Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Soooo, my first electric guitar in 1991 was a Vantage Avenger. Never heard of them? Not unlikely. Looks like a cross between an SG and a strat with a one piece maple neck. Built by Matsumoku in the early 80's it was a cheap guitar with great build quality. Matsumoku was known for lawsuit guitars & building better Gibsons than Gibson in the 70's. This was one of their first original & best designs. I kept the original MMK 45 humbucking (reputedly simiar to an SD super distortion) pickup from my first guitar. Though I loved it I sadly destroyed the rest of it in my early guitar modification days. I've missed it ever since.

Fast forward 20 years...I bought a silver strat inspired Avenger AV330 off the bay a few years back that had no electronics but was otherwise complete, untouched and left in a closet since the early 80's. It has the best strat style trem I've ever used, it is one solid piece of aluminum. I love the sound of teles but always banged my hand on that small cutaway & wanted to get that sound in a guitar that I could play slide with. I built a new pickguard for the Avenger, installed a tele neck pickup, a MIJ RWRP strat mid pickup and the original MMK 45 from my guitar at the bridge. It is completely shielded & buzz free. I have a 5 way, coil tap switch & 4 way rotary that allows me 16 different tones including 7 pickup combos + series & phase switching.

Everything has been great...well except that bridge pickup from my first guitar which is too quiet in comparison & lacks bite. Nostalgia doesn't always equate to sounding the best. I also have an epic 17 tone SSH strat with a 1 piece maple neck and a great Ibanez RG as my other solids and I still prefer the Vantage Avenger to either hands down, but I need a truly awesome bridge pickup sound. Sooo what should I put in there, a twangbanger, a real tele pickup ooooooor a HiGain? Yes, I'm seriously considering the HiGain in the bridge now. It will be a Tele-Strat-Ric small bodied solid with a trem & all pickup combos series & phase switching. What's not to like? I'll have to make a new pickguard but this is also a chance to change the look of the guitar. It is currently a slightly offputting silver body & matching headstock that have gone a bit green from age. I was thinking of spraying a blue green transparent over the top to get it to look more like a vintage lake placid blue & making a new tort pickguard. Once I'm done with this I'm going to let go of my strat & my Ibanez RG because I will honestly never have a reason to play either of those again.

i think a Higain is an awesome bridge pickup, but you have a lot of choices now

You could also go DeArmond Dynasonic or for something little different like a Burns TriSonic

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/2 ... ups?page=2

The Gretsch HiLoTron is also a cool bridge pickup, and not sonically that different from a Higain in my opinion

Great suggestions! I was going for tele initially but I really love Brian May's tone. You got the wheels turning mentioning the TriSonic. Good to know new ones are bring made. I'd possibly ditch the strat pickup in the middle for that & one at the bridge so I could get that out of phase bridge/mid sound May gets for leads. Thinking, thinking...gotta see how the TriSonic does with slide.

they're not super expensive either. they now make a strat size one but the originals are slightly larger

Looks like about $140 for three Tri-Sonics on the bay...same for the minis, not bad. Yet another option is a standard humbucker sized Valco style pickup from Roadhouse for 120. I know Doug Kauer has used those in a couple of his guitars & really liked them. Also a Teisco gold foil might be fun. In the meantime I'll throw a HiGain in (if there is room) & see how it sounds. The volume drop on this bridge pickup is a real problem.

Hot-cha! I installed a gold foil humbucker bridge pickup from GFS and now this guitar sings. It fits a standard humbucker opening. It can be tapped and has a great single coil sound & a gnarly bite with both coils. No icepick, yay. Oh and cheap, like me. The winning tone combo ? Bridge & Neck out of phase and in series with the mid pickup parallel. Sweet Albert King bends!

I like out of phase & series options but I need better ways to figure out the switching. I have a 5 way, a mini for the coil tap & 4 position rotary. I have a Deaf Eddie v5 Fat-O-Caster rotary switch installed which does the series/parallel/neck-bridge/all 3 and out of phase combos. The v5 is set up to add more mid pickup combos than anything else so I wired it up as the v3 which adds more bridge/neck combos. Really I just switched the mid pu lead from the rotary to the standard 5 way & switched the bridge lead from the 5 way to the rotary then output from the rotary to the bridge lug on the 5 way. Should be the same amount of tone options but somehow I ended up with an extra out of phase neck bridge tone in one spot where there wasn't one before. For the life of me shouldn't be there, but I ain't complaining.

I'm working out some switching ideas to make my 3 pickup guitars easier to switch tones reliably & quickly. I may go with three on-on-on mini switches for on-off-phase for the neck & mid and off-on-on in series for the bridge than a 2 way for the tap. Four switches I know will be nuts but a 5 way rotary & a mini are really cumbersome.