Aldrich pickups in a American Strat

[aeroic]

I have a Fender American Strat (a guitar I've owned for YEARS AND YEARS) and I had a set of Bareknuckle Crawler pickups in it, and liked them in there, but didn't love them. The body is alder, with a birdseye maple neck. Wilkinson tremelo.

3 Questions....

1. How do the Aldrich's sound in those body types? I'm looking for something very tight and defined, with not a terribly high bump in the mids, but nothing too scooped either. Would like the pickup to be able to do clean pretty well..but doesn't have to clean up like a PAF would .
2. How does it do coil tapped? I have a special 5-way blade switch from Stew Mac that makes the guitar switch like a 5-way PRS style rotary switch. So coil tapped sounds will be utilized
3. It is going on a black pickguard...can you guys do a custom black pickup cover on it with the screws exposed? I have it that way with the Bareknuckles in it, and it looks really cool. If not, I guess I could go zebra if I had to . If not, do you know where I could get black covers made for it?

Thanks!

Eric

 

[aeroic]

Bueller????

 

[fearhk213]

I find the Aldrich to be very even sounding in Alder. Not too much of anything really. It's also plenty tight and defined. Sure you could find tighter pickups, but there is no mud going on here and it might come at the cost of the responsiveness of the pickups. They do clean up fairly well. I find that when fiddling with the guitar's volume knob the gain does come on quick though, but they are hot pickups so you have to expect some of that. I run my gain pretty high on my amp so take that in consideration with my last comment.

They split pretty good also. When I'm going for a rolled back volume clean tone I usually pop it in the bridge coil tapped and I get I really nice tone that way.