The Stratocaster is known for being the most versatile guitar ever made. It’s not only the one you’ll find on the stage with Iron Maiden, John Mayer, and Cory Wong, but also one of the most imitated, copied, and overhauled guitar shapes of all time.
Looking for humbucker-equipped Strats instead? Check out this article.
But what if you want a Strat with a twist? What if you want a Strat that has a bit more growl and bite to it? Well, brands like ESP, Ibanez, and Jackson made stellar careers doing just that, taking this iconic shape to the next level. Shredders and rockers unite; behold the Super Strat.
Top 3 - Humbuckers for Strat
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Over the past 1.5 weeks, I did the hard work for you. I've tested numerous single-coil sized humbuckers and popular regular humbuckers on 2 different Strat guitars (Fender Player II and Squier Sonic).
I won’t deny it’s been a fun week and a half, but it was also very informative. What follows are the results of my relentless search for the tone that can take a Strat to the next level. These are, in my opinion, the best Strat-friendly humbucker pickups in the market today.
If you’re serious about adding a spicy element to an already versatile guitar, your next pickup is on this list.
Best Humbuckers for Stratocasters
1. Seymour Duncan Hot Rails
The Seymour Duncan Hot Rails are perfectly named. This is indeed a hot pickup. It actually sounds more like an active pickup than a passive. It has some real attitude and bite to it.
Seymour Duncan Hot Rails Strat Humbucker
It’s an amazing bridge pickup because it gives you that push in the midrange that drives amplifiers naturally into overdrive and you can get organic crunch effortlessly.
Also, as the high-end is not as glassy as a stock Strat pickup, you can go into heavy distortion without getting shrill or piercing. That said, it doesn’t kill the bright spirit of the guitar, it somehow, tames it.
Moreover, if you play clean you can get that in-your-face, compressed sound great for clean arpeggios with body and definition. You have that typical humbucker warmth with defined highs and clear mids, making it a great option for the neck position as well. You can get those nice clean leads with just an analog delay and an overdrive pedal and play for hours on top of the band.
Finally, it’s a very sensitive pickup and reacts very well to the volume knob and the attack of the picking hand. You can honor its name by going to full-on metal-approved tones; hard rock, and punk or grunge riffs sound huge.
It also does a great job at cleaning up and doing the rock and roll, slightly overdriven guitar sound; especially in the bridge and combined with the middle pickup.
Seymour Duncan Hot Rails (Bridge Pickup) on a Strat.
Yes, it doesn’t have pole pieces which might be odd for some players, but as a counterpart, it gives you a ton of options to add to your arsenal of tones.
If you want to give your Strat some extra edge, this is a great bridge pickup to have. If you want to upgrade more than just the bridge pickup, you can grab this complete set of Hot Rails (Amazon), which includes the neck and middle pickups too. Check out the video below for a demo of all 3 on a Strat.
2. Seymour Duncan Little ‘59
Don’t let the name of the Seymour Duncan Little ‘59s fool you. The sound of these pickups is anything but little.
Their name comes from the pickups on the holy grail of Gibson, the ‘59 Les Paul PAFs. I don’t know if you know the difference in sound between a PAF humbucker and a more modern unit. Well, PAFs, the original ones, are so expensive and hard to find because of their articulation, moderated gain, and definition.
This is not the pickup for the metal players out there (I’m sorry, Kirk Hammett, but you’re one of a kind). It’s got that note-per-note clarity, dynamics, and mid-gain crunch that can take your guitar one step further while remaining in the vintage realm of tone.
Think AC-DC, Jimmy Page, and all those Les Paul colossus that play dirty but not overly distorted.
Seymour Duncan Little '59
It is a bit warmer and thicker than a single coil, but still has a nice bit of twang to it. The clean tone is warm and bassy. The brightness is moderated compared to when you have the gain turned up. It still has that low-end compression found in humbuckers but with more air and openness to the overall tone.
Let me tell you that I was impressed by how responsive these pickups are. They handle dynamics very well. Your playing will become more expressive by changing your picking or switching over to finger picking.
