Just picked up a new Olympic White Maple American Standard Strat with all single coil pickups. I have played a Les Paul the majority of the time previously. I really like how it plays but am somewhat confused by the various pickup options as it sounds so different from what I am used to.

Could you guys let me know what pickups you currently play through and when. For example when soloing do you primarily play just the bridge pickup? When do you use position 2 and 4?

Also is there a pickup upgrade people would recommend to eliminate the noise the single coil pickups make when playing through my Mesa Boogie Mark IIC+?

Any other upgrades I should look at? I switched out the tuners for locking ones already.

Hi Mikebu, Welcome to the forum Mate.

If it is an 08 Am Standard Strat, don't change those pickups. lol Just my opinion.

I don't know if you own a Fender amp or not, but if you don't, you need to get one Bro.

The Fender Strat and a Valve Fender amp go hand in hand with each other.

Please repost with what Genre of music you mostly play...that will give people some indication as to any suggested mods options, if you are prepared for interesting responses. lol.

Enjoy and please post pic's...

For me, it's pretty rare for me to use bridge pickups on Strats. Seems I only use them in rare occasions when I feel like I want a lot of treble on a clean solo or something. But I'm more into the neck and middle sounds personally.

It's all gonna be personal preference in the end. I've never really been a big fan of a single bridge sound as what I primarily use, but they can be real handy for recordings when I just want something over the top trebly, or maybe just in certain spots where I just want to switch flavors for dynamics. I know quite a few others who prefer the exact opposite and ride the bridge a lot.

You're gonna have a lot of fun playing around with your Strat. There's SO many things you can do with them when it comes to versatility live and textural capabilities for recordings.

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Entirely depends on what song your playing. But for bluesy stuff I may start off on neck or neck/middle. Get the sound right, aiming for something really mellow and not too irritating to the ear. Then flick it to bridge to see how much punch it gets on just the one pickup. Changing how much attack and where you pick makes a big difference.



I hardly get any hum at all on my MIA Standard. Always check the guitar straight to the amp through a couple of different cables. Also Try the two humbucking positions.

If the amp is fully cranked and you have the gain right up you are going to hear some noise. But first it pays to know if its the one guitar over another.
If you replace the pickups you should first have an idea of what you want to sound like.

If its the amp it doesn't matter what you do at the guitar end. If its the guitar and not the environment then you can get the guitar checked out or insulated better before getting to the pickup stage.

I'd use a noise gate if the problem is isolated before the amp and nothing else works.

For me it completely depends on my mood and the style of music I'm playing. As for you, experiment and learn what you like. There are no rules so just go with the sounds that inspire you to play the notes you hear in your head.

The easiest and most effective way to eliminate 60 Hz hum is to use hum canceling pickups like the Fender Noiseless series or the Dimarzio Area series of pickups. Be aware that while hum canceling pickups eliminate the 60 Hz noise, they will not sound precisely the same as standard non-hum canceling pickups. That said, hum canceling pickups do sound really, really close to standard single coils.

Myself, I find there are no hard and fast rules, but...

- I tend to the use neck pickup for blues, with the tone knob at 10 to provide a bit of cut. It's a big, rich sound, and probably my favourite sound on the Stratocaster.
- For a sweet, mellow sound, I love neck+mid. There's a reason why John Mayer uses it all over the place!
- The middle pickup is actually my jack-of-all-trades choice. It sounds like a less-bassy version of the neck pickup. If I'm not going for a specific sound, I tend to use this one.
- Mid+bridge is a wonderful sound. Slam the strings with a hard pick and it's quack-quack-quack. Back off, and it's subtler. I actually wrote an entire song around a riff using just this pickup for the rhythm work.
- Bridge alone is trebly, and can be used for anything. I actually really like this sound, though as you can tell, it's pretty divisive among Strat players!

If you wanted to completely eliminate the hum, you'd need to go with noiseless, aka humbucking pickups. My favourite (though they're expensive) are the DiMarzio "Area" pickups. I've learned to live with the hum, myself.

One mod a lot of people do (and which I'll be doing shortly) is to either switch the second tone knob to control the bridge pickup instead of the middle, or to add a jumper wire so that it controls both. I'll be doing the latter.

Thanks for all the responses this is exactly what I wanted to know. With the Les Paul I primarily just use the Bridge pickup. Not used to having all these different options.

When I use a single pickup I get a little hiss on my amp. Switching to position 2 or 4 stops the hiss. I'll probably leave the pickups alone for now.

I'm mainly a rock/metal guy having grown up in the 80's. I understand metal is not a strong suit of the guitar. But I have my other guitar for that.

I absolutely love how the neck plays. One thing that feels weird to me is how the Volume knob hits my picking hand when I palm mute stuff. I'm used to having my space for my hand.

+1 for what prolog mentioned about pickups. You will end up using all combinations. That is a beauty of strats.
Hum you either learn to live with it or upgrade to any humbucking stacked pickups. Trust me, if the hum is that bad it is due to the poor shielding and crappy cables most of the time. Both issueas are easy to fix.

Your Am Std has "delta tone" pot for the bridge and middle pickups so you don't need to do a tone pot to pickup bridging.

By "hiss" you mean "hum" correct? The reason you're not getting as much or any noise in positions 2 and 4 is because the middle pickup is reverse wound, reverse polarity (a.k.a. RWRP) which makes 2 pickups buck the hum when combined but that doesn't make them a humbucker as far as sound goes.

I can understand that switching from an LP to a Strat is a bit of change but Strats can do metal with the right EQ and gain.

I know what you mean. It's a bit of change for me as well. If you find overtime that it really bothers you, you can always get a new pickguard that remedies that by moving the volume control to where the middle tone control is. This also means you have single master tone control for all pickups.

When David Gilmour is soloing with Pink Floyd does he typically use the same sound all the time? What pickup setting should I start with to try to sound like him?

And yes I know I'll never sound like him

Yeah. That, and him running through a huge rack of God knows what makes more than a little contribution, too ...

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Getting this is a good start(below link). Read the specs. below link and then go to www.gilmourish.com and read. You will find a lot of info. Here is guitar and spec link
http://www.fender.com/customshop/instru ... 0150068806

I use them all. It depends on what I want to hear. They can all be used for both soloing and rhythm playing.





Those of us who are baby boomers and have been playing Fenders all our lives will say "what noise?". Seriousy, if you hear noise, it means you're not playing.





Upgrade, schmupgrade. What don't you like about the guitar? Do you want to upgrade so you can be like all the cool kids?

I wouldn't swap out those pickups at all,some noise is part and parcel of single coil pups.Using position 2 or 4 will help cut down on unwanted noise and any noise is usually evident only when no signal is going to the amp.The 2&4 positions will give you the nice chimey out of phase sound such as in Jimi's Little Wing or The Wind Cries Mary.I rarely us the bridge pup alone for leads prefering the neck pup alone or the bridge and middle combined(pos2).I'm not familiar with Mesa Boogies but a Strat through a Marshall with Bass Treble Mid and presence on full sounds great.Hope this was somewhat helpful.Welcome to Fenderdom.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.