Guitar tones.

I play an Epiphone Les Paul like guitar with two hummbuckers.
Is there a way to get the sound of a Strat at the second position pick up switch?

 

The best way to get the sound of a strat is to get a strat. Sorry for that answer but it's true! A LP is a big lump of mahogany with humbuckers and a set neck. A strat is a tremelo equiped bolt on thing made one of a variety of woods but not typically mahogany. It has 3 single coils bolted into a bit of plastic that sits over a big hollow bit of the guitar.

I have a tele, a strat, a semi-hollow with P90s and a couple of humbucker equiped guitars. None sound exactly alike and the only one that sounds just like a strat is the one that is supposed to.

If you have 4 wires on your humbuckers and are handy with a soldering iron then you can get a bit closer. You could do the 'Jimmy Page Wiring Kit' mod on your LP (I've done this on mine and if you google for it you can buy kits or just find the diagram to DIY). What this does is to give you two coil taps and the ability to put the middle position in phase / out of phase.

This will get you closer to a strat sound (as it'll be a single coil) but it still won't sound like a strat and even with the Jimmy Page wiring where you can flip the phase, it still does not do the position 2 or position 4 sounds that a Strat does. I did the mod on mine for live use as it does really nice single coil tones now, but they are still not as nice as the single coils on the strat IMO and still won't do what you want.... Sorry!

Gary

 

OR get a James Tyler Variax from Line 6. It will do all the sounds you need, including acoustics, banjo, dobro, 12strings as well as the expected assortment of electric guitars. Line 6 hit the nail on the head with this product. I have a Paul Reed Smith and and American Strat that never get played anymore since I got this guitar. Awesome for live and studio work. The one thing you may miss though is the pick up noise and hum, they didn't model that so if you like that stuff going on in the background you'll have to look elsewhere.

 

I haven't heard this latest generation of Variax but I did have one of the originals.

I loved it up to a point. It was great through modelling amps. Then I discovered valves and found that, no matter what you did, you still had that piezo thing going on underneath it all.... It gave a good flavour of everything but all of the lovely harmonic stuff that goes on with a pickup just wasn't there. The noise isn't either, but the Variax really did throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Of course, it may be now with the new Variax but I don't intend to find out personally.

As for the OP, he's asking for Strat sounds. You're telling him to buy a model of guitar that costs an awful lot of money that does a whole bunch of things he may not want.....

 

I don't think there's any comparison between earlier variax's and the new JTV. I was really underwhelmed by the earlier incarnations. I don't think the re-did the models per se but the increased processing horsepower really brought these models to life.

I'm not telling anyone to do anything, I'm simply bringing the product to his attention. If you're gonna spend the money on a strat, it's something to consider. I have a strat, if I wanted to record a strat I would use the variax, and that goes for the les Paul, gretch, rickebacker, tele etc etc etc. and also for acoustics, it sounds better than and acoustic with a piezo direct and easier to get a good sound than using a mic. Of course, if you messed around with a good mic and good sounding acoustic you could do better than you can with the variax, but you're gonna spend a bunch of time on it for a marginal improvement. And a little heads up, there's a version update coming in which they have re-done the acoustics with more detail, should be out in a few weeks after which maybe I'll rethink my previous statement.

Maybe the OP doesn't want more than just a strat sound and if that's all he wants the ya get the strat or try wiring in some coil taps and try to get close. Just keep in mind you're gonna be trying to find that right angle to hold the guitar so that the whole recording signal isn't hum.

I just think before you do that you should be aware of other options. If I didn't like strats I wouldn't own one, but I had to swap out the pickups and put in HS3's. The JTV is just a lot more versatile, for live and recording.