinman woodstock plus'.

so their 259 on thomann, ive searched ebay and they dont seem to be for sale, anyone know where else they are sold so i can try grab a bargain!?

BostonB

spoonbadger wrote: »

....guys like hendrix just used bog-standard guitars back then

Its not like he'd play the first one off the shelf. He buy a bunch and pick out the best ones,. So he cherry picked the best.

spoonbadger

Eh-Er.....sorry to be negative, but you shouldnt buy expensive pickups on Ebay.

Very few people will have a genuine reason for selling boutique pickups like kinmans on ebay. So, there's a good chance, if your buying 'em through private auctions, that someone's just trying to offload some damaged merchandise.

Also, if your going for srv sound,then dont get the Woodstock plus set. That bridge pickup is very strong for a single coil, especially when the tone your going for would be closer to kinman standards anyway....

.....but the kinman regular set are very impressive indeed

Its not like he'd play the first one off the shelf. He buy a bunch and pick out the best ones,. So he cherry picked the best.

Yeah, like i said. He played bog standard fender strats. Everyone should try out a bunch of guitars before buying one, even within models there can be a lot of variance. The point is,he didnt have crazy upgraded guitars.

NoQuarter

I wish id never mentioned SRV now!:rolleyes: i just used him as an example of that low end stratty sound i want.

point taken about the ebay thing though, thanks.

BostonB

spoonbadger wrote: »

....Yeah, like i said. He played bog standard fender strats. Everyone should try out a bunch of guitars before buying one, even within models there can be a lot of variance. The point is,he didnt have crazy upgraded guitars.

Bog standard, but theres a lot of variance. So in effect they don't all sound the same. Take that over 10~20 yrs and imagine the difference.