# Squier Bullet Strat-mod to alnico pickups?



## rhh7 (Mar 14, 2008)

I am going to spend a little money on my Squier Bullet Strat. Have my frets leveled and crowned, get a bone nut, perhaps change the tuners.

Would it be worthwhile to change the ceramic pickups for alnico magnet pickups? If so, should I use three 5.4k ohm pickups, or use an 8k ohm pickup in the bridge?

Thanks a million for advice or opinions!


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## shiva (Jul 9, 2008)

If it's the NEW chinese made bullet, then go for it. A lot of people I have talked too love it, and since it is tough to even find one, I guess that speaks for itself. I guy I talked to bought 3 of them. 

I've been considering one as a project, it's a great base and you would have a hard time finding a body and neck for that price. I think a set of GFS strat pickups would be a good match, keep the cost down with all the other parts comparable to a Mexican strat, but you should still have a better guitar in the end.


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## Geek (Jun 5, 2007)

> Would it be worthwhile to change the ceramic pickups for alnico magnet pickups?


IMO, it's always worth subbing ceramics for AlNiCo's 

Cheers!


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

As for the 8K bridge, it depends on what yo want. The 8K bridge will give you a darker, hotter signal with more bass and midrange. It will be considerably noisier, however, and I find you lose that nice quack in the 4th position. The hot bridge signal kind of overwhelms the middle. I really like the bright jangly sound of a strat bridge, but I know a lot of people find it thin.

Fralin uses 6K, 6K and 6.8K in the bridge and that is a nice balance. Lollar also runs them a bit closer in the bridge (his blackface set is 6.4/6.5/6.8, and sounds amazing). If you want 5.4 in the neck and middle, I'd go somewhere in the low 6K range for the bridge max. Adding a steel baseplate will add a bit of output and bass without dulling down the highs if you want more later.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1) The difference between budget and costlier guitars is often the added touches, like fret preparation and electronics. Omitting the work involved to smooth fret ends and crown them properly can save a lot of production costs. So, spending some cash, post-purchase, to bring your guitar up to speed is basically buying a better guitar "on the installment plan". If the neck and body feels "right" to you, go for it. Paul is right to warn you that the resale value of the improved instrument may be modest since it still bears the stigma of the "Squier Bullet" brand. But as long as the outlay doesn't break you, and you have no immediate plans to liquidate assets anytime soon, I say spring the cash and make your instrument more playable.

2) Magnet type (ceramic, alnico, etc) is something where there is no agreed-upon conclusion. Some folks would say, a magnet is a magnet is a magnet, and shape may be more important than type. Note that the nature of the field produced when there are steel (or even alnico, for that matter) polepieces with a ceramic bar underneath, is different than the field created when the entire magnetic structure is 6 little polepieces with nothing underneath. So, it's not just the fact that it is alnico, rather than ceramic, but the type of field created. Within the alnico family, the various types have more to do with magnetic strength. There are some very nice pickups from folks like Kent Armstrong and Bill Lawrence that use ceramic magnets. As long as they are not done in slapdash fashion, they can be very good. That being said, once people get into the sort of care and cost that accompanies alnico-based PUs, you tend to be dealing with a higher level of attention to detail. So, overall, alnicos will tend to be a bit better, as a group, than ceramics, even though some ceramics can be excellent.

3) Is DC resistance (5k, 6k, 8k, etc) an appropriate barometer of either tone or "hotness"? Yes, but only loosely so. The same DC resistance can be produced in a multitude of ways, depending on the coil shape and wire gauge. #41 wire will have a lower DCR, per turn, than #42 or #43. Because of the larger circumference involved, a flatter coil P90 "soapbar" will have fewer turns for overall DCR than a tall and thin Strat coil. In general, the output is increased as the magnet strength goes up, the number of turns increases, and the sensing area is increased. A #41 gauge Strat-type coil with big fat strong magnets and a 6k coil could be much hotter than a similar PU with more slender and weaker polepieces inside a 7.5k coil wound from #42. 

At the same time, adding more turns increases the overall inductance of the pickup and drops the resonant frequency down a bit. As the DCR goes up, too, the ability of the pickup to be "loaded down" by things between the pickup and amp (or first pedal) goes up, so higher-DCR pickups tend to sound "darker and more muscular under many circumstances. That's not necessarily "wrong", just possibly not what you wanted.

Ideally, though, you will want a nice balance between pickup levels such that when they are all adjusted to their optimum heights there is no discernible difference in their levels that requires a volume adjustment.

4) The usual 5-way switch on a Strat gets you N, N+M, M, M+B, B. IN this arrangement, the middle pickup is supposed to be reverse-wound, reverse polarity (i.e., the magnets are upside down and you swap white and black leads in your wiring) so that hum-cancellation is produce in the two dual-pickup positions (2 and 4). One of the things I often recommend to folks is to enable Tele sounds from a Strat by swapping the leads of the middle and bridge pickups at the switch. Simply exchanging these two leads gets you N, N+B, B, M+B, M. In essence the first 3 settings are what you'd get from a normal 3-position Tele switch, and the last two are two of the typical Strat "cluck" settings. It's a fair trade IMHO, though understandably some find the loss of a cluck position too big a forfeiture. *If* you choose to do such a mod, however, it is the *bridge* pickup and NOT the middle one, that has to be RW/RP in order to get hum-cancellation.


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## rhh7 (Mar 14, 2008)

Thanks for some very informative replies!

Since I got this guitar for $94.99 new, it makes sense to me as a good modding platform.

And from what I have learned, reading here and on the TDPRI forum, the first step is great frets, and a pro setup of action and intonation.

After that, I may change tuners, nut, & pickups on the installment plan!

Thanks again.


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