After trying many different strings on my American Standard Stratocaster, I noticed the sound seems more balanced when using strings that have a wound G string. With a plain (unwound) G, the G seems to be much hotter than all the other strings.

Has anyone else noticed this?

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American Standard Stratocaster

No, you're not hearing things. The original Strat pickup design was for a wound G string as back then, there were no plain G string sets. Sparing you all the details up to this typing, the long and short of it is that even with that mismatched G polepiece (per today's most common string sets), this outdated design is still very popular. The good news for you is that if you choose to use an unwound G string, the OEM pickup set in American Standards allow for you to simply push that G polepiece down into your pickup (just like the B string's polepiece) and merrily play on with a now, equalized unwound G string.

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You dig?