Bulldog Pickups Formvar '50s

bulldog formvar 50's full set of hand wound pickups for strats... passive of course, there weren't any active pickups in the 50's to my knowledge...

i have a fair collection of guitars... including three strats (2 usa)... the strat in question is a usa texas special for which the stock pickups must have been ok in the first place for me to buy the guitar...but i soon found them a little thin and uninspiring and changed them for seymour duncans, from neck to bridge as follows; cool rail humbucker in a single coil package, seymour duncan quarter pounder and finally a mini jb. on my other strats i had stock on the mex and a set of emg dg-20's on the strat deluxe... of all 3 my favourite axe was actually the mex for lead stuff... but it did mush out a little with chord work... i wanted something that could fit all applications, and my least favourite sound was comming from the seymour duncan texas special strat.

i heard some positive feedback from people who used bulldog p-90's, so i got in contact with the people at bulldog... i reckoned the formvar 50's were what i was looking for... a good clean tone for breaks, fairly thick but well defined for chords and coped well with overdrive and distortion

sound is fairly hot, well defined, and well thick enough for good clean breaks... again plenty of response if you dig in... the guys at bulldog warned me that the treble response would be superior to anything else i had been using, but without being overbearing or gritty... they weren't kidding! the sound of the texas special was transformed, my fovourite general strat sound was middle and neck pickups together before i used the formvar50's, but with the formvar 50's its neck on its own, very usable tone, very appealing, excellent for clean breaks...however, i found my D string sounded pretty awfull, this sound beind due to a fret buzz problem around the 8th to 14th frets that i couldn't even hear with the previous pickups! so i performed a set up job armed with the new pick ups, in short the guitar sounds fantastic. tbh i prefer a slightly higher action to let the strings trully ring out with more sustain, probably the set up was well overdue, but you just couldn't hear the problem with the previous sets of pickups.

i have about 14 assorted guitars..the fender texas special strat was pretty much in the bottom 3, i felt that the potential of this guitar should justify a more favourable degree of usuage, hence i switched out the pickups to the formvar 50's. that was some four weeks back, now the guitar is the first i pick up to play, the guitar i take most commonly to jams etc... i would have no hesitation recomending bulldog pickups.

Humbucking, passive(don't need active with this), is ceramic magnet(have the bridge one), 17.6k

Ibanez sas36fm,
have it in the bridge position
am replacing a Bareknuckles Nailbomb, wasn't quite enough for me
Have two singles again by Bulldog

Loud could kill at a hundred yards
Am using it through my podxt into an atomic amp
Tone is balanced, maked my guitar sound a lot bigger and heavier without sounding like mud
what weird is is sweet for thrash, very heavy distortion stuff(guess in the name), but is clear but not sharp like some ceramics clean and split
Is designed for bridge the one I have

If destroyed or stolen I would hunt them down and have them for tea with fava beans and a nice chianti
love everything hate nothing
tried a lot of bareknuckles and don't get me wrong they are great...but this was the one for me
As for service the guy there goes the extra mile to help.....more info you give the more he will try(successfully)to get the sound you want.

Single coil
(specs from Bulldog Pickups website)
Bidge 6.5k, middle 5.9k, neck 5.8k
Heavy formvar wire
Alnico III hand bevelled magnets
Fiber top and bottom plate
Cloth covered push back wire

Guitar is a Fender Highway 1, build in 2003.
I replaced all the original Fender Pickups with Bulddog pickups.
Reason for changing is that the Fender pickups are rather 'thin' sounding. I never used the Fender bridge pickup because it sounded painfully sharp. Recently (2006) Fender have done an upgrade to the Hihway 1 series and also upgraded the pickups (I guess that confirms my findings:)
So the new highway 1 may sound better than the original Highway 1, but the original looks better than the 2006 update.

I used a Matamp 1224mk7 tube amp to test the pickups. No effect, just the guitar and the amp.
The output level increased compared to the original Fenders.
The Bulldog tone is amazing, the fat tones never get muddy and the sharper tones never get harsh. I get great tones on all switch positions. I have done this Kinman mod that gives all 7 basic combinations of the 3 pickups plus progressive mixing of neck into middle, neck into bridge or neck into bridge+middle.

I will never change the Bulldog pickups, they'll stay in forever. The Highway 1 is a new much better guitar with these pickups. Best buy in many years.

Next to the Fender Highway 1, I have a Gibson Les Paul Studio and a Gretsch Tenn Rose.

Last note: The Bulldog Pickups guy is great to do busines with, he will help you find the tone you want. You just describe the tone, he will do the tech stuff.