Can anyone tell me the tonal difference between the Fender custom Shop 50's and the CS 60's for a Relic strat? I have a set of greyback 60's or 65's and was wondering how they would sound in my 56' Relic. Any idea's on other pu's I could swap out also. Thanks guy's.
the greyback would be 65 they are wound a bit more than the 56 or 60 the 60 are my favorites, very balanced, not too dark, not too bright, great quack, great tone 56 and 65 darker than 60 I still have the 60's in one of my relics all other have Fralins - Vintage Hots, and Real 54s I like the Blue Specials, but not as much as the others I also have a custom wound set from Fralin, which I like very much Lollar Blondes have a good thing going for them, depends what tone you are looking
Thanks Rick. I have two 56 Relics. One Fiesta red stock w/ vintage frets and a one off sunburst I just got right here on TGP about 2 weeks ago with a 9.5 radius and larger frets. Both these guitars weigh in at about 7.5lb's. I had a 60 Relic and loved the sound of those pups. Would love to get a hold of another set of those. Though I'm wondering how they would sound on a maple fretboard!
Same experience as Rick. The black bottomed pickups in my '60 Relic are the only stock Strat pups still in their original guitar. '69s would be my second choice from the CS offerings, though I'm pretty fond of fitting SD Antiquity Surfers to most of my other Strats (including CS '66 and '56 Ash.) The Surfers are very close in tone to the '60 pups, and as they're aged, they fit in nicely with the relic look.
In my experience, pickups can sound very different from guitar to guitar. A few years ago, I had the exact same set in 5 different Strats I had at the time and they sounded great in one particular Strat, crappy in another, and so-so in the remaining 3. So, based on my experiments, I'd say you'd just have to try different pickups in your Strat to see whether or not there's any subjective improvement. Like building a parts-o-caster, IMO pickup swapping is a bit of a tonal crap shoot because of how they interact with an individual piece of wood.
