Last night I found a single-coil pickup I had packed away in a box and had no idea where it came from. It was in like-new condition, so I assumed it was something I bought within the past year or so and forgot about it. I measured its DC resistance and it comes to 10.92 kohm. It has what appears to be Alnico pole pieces.

Anyway, I googled the number stamped on the bottom of the bobbin (016730) and it turns out that's it's my old Fender bridge pickup that I took out of my 1987 American Std Strat when I got it back in '87 (that's why it looks new... been unused and stored in a box for 23 years).

But the weird part is the winding resistance - 10.92 kohm. I was very surprised at that so I checked to make sure my multimeter was working right against several other known pickups and took the reading several times... 10.92 kohm it is. By comparision the '87 middle position pickup, which I also have, comes in at 6.0 kohm... about where I expect it to be. I was thinking about getting a Dimarzio FS-1, SD Quarter Pound or a hot GFS pickup for the bridge position, but with this stock Fender being so hot I think I'll pop it back in (going for a overwound single-coil FS-1 type sound really).

My question is, has anybody heard of stock Fender Strat pickups on the Amer. Std. series being this hot???

The only Fender SC pickup I recall being that hot was the old X1 type that was used in the "The Strat" series of guitars. But I believe those dated to the early '80s. Wire it up and see what it sounds like.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I don't have tuning keys for that guitar yet, so it will be a few days before I can get it together and test it out. But when I do I'll update the thread with a mini-review. I also have an LCR meter, so I'll take the inductance of that pickup as well.

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread... but I promised to update it.

I later bought several pickups from late-1980s/early-90s Am. Std. Strats and they all measured in the 10-12 kohm and 4.5H range. Seems that Fender's new owners in the mid-to-late '80s "experimented" with hotter single coils to keep up with the trend for more power. These guitars came with TBX tone controls (1 Meg) that compensated for the slightly darker, hotter wound pickups, so they were still plenty bright. I was wrong about the 1987 middle position pickup, which I said measured 6.0 kohm - that was actually from a mid-90's Strat.

Tone and response wise I find those late-80s/early-90s overwound Fenders to be excellent pickups. They're hot enough to handle high gain well, but also have low enough inductances to be clear and bright, though they do not quite have the clarity and snappiness of Fender's typical 6.0k range pickups. They make excellent bridge pickups to match with more "traditional" Strat pickups in the neck and middle because they're warmer, higher output and tame the brittle highs that Strats can notoriously suffer from on the bridge position. In the neck and middle they match very well with high-output single coils like the Dimarzio FS-1 or SDS-1 and PAF type humbuckers.

I have a left-handed 1989 American Standard and I love it. The tonal variation of the bridge pickup is incredible. I can dial a muffled bass tone all the way to a bright high-end tone. And for some strange reason the pot seems to have a notch or setting right in the middle and it's where I tend to find my happy-medium in terms of tone.

I guess it could be deemed a hot pickup but I have to say, I have not been impressed with the other American Standards that I have tried out. I love the pickups on this guitar and I would never swap them out for replacements.



She's yellowed nicely over the years has she not.

If the 2nd tone pot has a notch in the middle (5) then your guitar had a TBX tone circuit.

TBX stands for Treble/Bass Xpansion.


The TBX control actually consists of a custom dual-ganged pot (aka a “stacked” or “stereo” pot), a resistor and a capacitor that cuts the bass and treble out of the circuit, depending on which way you turn the knob. This can add some new dimension to your solo parts, especially if you are going for those bright, crystal clear Jeff Beck tones.

The basic configuration of the TBX control (Fender part no. 0992052000) changed several times over the years. Fender used several different values for the two pots, the capacitor and the resistor. The first few versions also lacked a center detent function. The current version consists of a detented 250k/1 Meg stacked pot, a 0.022uF standard film capacitor, and an 82k-ohm carbon-film resistor. In a nutshell, the TBX tone control is a special pot that cuts either treble or bass instead of a normal tone pot, which cuts only treble. This is done with the dual-ganged pot, which is wired to work as a low-pass filter in one direction and a high-pass filter in the other. The center detent in the middle is provided for the off or “flat” position.

The dual-ganged pot is cleverly designed, meaning you can’t substitute a normal stereo pot to make your own budget TBX control.

How does it work?

The bottom pot (with the shaft up) is the normal tone control we all know. It’s a standard 250k audio pot with a range from 0 to 5 on the knob. At the detent (middle) position, it goes open and acts like a no-load tone pot, remaining out of the circuit from 5 to 10 on the knob.

Hope you'll find the information useful.

Beautiful Vintage White finish, IMO.

My '87 is almost the exact same colour, Olympic White - side-by-side to other older Olympic White Strats the late 80's Strats seem to fade with a little more of a minty-green yellowish shade to them than the more beige colour that most other Olympic White Strats fade to. I can see the same tint in yours as well.


The TBX doesn't actually cut bass, it acts only as a high pass filter for the first half of the pot's range and a simple resistor to ground over the second half of the TBX pot's range. It does not act as a low-pass filter.

It is categorically false for Fender or anyone else to advertise the TBX saying... "this tone control to cut either treble or bass instead of the standard style that attenuates treble only. When the control is set at the centered detent, it is off. Turning the control one way cuts treble; the other way cuts bass. The TBX can be also be wired as a master treble/bass control."

With the exception of "...the TBX can be also be wired as a master treble/bass control," that is completely untrue.

From 0-5 (detent) the TBX is essentially the same as Fender's traditional 250k tone control (using a 0.022uF cap instead of 0.047uF), but with a 82k resistor in parallel (which makes it a little darker). After the detent (from 5-10 on the dial) the 250k pot is open and only the 1k pot + 82k resistor are in series to ground (no cap).

Having said that, I like the TBX tone control. I replace the 82k resistor with a 220k on all my TBX's so you actually get 250k to ground in the center position rather than 82k. It can also be easily modded to be a true bass-cut... but not the way Fender wires and sells them.

I've read that James Demeter and John Carruthers designed the TBX and MDX circuits.

Not sure because Paul Gagon was the man who developed them.

It's a very easy mod to make the TBX actually cut bass... but it will require making the TBX a master tone control for all pickups. Perhaps that's how it was originally intended, but Fender re-worked it so it could be placed on the bridge pickup alone, and had to sacrifice the bass cut function in the process?