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Squier HSS Strat with EMG SA/SA/89 pickups


roverpig

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OK, the clearout of things that I'm no longer using continues.

This one is a little unusual though. The guitar is just a basic Squier Affinity Fat Strat (i.e. a Strat with a Humbucker at the bridge for a bit more variety). It's had a few small dings, which I've done my best to photograph, but is very nicely put together, looks good and plays really well. However, this budget guitar has really been transformed by the addition of a nice set of EMG active pickups. This is the SA/SA/89 set with a coil tap, so that the humbucker can be switched to single coil mode for those classic Strat tones. If you are interested in the guitar then you probably know all about the EMG pickups. If not a quick Google will tell you all you need to know about these pickups, including the long list of top playesrs who have used them.

You might ask what posessed me to put such an expensive set of pickups in a budget guitar? Well the guitar is basically sound and plays well and the main criticism of EMG pickups seems to be that they sound the same whatever you put them in, so I thought it made sense. I think the combination works well, but it wasn't really the tone I was after and I've now switched to a 335-style twin-humbucker semi-acoustic guitar. The EMGs give a really clear clean tone, which ironically works really well if you like lots of distortion. I guess, if you are going to pile on lots of distortion, you want to start with a nice pure signal, but I just play clean all the time, which is probably why I prefer the semi-acoustic. The EMGs also pretty much eliminate the single coil hum that you get from most Strats without relying on the potentially dangerous trick of wiring the ground to the tremelo block (and using the player as the earth), which never struck me as a good idea but seems to be standard practice with lots of guitars.

This guitar is too nice to sit around my spare room gathering dust so I thought I'd stick it on here and see if there was any interest.

I'm looking for something close to 250 for it.

Losts of pictures can be seen HERE

1yetzm.jpg

Cheers,

Andy

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  • 1 month later...

she's a beast, though i did think for a split second that was a mirrored scratchplate and nearly did something rather reckless, but alas having just bought a new computer and the impending doom of christmas i really dont have the cash for it, i hope you find a good home for it tho man!

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so how does the coil tap work ??? is it on tn the selector or one of the knobs cool idea this works on all sort of levels i'm an inverted gear snob even marshall are now doing a chinese " budget valve amp " who's next............................

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so how does the coil tap work ??? is it on tn the selector or one of the knobs cool idea this works on all sort of levels i'm an inverted gear snob even marshall are now doing a chinese " budget valve amp " who's next............................

The coil tap is on the rear tone control. Just pull it out to turn the rear pickup from a single coil to a humbucker. One of the neat things with the EMGs is that even the single coils don't hum, but being able to turn the rear pickup into a humbucker gives you lots more options, especially if you really want to overdrive that amp.

The scratchplate is just a metallic "sparkle", but you could easily swap it for a mirorred one if that's your thing.

She's a great looking guitar, well put together and really easy to play. But so far nobody seems to want to take her off my hands. Maybe the wrong time of year or something.

Cheers,

Andy

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  • 2 months later...
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