Guitar Opinions Needed?

Hello there,

As Tony and OU812 correctly point out, distortion is a matter of the amp and not the guitar. Thumbs up to both.

If all you need is to be able to add some distortion for certain songs, get a distortion pedal to use between your guitar and your amp. Boss DS-1 is a good basic distortion pedal (and it is inexpensive). If you have more to spend, look at the Pro Co Rat.

I doubt if the Seymour Duncan pickups will give you the tone you are looking for. I like those pickups and have them in one of my Strats. They are called California 50s because they are vintage voiced, low output pickups. That is a sound much different from any of the music you said you play. If you wanted a Buddy Holly sound, those pickups would be great.

The ESP LTD guitar is quite different from your Strat. It has a 24 3/4 inch scale length. That means the frets are closer together than on your Strat. Also, it has a fixed bridge. Your Strat has a tremolo bridge. So if you switch to the ESP LTD, you will lose your whammy bar.

My guess is that a decent distortion pedal will solve your problem. If you like your Strat and are considering a pickup swap, think about just dropping a humbucker in the bridge position. That would give you some tonal change that would probably work well with your band and you will have the neck and middle pickups for your other songs.

Later,

Norm

Hey Donathan, you are little confused about how clean and distortion work. This is a product of the amp and/or distortion/OD pedals. The guitar has nothing to do with it. If you hear someone say a guitar with humbuckers is better for distorted tones, this is just because as you increase distortion the guitar can get more noisy. It is referred to as 60 cycle hum. A humbucker has the word hum in it for a reason. It was made to decrease the amount of 60 cycle hum. So a humbucker equipped guitar like the LTD still sounds clean with no distortion. It will just have less hum with distortion. Understand?

Now there are some tonal differences between humbuckers and single coils. A humbucker will have a little fatter sound, but a single coil is brighter and has slightly better note articulation. Hope this make sense.

A guitar is not "more distorted" than another guitar. Plug in any guitar to any clean amp and it will play clean.

Distortion is determined and controlled by the amp's gain and headroom, and by the overdrive or distortion pedals that are used.

Changing the pickups will help the amp reach the point where the amp overdrives, but in itself, it will not make the amp distort, and certainly not on Green Day levels. Probably Albert King levels if you have a low wattage tube amp.

In your case, it is best to buy a distortion pedal, as you will most likely need them anyway even if you get the LTD or change your pickups. I suggest getting fuzz or fuzz-distortion like a ProCo RAT or a Big Muff or Metal Muff.

I agree with the answer you have. Distortion/overdrive comes from the amp or an effects pedal. Any guitar can produce a clean or a distorted sound.

You can't really compare a set of Strat type pickups mounted on a scratchplate with a set neck guitar with humbuckers.