Replacing Pickups help needed

Hello all
Even though I'm lucky enough to own a couple of decent guitars I've always had a special place in my heart for my first guitar Squire Strat (yeah I know most people think they suck etc) I think its an affinity series one so it feels a bit nicer than the tea chest wood ones they make at the moment. Basically I was considering replacing the pickups on it so I'll be able to use it again (not for gigging just for doodling with). However I've never done this before so I have a few questions.

1) I play mainly punk/rock and occasionally blues music, can anyone recommend a good set of pickups that dont cost the earth!
2) How difficult is it to change pickups? I'm happy with soldering and I've had my guitar apart a few times to nosy around. Should it prove to difficult?
3) If I replaced the bridge pickup with a humbucker is this any more difficult that replacing it with a single coil pickup (electronics wise) and will I need to buy a new pickguard to seat it, or can I somehow widen the hole?

Hope someone can help me with this, I'd like to be able to play my first born again :)

Ta

Neal

You will need to enlarge the hole in the pickguard and the pocket in the guitar body to accomodate the humbucker. Some skill is required to get clean-looking results.

Electronically, you can simply swap the pickups and retain the stock wiring, or add Series/Parallel selection to your palette. The stock Strat 5-position switch already has out-of-phase connections (positions 2 & 3), and you may want to add another tone pot. You might consider a Master Volume with separate Tone pots instead of the stock arrangement.

The sky's the limit. Do whatever you think will work best for you. Even if you change your mind later, you can re-arrange things to suit yourself.

Thanks for the reply you've given me food for thought
*wanders off to find his soldering iron"
Thanks again

Neal

The trouble with installing pickups in a strat is the way the pickups are mounted to the pickguard can create difficulties. An easy option can be to buy a new pickguard (with a wider hole for the humbucker - no messy sawing of plastic) with the pickups already mounted on it. Then, what you can do is simply to remove the old pickguard and pickups and swap them over, wire for wire. This makes it a bit easier not to get confused, though it does make modifications to the basic setup harder. My squier standard series already has the routing required to put humbuckers in both the neck and middle positions, so you may find that you don't need to cut any wood out of your guitar.

Forget the wonders of drilling & cutting and get Hot Rails.