Seymour Duncan APST1 Twang Banger Strat Pickup

I installed this pickup into my G&L Legacy Tribute, a great upgrade from the ice pick sound coming from the stock bridge pickup, and it fits into the stock pickup cover perfectly. I've also tried the Little '59 for Strat, and I prefer the Twangbanger since I'm more of a single-coil guy. Since I've never played a Telecaster, I couldn't say if it amounts to the real thing. I love this pickup and I'm not planning to change it anytime soon.The only thing I would point out is that Seymour Duncan uses inverse wiring in the leads, so I had to reverse them when soldering. However, the base plated is grounded, so I had to cut the wire that connected the plate to the lead, and add another wire from the opposite lead to the base plate. If you reverse the leads and don't re-ground the base plate, the base plate and pickup magnets will be connected to the output, causing unbearable noise and an unstable connection to the output (it will turn on and off). It's pretty nerve wrecking to cut part of the wire of a new pickup, so take this into account if you're planning to install it yourself.

I did a lot of research on the best way to get a Tele sound in the bridge of a Strat. My first thought was just to go to Seymour Duncan's site and look to see if they had anything and boom, right there in the description. I thought that it couldn't be that easy so I did more digging and looked at a lot of reviews on different forums and I read a lot of really cool ideas and I learned about a lot of other pickup companies. What seemed to be the one thing that all the forums had in common was that no one ever said anything bad about the Twang Banger. People said that they put an actual Tele pickup in a Strat and it still did not sound exactly the same because of the wood and the body and all that jazz. So I new I was not getting an exact sound alike but what I was wanting was just to get close and that is exactly what the Twang Banger did. My girlfriend has an American Tele (standard, 2013) and so I had to do a back to back test and damned if it wasn't close. The main difference is when you do lead lines further up the neck but doing cowboy chords and what not was shockingly close to the sound of the American Tele. I had a MIM Strat Deluxe, the one with the Vintage Noiseless pickups in it. I know pickups can be extremely subjective but when looking around, the one thing that I looked for was what do most people say is fair. No pickup can please everyone but one pickup can make most people say "Hmmm sounds pretty good" and that is the Twang Banger... well for people wanting that sound.

Pickup sounds good, unfortunately it’s unusable with the amount of hiss it has.

First, this does NOT make a Tele out of your Strat. But it can get very close to that fullness & bite (that doesn't pierce your ears) that a Tele has. Mine was setup with a 3-way switch & classic Tele wiring but still with 3 pots. The middle (tone) pot was used to blend in the middle pickup as needed without the need for 5-way switching. Turn down the main volume, turn up that pot for the middle & you can get a great rhythm middle pickup sound by itself. The APST1 is wonderful in terms of not being as thin as many classic bridge pickups. Such a setup makes for an excellent working guitar for someone perhaps doing a variety of material in a band & needing to cover alot of tonal bases. Note: Pay attention to the instructions from Seymour Duncan. If you have pretty mainstream Fender Strat pickups you WILL have to reverse the leads on one to get this to work correctly, as Duncan winds differently (classic way before Fender changed in early 50's), so use your ears. It's a simple process, but you'll "probably" have to reverse the leads unless you're running S-D pickups for the others. Worth having though.

Seymour Duncan guitar pickups are top picks by many "A" list guitar players. The Twang Banger is another great example of his ability. The Twang Banger is designed for Strat type guitars that want a Telecaster tone and it delivers. It comes closer to a Tele tone when put in the bridge position and slightly more like a Strat in the neck.I've put them in Strats and like the sound. This particular one I put in a 1966 Fender Mustang in the neck position and a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder in the bridge. The Mustang now has both a Tele/Strat tone and it's out of phase positions sound great as well. When I bought the Mustang in the late 70's it's original pickups had been replaced by some early market units that sounded poor. It now sounds great and has numerous tones to play with from surf to rock to country. The TB is a great replacement for any Strat bridge pickup, it gives you sound of a Tele in the correct place, the bridge! Get one!