This is also a great neck pickup for genres like blues and jazz. While the set is a bit expensive, I would recommend going for it. The pickups are also available individually, alongside the set (generally sells for slightly less than what you'd pay for all 3 individually).
You can play with the middle-and-bridge or middle-and-neck configurations and have a beautiful, jangly, neo-soul tone with a little compression or play spiced-up funk a-là Chili Peppers.
These pair great with single coils too, so HSH and HSS configurations work great. You’ll expand your sound palette drastically with just a flick of the pickup selector.
3. EVH Frankenstein
The EVH Frankenstein is the most expensive pickup on this list, but in my opinion, what you get is more than worth the price. It might be the best traditional-sized bridge humbucker for Strat.
EVH Frankenstein Humbucker Pickup on Strat (Bridge)
Arguably, modern guitar playing never fully recovered from the earthquake Edward Van Halen caused when he appeared, fully-formed, as a guitar demi-God. This pickup is made to match the exact specs from his original one.
This is the closest you can get to that nasal, explosive, take-no-prisoner tone Eddie used to turn the world upside down. Just like his amp, the legendary 5150, this pickup is kind of an elite-level one-trick pony ready to turn your guitar into a metal monster.
This is just such a fantastic pickup. But then again, everything EVH makes is fantastic. You won’t play like Eddie, but you’ll surely sound like him when trying.
When you start playing and are greeted with a tone very reminiscent of Van Halen himself, you know you’ve made the right choice. This pickup has some serious growl.
The overall tone is well-balanced. The low end is very powerful and chewy. You can get some really big, crunchy rock chords. Individual notes also squeeze out very nicely.
Unsurprisingly, solos really screech and scream with this pickup in the bridge position and coupled with enough distortion. You know what that means in Van Halen’s terms: obnoxious levels of gain.
Eddie was quite known for his pick harmonics. So, naturally, I played some to test this pickup out. I’m not going to tell you I sounded like Eddie, but I got that bigger-than-life bright sound that could fill an entire arena.
If you want to give your Strat a massive, mid-infused, ‘80s rock tone, this is the pickup for you.
4. DiMarzio Super Distortion
Aftermarket pickups might be common these days, but it wasn’t always like that. It wasn’t until 1972 when Larry DiMarzio introduced the world to the Super Distortion, that guitarists had options beside the stock pickups their guitars came with.
For example, the Super Distortion was the secret recipe for the Nevermind sound. Yes, Cobain’s famous dual-humbucker Jaguar was equipped with two Super Distortion pickups. In fact, Fender’s recreation of that guitar comes with two DP-100s.
The Super Distortion didn’t just change the pickup game, but it might arguably be considered the OG sound of rock. I am inclined to agree with that statement. This pickup is fat, mean, and aggressive. The way rock should be.
The first thing that hits you, especially when playing with a Strat is that the lows and mids are boosted, giving you a big wall of sound. That’s the term many people used to describe the sound of Nevermind’s guitars. Well, that’s the sound you will get from this pickup in the bridge, especially when coupled with the uncanny Boss DS-2 Turbo Distortion, or a Rat.
That wall of sound is accompanied by a quick and sharp attack. That, in a Stratocaster sounds like a big, thick, heavy distortion that has the upper mids to cut through the mix. Just like you hear in Nirvana’s songs, the guitar sits in the middle of the mix giving body but also texture and power to the sound. It doesn’t sound muddy, it’s punchy.
All these factors, plus the fact that the Super Distortion is also available as a single-coil-sized humbucker, make this pickup one of the most popular bridge pickups for Strat even today.
DiMarzio Super Distortion as Strat Bridge Pickup
When turning off the distortion pedal (if that ever happens, this pickup is a monster for distorted sounds), what you get is a nice, warm, balanced sound. Indeed, the clean tone of the Super Distortion is quite pleasant, perhaps a bit dark if you want to jingle-jangle a bit. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it is a one-trick pony, because it could be a great choice for a maple-neck Stratocaster that you think is too bright.
That said, I think this pickup should be played at 11. Anything less just isn’t quite as fun.
Finally, as a neck pickup it can give you a creamy tone that’s great to play Gilmour-esque leads, melodies, and textures. For example, coupled with a Tube Screamer and a distortion, you’re in soloing mode instantly.
