A David Gilmour Inspired Strat - Redux

A little over two years ago I put together a parts-caster using the EMG DG20 pickup set. This set of pickups was used by David Gilmour starting in around 1985 at the Live Aid concert. He'd continue to use the active pickups through about 2005 when he would return to the Black Strat and it's traditional single coils. When I first got the EMG DG20 together, it sounded good - by itself. Unfortunately most of the Gilmour sounds and pedals I'm trying to emulate are from the earlier albums, and the active pickups didn't stack well with my amplifiers and effects pedals. So given I have many guitars and this one wasn't being played - I had two options. I could try and sell it (the market for parts-casters as a unit is not good), or I could pull out the active pickups and re-wire it with single coils. After some unsuccessful attempts at the former, I settled on the latter, and I'm very happy I did!

As you can see above, I decided to keep the black on black look of the original build - just with passive single coils rather than the active pickups. You can also see some pick abrasion on the pickguard - because, well, this guitar has been played more in the last two weeks than the original build was played... ever. 

On any build like this, the first decision is what pickups to use. I've always loved the tone of Gilmour's original Black Strat, so I decided to see if I could track down some pickups that would match that guitar's electronics. There are tons of sites out there that will recommend one pickup or another, but while cruising Reverb I happened across Radioshop Pickups. They're a small outfit in the UK, and they had a set of pickups specifically wound to match the Frankenstein set in the Black Strat. They weren't cheap, but they weren't any more expensive than the original DG20 set - and as I like supporting small businesses - I decided to go for it. 

I was absolutely blown away by what I received. My pickups were made to order so it took a few weeks for them to arrive from the UK. When I got them, everything about them - from the presentation to the pickups themselves sort of screamed bespoke - but in a good way not a pretentious way. It felt like they really cared not only about their product but how it was presented. The set came in a lovely box with each pickup individually wrapped. The pickups themselves (shown below in my initial test fit) were all clearly marked and used high quality vintage wiring.

I knew with pickups this nice, I needed a great wiring set to go along with the amazing pickups. I decided to go with the 920D pre-wired harness with a five way switch and pure-tone jack (I've really loved using those on several projects). As it was Christmas, I'd gotten a couple of Amazon gift cards (as some people seem to think I'm hard to shop for... and to be fair they're absolutely, positively right) and I was able to pick one up with my Christmas money. The only odd bit about the pre-wired harness is the pure-tone jack is already soldered in - which makes actually running the wiring to the top jack plate, well, impossible. I ended up having to de-solder the jack and re-solder it once the jack was installed on the plate.

The nice thing about the wiring all being set on a harness is I could run the connections from the pickups to the rest of the wiring harness without removing the pots and switch from the backing card. The 920D harness comes with detailed instructions, and all of the vintage wiring looks amazing. I added a separate ground for the body as well to finish the ground path (the green wire). 

Once everything was wired up, I attached everything to the pickguard and it was ready to install in the body of the guitar. Final installation was straightforward. Next I worked to set the pickup height. As these are more vintage-style pickups, I used my '57 American Vintage II Stratocaster as a guide.

I figured it would be worth a comparison of the "before" and "after" shots of the guitar. Below is the DG20 in its original configuration. There were a few changes after this. First I moved from a white-tipped tremolo arm to a black tipped one. Eventually I replaced the whole MIM bridge assembly with one from an ultra Stratocaster.

As you can see below, the current incarnation (and likely the final incarnation - the only tweak I may eventually make would be to move to locking tuners) still includes the same body (MIM aged cherry burst - simply because it's amazing), the American made neck and tuners, the Ultra strat trem, and the new (-ish) pickguard and pickups.

Once this was together and set up, I immediately had to test it with all of my Gilmour inspired pedals. It literally exceeded all of my expectations. I can get a very respectable "Time" or "Comfortably Numb" tone with a Big Mutt (Violet Ram's Head Big Muff), Thagomizer (Colorsound Power Boost), and a nice analog delay pedal (honestly the limitation is me, not the guitar). It also does other genres well and has turned into a really amazing instrument! I'm glad I ended up going with the rebuild, because it's definitely a keeper now!