Never head that abut the strat, and its certainly not true.

The answer is it depends, but I like the gain about 40%-50% of max, tone controls fairly flat, or in the middle of their range. This gives a dirty rock sound, that you can clean up with the volume knob and warm up by rolling off the tone knob. You also get good dynamics to your strumming. Of coarse this depends on the amp but is generally a good starting point on most amps and you tweak it from there to your liking.

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

As far as settings on the guitar, any pickup cofig should work depending on the tone you need. For a thick backing clean part, I like the neck pu. For something tighter, focused and cutting through the mix I like the bridge pu. I have not found much excitement in middle pickups and middle toggle positions so far. On a strat the middle pickup is mostly used on settings 2 and 4 to cancel any unwanted hum and it creates that quack sound, which I don't use much personally, but I think it sounds kinda like Steve Miller in clean settings, which I like.....just don't use much. I have not used the middle pu by itself much at all

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

BASS,it is good to see you want to better yourself and I am going to give you an interesting fact,even if your the lead guitarist un a band you spend a good 85% of the time playing rhythem.A lot of people think rhythem is like a scond rate job (WRONG) and there are a ton of lead guitarist who are terrible rhythem players.Now to get better at what you want to do listen to the best.I know you mentioned country but you can go outside of you genre and listen to other music for ideas,lets look at some great rhythem players. Steve Cropper is one I would study, Keith Richards is another and a big user of open G tuning which is great sounding especialy for country type songs and so simple to play.Listen to Beatle records as they were all great players and used a lot of chords and always had great parts running through out there songsOn the heavy side Jmes Hetfeld is a beast down stroking his parts at like 200bpm is harder than most solos,and Dave Mustain another great metal rhythem player.Then theres thr rare combination of a great lead guitarist being a super great rhythem player and that would be HENDRIX and VANHALEN.tHATS WHERE YOU CONFUSED ME WITH THE STRAT NOT BEING A RHYTHEM GUITAR,listen to Little Wing,Bold as Love and Castles Made of Sand ,AS A MATTER OF FACT I LOVE LISTENING TO HENDRIX PLAY RHYTHEM OVER LEAD THATS HOW GOOD HE IS.And VanHalen just comes up with these incredible parts with chords ,riffs,harmonics,the floyd just brilliant.So you see it is not that easy being a great rhythem guitarist the thing is you want to come up with interesting parts that grab the listners ears and make things interesting instead of just strumming chords which works but is very boring for the most part.3 pedals I would recomend are a chorus a good distortion and a delay and listen to all kinds of music to pick up ideas and put it into your style.Zack Wylde is a dead out hard rock/metal player yet you hear chicken pickin in a lot of his leads he didnt pick that up from listening to metal.

I have an SCXD and my settings are:

Clean volume - about 3
Treble - 6.5
Bass - 3.5
F/X -- Set to Reverb; F/X Level set to 2.5

This is what I use with my SSS AmStd Strat but I should note that you're going to get a very clean rhythm with these settings. I more play old school rock 'n roll than hard/metal rock.

Even if you're looking for a harder sound, these would be good settings to use for practice since you'll hear exactly what you're playing.

Can't imagine though why someone would say a Strat isn't good for rhythm. Did they offer anything resembling a "fact" to support that?

Give Pearl Jam's 'Ten' a lot of attention. Stone Gossard's rhythm work on that album is among the best.

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Custom Shop '59 Strat with John Cruz Master Design Pickups
Vibro King
Fulltone Clyde>Deja-Vibe>TS-808>TS-9>Boss Tuner

I start with my amp EQ in the middle and adjust from there. I also have a 7 band EQ pedal on the floor. I pretty much have it in the middle as well except the 1 K setting is a little below middle position. Hope you find the sound you are looking for.

RK

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RK

2007 Fender Highway 1
2012 American Deluxe
2015 MIM Dave Murray HHH
2010 Fender Blacktop
1987 Fender Avalon Acoustic
2012 Marshall DSL 15 watt head