On the other hand, if you couple it with a shimmer reverb and a delay, you can get some great dark sonic landscapes that are just drippin’. Believe me, it’ll have you playing for hours.
DiMarzio offers this pickup in full or reduced size, so you can just swap that bridge pickup without modifying your guitar. But that’s not all, because the DiMarzio Dual Sound is this same pickup with 4-conductor cables, meaning you can wire it to use it with a coil tap and go from single-coil to humbucker with the flick of a switch.
Finally, this pickup is also available in a variety of different colors (25 to be precise) so you can go bananas on it and make your guitar an avant-garde looking instrument.
If you are willing to spend extra, I would highly suggest the chrome. It is just such a cool and sharp look.
Check out this pickup (including the regular and F-spaced versions, and different color options) on: Sweetwater / Amazon
And finally, here's a short-and-simple demo of this pickup on a Strat.
5. Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB
The SH-4 JB is Seymour Duncan’s most popular pickup of all time. It is an exceptional pickup. So exceptional, in fact, that it has been used by guitarists as diverse as Jeff Beck, Dave Mustaine, and Kurt Cobain.
The SH-4 JB is a bit brighter than humbuckers usually are. If you were to look at its EQ curve, you’d notice a cut in the low-end and a slight push toward the middle and the high-end. This gives the pickup uncanny definition, which translates in a singing, pristine, almost vocal sound for solos and leads.
That said, this is also quite a compressed-sounding humbucker so, while the low-end is not pushed from the EQ, it sounds tight and focused. This is perfect for the chugging sound of palm-muting and heavy riffing.
It performs very well under high levels of gain. Chords are crunchy and powerful, while notes are crisp and clear.
That tight low-end and crisp high-end works great when you clean up the tone too. There’s a sweetness and warmth that’s very humbucker-like but note-to-note definition and clarity are there too.
I mean, it’s still a powerful humbucker, so it will drive any amplifier into overdrive way easier than a single-coil pickup, but if you roll off some of the volume and turn off the gain stages, you can get some punchy and clear clean sound that’s great for chord work, mellow melodies, and arpeggios.
When in the neck position, you can work your way to some nice blues tones and get creamy lead sounds by just adding some gain to it. Mixed with the middle pickup, it can give you that bitey, overdriven sound hard rock verses live on with the right amount of midrange and brightness to match the tight low-end and leave some space for the chorus to explode.
It could be the best Strat bridge humbucker for you if you prefer versatility over downright aggressive tones.
Just like the Super Distortion, the SH-4 JB comes with 4-way conductor cables which allow you to wire it for a coil-tap and still have that close-to single-coil tone on your guitar. Moreover, although not in 25, it also comes in a variety of colors. You can choose between modern, vintage, or a mix.
Of course, this is a full sized humbucker. So, you will need space to fit this pickup.
Finally, taking into consideration the sound and build quality (they’re hand-built in California), along with the fairly affordable price, the Seymour Duncan JB makes a worthwhile upgrade for any Strat.
6. DiMarzio Fast Track 1 & 2
The DiMarzio Fast Track was one of the first pickups to hit the market as a humbucker to put into a single-coil slot. The dual-rail design was outrageous back in 1991, but the concept was impeccable; and it still is today.
The Fast Track 1 has double the output of a regular single-coil pickup but it has the same EQ curve those pickups have. This means that the low-end is not as prominent as the high-end which has some bell-like singing quality, and the mids are tamed.
DiMarzio DP181 Fast Track 1
This combination of features makes the Fast Track 1 the perfect humbucker for a guitar player who changes pickups often in the show. This is because the volume and equalization difference isn’t as drastic; it blends in perfectly with single coils and humbuckers.
When playing clean, the pickup really shines giving you hum-free compressed, in-your-face tones that are punchy without being overdriven. You can push the leads a bit with a Tube Screamer and get a nice broken sound with enough edge to cut any mix.
Things get drastically different when you move to the Fast Track 2. It’s a very powerful pickup (three times the output of a regular single coil) with a heavy push in the low-end and the low-mids. This is definitely a take-it-to-eleven approach that will turn your Strat into a heavy-riffing machine. Furthermore, solos literally jump at you, your leads turn soaring and the power chords sound huge.
