The ShadowMusic Web Community

Hank2k wrote:that was certainly an interesting post and welcome Chris good to have your knowledge here for all of us.

My pleasure Hank2k. It's great to chat to folks that appreciate the finer nuances of instrumental guitar sound, which, by the way, is much more difficult to achieve than modern distorted sounds. All the best, Chris Kinman

This is just a note to say that I had to refer to this thread for information that was provided here but I had forgotten. This is a very useful thread, and I must re-read it again. An Enjoyable thing to do in these times of isolation.

Keep safe all.

Andy

I have a standard G&L Legacy Tribute guitar which i find good for my shadows sound which i use with my zoom G5n, a really nice mint condition mexican standard strat in candy apple red came up at the right price, so i bought it, the thing is i cant seem to get a decent shadows sound with it, can anyone suggest how to improve it to get a decent shadows sound out of it, should i be thinking of changing the pickups, any advice welcome.

The Mexican standard (recently discontinued and replaced by the Player Strat) was fitted with ceramic pickups, so anything would be an improvement! I bought a set of Vanson Vintage Pro for mine, I didn't choose them specifically to sound like the Shadows but the guitar does sound amazing when it does.

You'll find Vanson on eBay, Vintage Pros are a mere £39 a set and they come with fibre bobbins, vintage staggered chamfered Alnico V magnets and waxed cloth hookup wires. They are also wax potted and come with a choice of black, white or ivory covers. Pole spacing is the correct 52mm and the middle pickup is RWRP for hum cancellation in positions 2 and 4.

(They're not paying me to say any of this by the way.)

I do own a Classic Player Strat designed by Fender Custom Shop and made at the Baja factory. It has two point modern tremolo and locking tuners and the neck is really nice on it.

The standard pickups fitted are quoted as 57/62 new design and are wound all three at 6k DC resistance Alnico 5.

I had a 57 vintage Strat for a number of years with the older 57/62 pickups, but those were about 5.7k DC OHMS. They were very good, but I find the ones on the Classic Player are are better overall. They produce a great Shads sound combined with 12-54 pure nickel strings and the bridge pu is very good and not thin sounding at all.

At the end of the 50s , Fender pickups were typically around 6k mid, neck and bridge.

I used the Classic Player on my recent demo videos for the TC Electronics Triple Delay if you want to hear that guitar.

This guitar is different to the normal Player Strat made at the same factory by the way.

I recently fitted some ceramic pickups to one of my Strats' and in all honesty couldn't fault them in any way, so I did some comparisons with my more expensive Alnico 'Sliders' pickups on other Strats' I own and blew the myth out of the water that cerimic = rubbish sound - quite the opposite as I got some good results.
I do agree that the Wilkinson Strat pickups are good and inexpensive, I have two Vintage V6 Strats with those fitted and they sound as good as the expensive Sliders in the mix.
I'm tempted to record a video and stick it on YouTube playing Shads music to show people how they sound.

I am not familiar with the models, but a few months ago I accompanied a friend select a new Stratocaster at the local dealer. We tried out many models, including Squiers and to our surprise heard a startling difference in sound between guitars with ceramic pickups and those with alnicos. The young store clerks, both musicians themselves, agreed with the conclusion (they were pleased when we played Apache and brought out an acoustic for rhythm; they may not have heard the piece before!). Perhaps the differences could have been evened out with careful adjustments and so on, but all we did was plug and play and straight A-B comparisons.

Andy

I remember my Mex Strat I bought In 2000, had ceramic pickups and I thought them quite good overall. I changed them for CS54 pickups and the guitar was notably brighter sounding and closer to the Shadows sound. I would liken it to using a Greenback (ceramic) to a Blue (alnico) speaker.

Many people think ceramic magnets are rubbish because they've only heard them in nasty cheapo pickups. Put one in a decent pickup though, and it can be quite good.

One of my favourites among pickups that I've owned, is the DiMarzio SDS-1. It has a huge ceramic magnet on the bottom and is wound to a massive 9.5K, so it sounds like a P90 more than anything else. But when I wanted a Shads sound, it delivered that as well.

Here it is in its natural habitat.