Hi all,

I am looking for some advice on possible upgrades to my Fender USA Stratocaster bridge.

Basically, I just like tinkering with my guitar to try and achieve the best possible tone, and now it is the bridges turn to get a bit of attention.

I have a 1999 Fender USA Standard Stratocaster with its original bridge.

It has the smooth style saddles (before they reverted back to the pressed steel, vintage style ones) and a painted (which I believe is cast metal) tremolo block.

These are the main two areas I wish to upgrade. Firstly, can anyone tell me what my saddles are made from (maybe some kind of cast metal?)?

I see that the Deluxe American Stratocaster now uses saddles which look pretty much identical to these but are made from a polished stainless steel.

Can anyone tell me if these are any good? I was just curious to how the stainless would affect the tone? Only I once tries the Fender stainless bullet strings and found them far too tinny for my taste.

Also, I have been looking at the Callham solid steel tremolo block as a possible replacement. Has anyone hade any experience with these? I hear they get quite good reviews.

Thanks guys, any help or advice will be much appreciated

Russ

These are, as always, just my own personal opinions and should only be taken as such.

Personally I think the Callaham blocks are a VERY worthwhile investment. I put one in my '96 MIM and the improvement was on par with new pickups...made a HUGE difference in regards to sustain and even tone. Now granted, my MIM came stock with the dinky little half sized zinc block...with your USA model, the difference may not be as significant but I would still think it would be a very worthwhile upgrade.

Now as far as the bridge saddles go, I've probably had every style of saddle on and off my '96 MIM over the years and honestly...the difference is quite negligible at best. I've never tried brass so that might make a little bit of a difference but I still doubt it would be all that significant. In this regard, I just went back to my original stamped steel saddles. Unless you're having some specific problem such as strings breaking at the saddle or the strings binding for some reason, there's not really too much point in changing them...unlike pickups and a trem block, they don't really make any significant difference in regards to things like "tone". I don't wish to sound rude here but it almost sounds as though you're changing things just for the sake of changing them...if that's the case, I wouldn't bother with the bridge saddles.

Again, just my own personal $.02 worth.

Peace,
Jim

The inertia block on the american standard is steel, powder coated. According to Mike Eldred its exactly the same steel that callaham are saying fender have never used. The only difference I can see is the cut off angled edge to allow more tremolo travel. A flat sided inertia block will only impair travel. I put one (block only) on my MIM and noticed a difference. The MIM does use a cast inertia block though. So I'd put my money on thats where the noticable improvement lies. I put a wilkinson 5+1 trem on the same guitar and noticed a drastic improvement over the MIM/callaham trem.

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