strat pickups

[Pure Rock Casey]

Hey so wanna get my strat back into action but the stock pickups are just too low output and lacking in warmth for me. Wondering if anyone has any recommendations?

My strat is an ash body with a maple neck, was thinking of some Bare Knuckle Slow Hands as I would like a vintage tone but with a bit hotter output to be played mostly through cranked fuzz pedals. (btw I pretty much use the neck pickup 90% of the time) Only issue with the Bare Knucks is the price tag

I recently played a Custom shop 63 strat and the pups in that were insane!

Anyway, anyone got anything cool in their strat that they can recommend?

[Submarine]

You might want to have a look at these: http://www.zexcoil.com/

[AgentofOblivion]

I use Texas Specials and love them.  My strat is also ash with a maple neck/fretboard and the Texas Specials just have a growl to them that I can't get enough of.  I recently bought a Strat Ultra that has Lace Sensors in them and those sound pretty fucking awesome.  I prefer the Texas Specials for the neck position only, but for all the settings that have multi-pickups in use, the Lace Sensors have very usable sounds.  Full disclosure:  my strat with texas specials has a duncan pearly gates humbucker in the bridge.  This is a 90s lone star strat and it's amazing (and cheap these days).  But there are a billion pickups out there and I'm sure most of them are good options.

[mutantcolors]

The Lace pickups for Strats really do kick ass, they've been around a lot longer than you might think from the recent outburst of metal dudes buying up their humbuckers.

[AgentofOblivion]

I remember they were popular back in the early nineties but the only people you really saw use them were the super-technical shredders and then occasionally a Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton.  But they are super well balanced and pretty much every setting is usable and toneful.  The only things I don't like as much on my ultra set up (Blue in neck, silver in mid, and two reds wired in series in bridge) is the neck only is a bit too powerful and sounds more humbucker-like than single coil (and I'm a single coil man) and the two reds together are so powerful it just overdrives my pre-amp like crazy and sends it into that super smooth, compressed-like distortion.  This is partially due to my amp settings, which typically have things on the cusp of distortion.  Anyway, they're definitely worth checking out and bonus:  completely noiseless.

[Pure Rock Casey]

Interesting. I've always thought of Lace Sensors as kind of sterile sounding but cant remember why I have that impression - probably the production choices of the artists that used them in the 90's.

I might have to check them out though and re-evaluate my perception. Cheers for the suggestions

[AgentofOblivion]

That's definitely a complaint lodged by some.  People seem to either love them or hate them. 

[spookstrickland]

I think low gain pickups sound better, much more dynamic and really lets playing style come through.  get a booster pedal and dial it in.

[AgentofOblivion]

I mentioned that Lone Stars are absurdly cheap these days for an amazingly awesome American strat.  Case in point:  https://reverb.com/item/245425-fender-texas-lonestar-stratocaster-hss-about-mint-2004-siennaburst