the best pickups i've ever heard for a strat were from EMG. the gilmour setup to be exact. check the EMG website for more details.

actually i hear sometimes its how they are wound or even how well they are wired or it what way they are wired.

I'm getting my fralin vh's on a 10-way mod! 5 blender pot vintage single coil tones and flip a switch and 5 more acting as humbuckers..even though i don't have a hiumbucker installed...they are getting combined through the wiring mod i'm getting.


not to sound typical but yeah
dimarzios
Fralin VHs.
Fralin blues
stock 62s
custom shop

they are all good and can all sound different depending on the mod too! Also they can be wound differently i.e. reverse wound etc.

Is it technically challenging to change out pickups?

I have never customised any of my guitars but have always aspired to it.

Does it require any altering of the body,wireing/soldering or do pickups all comply with standard sizes etc because quite frankly I'm a monkey when it comes to anything like that! :-)

It requires no altering of the body if you replace them with the same *style* of pickups, i.e. humbuckers with humbuckers, singles with singles, p90's with p90's. You *can* put a single coil in a humbucker rout (my RT650 has this), and some guitars also have a "universal" or "swimming" pool rout to accept almost any pickup configuration.

The size difference is really mostly in the depth. Two different brands of humbuckers may look similar, but one may have longer tabs. Also, I believe EMG single coils can use a smaller rout than standard single coils, if you are rear-routing a body. Outside of that it's a total crap-shoot.

The biggest skills involved are knowing how to solder, and how to read schematics. If you can do that, you can probably do all of your pickup modifications yourself.