When used in clean mode, what you get is that nice, compressed, slightly overdriven, dark tone you’d expect from a heavy guitar at the edge of breakup.
But why did I put these two pickups together here since they’re so different? Well, I tried the Fast Track 1 in the neck with the Fast Track 2 at the bridge and it was a great experiment. I got the best of both worlds playing overdriven, melodic, and simple stuff with the Fast Track 1 and engaging the bridge pickup to call upon mayhem with the Fast Track 2.
I highly recommend the combination of the two in any way you like them.
7. Seymour Duncan Duckbuckers
The Seymour Duncan Duckbucker is a pickup that aims to retain that single coil sound, with the added benefits that come with humbuckers.
But that’s just the intro, because this pickup hides a plethora of sounds in a size that’s a drop-in replacement for any single-coil strat pickup.
To begin with, the Duckbuckers have a bright, twangy tone, even more than some standard Strat pickups I have heard. That brightness is coupled with a bit more low end, giving the Duckbuckers a more rounded and fuller sound.
And here comes the trick. It’s a 4-conductor pickup that sounds very much as a hum-canceling single-coil but can be wired in series and parallel allowing you to turn it into a full-blown humbucker with the flick of a switch or coil-tapping pot. That increases its volume a lot but also pushes low-end and midrange forward giving you a nice, round sound that can overdrive your amp easily.
As a humbucker, it handles high levels of gain much better. You can really push the distortion for a heavier sound.
I loved it in series for the bridge because it really makes the world of difference to access those hot but dynamic, hot-rodded single coil sounds while having the traditional Strat sound ready to go at any time.
Also, placing it at the neck position gives you a great open, crystal-clear clean sound and you can go into those nice bluesy, moody, overdriven leads and then back to your strumming very easily.
If you want a pickup that will open many possibilities, this is a great choice.
Why Put a Humbucker in a Strat?
Apart from the change in sound, humbuckers also reduce noise. I don’t mean to give you lots of technical mumbo jumbo here, but coils generate 60-cycle hum. If you put two together in reverse polarities, they cancel each other’s hum and you have a completely clean sound.
Humbuckers have two coils canceling each other, hence the name: hum-bucker.
This can give you a cleaner sound, especially when you play with a lot of distortion and other effects or if you want those pristine-clean, heavily compressed tones to play funk or neo-soul.
Humbuckers are also hotter because you have to add up the power of the two coils working together. This means they can easily take an amp into the overdrive zone. Also, distortion becomes, somehow, more distorted. When paired with a solid-state amp or digital technology, you can easily find clean sounds with compression to be bigger, rounder, and fuller.
Squier Sonic Stratocaster HT H - one of my favorite budget Strats currently. A single humbucker at the bridge is all it's got!
So, some possible scenarios in which you want to put humbuckers to your strat may be:
- You want more gain - Humbuckers, being hotter pickups, can generate more gain. But that’s not all, they can handle it much better too. Without the hum and the squealing feedback, gain translates into power with humbuckers and not a giant swarm of screaming bees every time you step on the distortion pedal.
- You want to clean up your sound - 60-cycle hum is a trademark sound that’s been around us forever. You can hear it in every Hendrix record, every Frusciante lead, and every Rolling Stones riff. Modern styles, though, like neo-soul and the ultra-clean, processed sounds of urban music need a different approach. A humbucker can give you pristine clean sounds that suit that scenario much better.
- You want more versatility - Stratocasters are famous for being the most versatile guitar ever made. Well, if you add a 4-conductor humbucker to the formula, you can have the standard Stratocaster sounds and add more power and low-end to the bridge pickup for soaring leads or heavy parts as well as more juice to the neck pickup for some soulful, round, and creamy tones. That way, positions 2, 3, and 4 remain pure strat sound and feel and you have high-gain sounds in 1 and 5.
Difference in Sound
Do humbuckers sound different from single-coil pickups? Well, let me tell you they overlap in many places, but humbuckers can give a guitar a completely different sound.
Furthermore, it’s a rather cheap tone experiment and might make you fall in love with that guitar you’re just not playing so often.
