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I bet a bunch of you have experience with this, any recommendations? I want a fuller sound then my stock pups. I play in a psychy Wooden Shjips type band.

what are your stock ones? 69RI? 65RI? vintage?

'65RI

I have Lindy Fralin Texas Special Jazzmaster pups in my Jagmaster. Lindy Fralin makes good pickups and is a class act. I would totally feel comfortable buying his Mustang pups. I would like to get a set of higher output Mustang pups for one of my upcoming project guitars.

I was about to say, the '65 RI pups are among the best Mustang pickups you can get today - handmade to the same specs won't be better in any noticeable way. But I see Fralin offers them with different windings, so you may find something that offers some more output there.

Only thing is, they're rather expensive. As the only difference between his Strat and Mustang PUs seem to be the polepieces, which everybody can do non-staggered and which also can be ignored, you may as well check out other companies?

i've had trouble finding places that sell decent pick-ups for mustangs in the uk. I'd never actually considered strat pups for my mustang, just never popped into my mind. might have a look into it, are they easy enough to fit?

thickarms wrote:i've had trouble finding places that sell decent pick-ups for mustangs in the uk. I'd never actually considered strat pups for my mustang, just never popped into my mind. might have a look into it, are they easy enough to fit?

They are the same size so no harder to fit. You can get Strat pups with flat profiles rather than staggered, which are in effect what mustang pups are.
How much are you looking to spend?

I once had a problem with the depth of the routing, as some few Strat pickups are a little too high for them. But most should fit without problems. I currently have a Fender American Standard pup in it. Fits under the mustang cover with no problems. It's not making a thicker sound though. My recommends concerning "Boutique" companies would be the "pickup wizard" on ebay (frome canada, but ships to europe with no problems), and in Germany David Barfuss and Leosounds. SUre there are guys in England that do the same thing, but I don't know them. Maybe with the $-weakness, they are in the same range in the end though ... but you can check their prices on their websites and then mail them for your sound needs.

might have a mess around with it then. I have a lipstick tube that sounds really good in an out of use mexican strat, i'll see what the results are.

i'm a complete amateur at pick-up changing/wiring. The most i've done is soldered loose wires in pedals and swapped pick-ups in my strat. could anyone point me in the right direction to some wiring diagrams that'll help me put a strat pick-up in my mustang? the whole pick-up selector thing confuses me a bit in the 'stang

From our very own wiki:
How to wire a Fender Mustang

you won't need that. just disassemble the pickguard from the body, unscrew the pickup you want to replace and look where its wires go before you unsolder them. Then solder new pickup cables to the same 2 locations. If you have a colour mismatch concerning cables - black is usually on any pickup the ground while yellow or white equals red ("hot"). But on a Mustang confusing this leads to no real disadvantage.

I put a pair of SD Antiquites in my 1965 mustang. Someoe before me had pulled out the original and put stat pickups in it...sounded terrible.

The SD's really made it shine. Could handle anything I threw at it and they were too pricey. I left them uncovered too so I don't know if it changed any qualities of the pickups but I really liked what I heard from it.

Never dealt with the Mustang pups specifically, but i do have several sets of fralins in teles and strats. I love them to death. Def worth the dollars.