Artec Hotrail in a Mexican Strat

Another Nice Budget Pickup

I installed an Artec Hotrail pickup in the bridge position of my friend’s Mexican Standard Strat today. He was looking to get a warmer and fatter tone than that of the stock bridge pickup.

It sounds pretty good. It’s not an extremely high-output pickup, so it’s still quite easy to get decent clean tones from it. The specs are:

Alnico 5 magnet, DC resistance between 11k & 12k ohms. Even with the original 250k pots it has plenty of sparkle without actually sounding bright. I’d say tonally it’s more in the vintage realm than modern, which is a good thing in my book.

It’s got most of the tonal qualities of a vintage humbucker without the excessive lows that I often find a problem with full-size humbuckers.

Overall it’s a good pickup, especially considering it was just £15.