Don’t sell it, humbuckerize it!
The way humbuckers are made give them side effects that affect your tone.
- Added low-end - The sound of most humbuckers is equalized to give them a generous bump in the lower frequencies. You’ll feel that round warmth underneath your playing. This is the reason you see people playing humbuckers in every chugging-friendly musical style ever played. The humbuckers’ low-end can’t be found in single-coil pickups. If you want that, it’s humbucker time for your strat.
- Natural sound compression - The low-end and the added gain not only sound heavier, they also generate more natural compression. It’s like when you crank a big tube amp and you get that wonderful natural compression that makes everything sound bigger, meaner, and more powerful.
- Reduced dynamics - Every time you compress a sound form of any source you try to even the peaks to the valleys. That means everything sounds at the same volume regardless of how it was executed. Every time you do that, you lose some dynamics and percussiveness. Everything sounds more or less at the same volume, so fingerpicking and heavy picking are not as far apart in terms of volume. Nevertheless, the loss in dynamics is a gain in size and power.
Possible Configurations
The original version of the Stratocaster typically had three single coils. We refer to this as an SSS configuration, S meaning single coil. Yet, as things got increasingly out of hand musically in the world (the ‘80s came along, basically), we witnessed the Strat going through countless transformations.
It all started with Eddie’s Frankenstein, with a pickup I tried, loved, and listed above.
Stratocasters are easy to modify because they have a huge pickguard, if you carve or not carve the wood beneath it, nobody would notice. The difference in tone is minimal if any. You couldn’t do the same with a Les Paul, right?
These are the most common versions you’ll find on the market.
- HSS - By far, the most common version of the humbucker-equipped Stratocaster is HSS. This gives you that low-end to work with the mids and the high-end of the Strat where you need it the most, in the bridge position. Very, very common for session guitarists who want the best of both worlds.
- HSH - This is a version of the Stratocaster popularized by the shredders, virtuosos, and guitar magicians who rose to fame in the ‘80s (yes, talking to you, Steve and Joe). In this configuration you have creamy leads in the neck position, heavy tones for riffing and soaring leads in the bridge position, and strat sounds in positions 2, 3, and 4. The most versatile version of the Strat, no doubts about it.
- HH - The HH configuration, typically found on a Les Paul is great for a Stratocaster if you want to play rock-related genres and won’t ever need Strat-style jingle from your guitar. This is the case of Kirk Hammett and many other Super Strat players. Furthermore, players like Tom DeLonge have gone even further to a single humbucker in the bridge position.
These are just some of my favorites. The options for customization on a Strat when you are using both humbuckers and single coils are nearly endless. If you're interested in reading further, we have a dedicated article comparing the SSS, HSS and HSH pickup configurations.
Which Strats Can Have Humbuckers?
Technically speaking, you can put a humbucker in any Strat. Your only real limitation is the size of the pickup cavity.
Swapping pickups is very common, so most Strat have pickup cavities that can fit humbuckers. Also, there are single coil sized humbuckers, like the Duckbuckers or the Hot Rails.
For example, Strats like the Squier Classic Vibe have a bridge cavity big enough for a full sized humbucker. You can always buy a guitar with a different pickup configuration like the Player Stratocaster HSH. I've previously covered a list of Stratocasters pre-fitted with Humbuckers.
There isn’t really a noticeable difference in sound between a single coil sized humbucker and a full-sized humbucker.
If your Strat doesn’t have the right size cavities, or doesn’t have enough room, you can make it. This does require that you cut into your guitar’s body, and unless you know what you are doing, or know a good luthier, I wouldn’t really recommend this. At all.
Your best bet is just to get humbuckers that are going to fit. That way you won’t have to modify your guitar. Imagine if you do carve the space out and then realize you don’t like the humbucker sound!
Final Word
If you are looking to give your Strat some more bite, humbuckers are a great option. It is also easier than ever to get a humbucker that will fit, there are many options for single-coil-sized humbuckers out there, and plenty of Strats even come with humbuckers as a factory standard.
Now that you have a clear idea about what’s in the market, go out there, get the one you like the most, and add a new layer of tone to your Strat.
