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DarkSTARan
I have a first act electric guitar (yeah its cheap), and my friend was telling me I would be better off buying a new better guitar than upgrading the pickups. So my real question is: Is it possible to put new pickups in a first act guitar without cutting/drilling holes to make it fit?
Answer
Most of the time, no routing and drilling is needed, unless the pickups are really huge vs your existing cavity size, or with some guitars when you want to go from single coil to humbuckers. Consult with a guitar tech to get a better answer than that.
Does the guitar play well, and does it have the basic tone that you like? If so, then you don't need to get a new guitar, just get new pickups. In a general sense, you want the basic tone to be in the guitar, and pickups to help balance the tone out and have the right amount of output suitable for your style of music.
For instance, if I want a relatively dark tone, but one still suitable for non-detuned punk music, I would probably go with a mahogany guitar and pickups that are medium-hot with a lower bass response than other pickups. If I wanted a versatile guitar, I might go for a basswood guitar (yes, I said it) with a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge and Pearly Gates or a DiMarzio PAF Joe in the neck. For alt/indie/pop punk, I might go with an alder or basswood body and relatively high-output pickups with a decent or large amount of bass response - the Strat + Seymour Duncan Invaders is a well-traveled route, ie, Blink 182.
So it kinda depends what you want. Be aware that if you have too hot of a pickup in the bridge you won't be able to get a clean sound out of it... I believe the Invaders fall into that category.
Saul
Most of the time, no routing and drilling is needed, unless the pickups are really huge vs your existing cavity size, or with some guitars when you want to go from single coil to humbuckers. Consult with a guitar tech to get a better answer than that.
Does the guitar play well, and does it have the basic tone that you like? If so, then you don't need to get a new guitar, just get new pickups. In a general sense, you want the basic tone to be in the guitar, and pickups to help balance the tone out and have the right amount of output suitable for your style of music.
For instance, if I want a relatively dark tone, but one still suitable for non-detuned punk music, I would probably go with a mahogany guitar and pickups that are medium-hot with a lower bass response than other pickups. If I wanted a versatile guitar, I might go for a basswood guitar (yes, I said it) with a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge and Pearly Gates or a DiMarzio PAF Joe in the neck. For alt/indie/pop punk, I might go with an alder or basswood body and relatively high-output pickups with a decent or large amount of bass response - the Strat + Seymour Duncan Invaders is a well-traveled route, ie, Blink 182.
So it kinda depends what you want. Be aware that if you have too hot of a pickup in the bridge you won't be able to get a clean sound out of it... I believe the Invaders fall into that category.
Saul
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