Replacing Pickups in a Guitar

Question

About how much would it cost to get the pickups in my guitar replaced with reasonably good ones profesionally? Also, how else would I mprove the sound qaulity of it?

Answer 1

Hi Amara

The only way to improve the sound is through the pick-ups. If the guitar has exceptional wood quality like a gibson , Fender, Jackson etc...., the pickup will reproduce the tone quality.

If you buy Seymour Duncan pick-ups, they have a very high output and super clean compared to EMG and DiMarzio.

I prefer DiMarzios for the power and the not so clean sound.

Answer 2

A large part of it will depend on what your goal is. What do you have, what do you want to sound like, etc.

Let me give a "for instance". Say you bought a 150$ Squier Strat, and have decided that you want to sound like Slipknot. To be quite honest, the expectation is unrealistic - you can get really beefy pickups, but even with a very chunky metal amp you would have a hard time pulling it off, due to the limitations of the guitar itself. Sometimes the guitar just won't cut it, is what I'm saying.

Okay, a more reasonable example. I wanted to buy a backup guitar for gigging, so that if I broke a string (it happens) I'd still have a guitar to keep it going. Turns out my baby bought one for me for my birthday... she's such a sweetie! I loved this guitar, the way it handled, the way it felt, and I liked how it sounded, but it wasn't hot enough. When playing aggressive/distorted music you want some hot pickups to get that extra chunk. So I replaced the stock bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan JB, and I was very happy - I got a better tone, better lows, better mids, pleasant highs, and just a slight boost in output. Since I play a variety of material, and not just "chug chug whee" stuff, this was exactly what I needed, vs some death metal pickup. I think installation was somewhere between 20 and 50$. The shop I go to makes custom buffer circuits, so I had them install one in the guitar as well, so that kinda futzed with the price.

If you want better sound, the three biggest ways are to upgrade the speakers, upgrade the amp, and upgrade the pickups. A better amp is usually more affordable than swapping speakers for most people.

Saul

Answer 3

If your guitar has single coil pickups (like most Fenders) you'll get a big difference if you put in a Humbucker - there are some that fit in the same space as the singe coil (one is the Duncan Hot Rails)  If you are changing one humbucker for another, then the difference will be slight.

Like the other answer said, the amp will make a much bigger difference.