Thanks for everybodies help with my basket case strat. Between the basket case and a kit that was complete EXCEPT no electronics, I had enough to put the Fender back together, and even have another body and neck-which I painted a medium metal flake green-had some cans of spray paint left over from a 1970 Yamaha Street and trail bike, so I used it to paint the body on the kit guitar.

Anyway the Fender sounds great. Electric guitars are SO much easier to play than acoustic.

Now for some questions-

The Strat has 3 SS pickups (bridge, mid and neck) Are the 3 pickups suppose to sound approximately the same? If so what is the point to having 3 pickups and a 5 way switch? Are they supposed to sound different-say like mellow, twangy and really twangy?

What EXACTLY is the 2 tone knobs suppose to do? The tone does not change much -except it seems to get louder when put up toward 10 than say down near 1. If the tone knobs crank up the volume than what is the volume knob suppose to do?

Finally-the new strings I bought over at Walmart for $5 were light .009 for the 1st string. Mercifully I broke it while bending and choking the string. Because the pickups could not get decent sound from it. I did replace it with an acoustic 1st string of .010 size and now the pickups ring great. So does anybody else have this problem? (and yeah I tried adjusting the pickups as well as move the string closer to the pickups. No dice. But no problem with the .010

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So heres to your survival, swimming up the stream, crossing over one dam after another till we get to Rock and Roll Heavens Gate!

You have the same questions on a previous thread. Just to answer it again...

3 pickups have different sounds. Your tone pot should alter them, if they are doing volume, sounds like they aren't wired right.

in a five position selector where as position one is "up" towards the neck:
1) Neck pickup only, base/blues like tone, avoids sharp tones
2) Neck and Middle, sort of "Quack" like tone, more base, less treble
3) Middle only, more distant tone, not as much base, not to sharp either
4) Middle/Bridge, more "Quack" with more attack/sharp tone.
5) Bridge only. Very bright/sharp. Need tone control to keep it from being too piercing...

As for the strings, common problem with thin strings. A higher gauge string takes away a sharper tone. However, pickup height makes a difference. Acoustic strings are not as magentic, so it may be your pickups are set too high and the magnets in the coils are pulling the strings out of tune to a almost warbly effect...

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"Epitaph on a blues musician’s tombstone: “I didn’t wake up this morning”" Davy Knowles


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The tone knobs roll the highs off the pups. One important thing to note is that in the standard strat wiring scheme, neither of the tone knobs do anything to the bridge pickup.

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life is too short for bad tone.

I've never liked that and always change it so I can use tone on the bridge pup....can't stand the icepick treble.

I can't stand the icepick either, but that's more the pup's fault than the wiring scheme. My presumption is that they underwind their pickups to save money resulting in the icepick. But if you have one thats wound to a higher resistance, something closer to the actual vintage resistance, you won't have that problem.

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life is too short for bad tone.