I was looking into buying this hot rod, but i noticed that their stock pickups are not the original vintage 57/62 ones, they're actually a silent(noiseless) neck and middle pickup, and a dimarzio tone zone in the bridge..I'd like to know if they're a modern-sounding pickups or you can still get a nice vintage tone with it.. thanks

I don't have any problems with the neck and middle. You got no chance with the bridge.

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why the hell have they done this to the HR57' ?? also, this doesnt happen in the hr62', i wonder why..

see the hot rod 57 is basically,
fender took the american vintage reissue 1957 strat and hot rodded the sheeet out of it..
to my understanding it hasa vintage vneck 50s neck with a modern 9.5 radius vs the 7.25.
replaced the pickups 57/62 for somarian cobalt noiseless pickups which are very very nice pickups, and added the dimarzio tone zone.
i imagine its an extreme joy to play, and rock out with.
imo you can play almost anything.
from clean blues to hard rock even can get away with some metal.

i love the hot rod series of strats.
dont worry, they still have the avri 57 strat that i mentioned above to satisfy the vintage soul....

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"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

oogway, kungfu panda 2008

The neck isn't like the AV57 it's more like the late 80's Claptons apparently.
It's a very well defined bit of maple.

Who'd have ever thought pickups could become so important eh?

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No no and no

I've always wondered if the HR '57 wasn't some type of attempt at a signature model for David Gilmour - trying to come up with some type of passive pickups that would fall into a similar range of the DG EMG set. The of course Gilmour wound up having them replicate the Black Strat through the Custom Shop. Maybe I'm way off base, but it always seemed like it was a guitar that was in development that Fender thought was too nice not to put out even if it was never going to be a "signature model".

The HR '62 seems to be more of a response to those who wanted a fatter neck, modern radius and RWRP middle pickup on the regular AV '62 - it doesn't seem to fit anyone's specific "signature model".

yeah, the thing that is stopping me to buy the HR 57' is basically the pickups, cuz i wont have money to buy the HR+new pickups...
About the Vintage 57'(regular), i don't like its thin neck, i felt really confortable with the 9.5 radius...i guess this time fender didn't satisfy me.. but no one told me, does the bridge affect too much on the sound?

May I suggest looking at a Jimmie Vaughan artist model,it is a 57 body in classic colors with a soft v neck with a 9.5 radius vintage tuners and vintage spaced bridge with some pretty okay pickups for a really attractive price.cheers

I have both the '57VHR and a '57AVRI.

The '57VHR's neck is thinner than the '57AVRI neck.

They basically took the AVRI neck and flattened the fret board to get the 9.5 radius (thus making the neck thinner).

I wouldn't expect much of a vintage tone out of a VHR. The SCN pups sound great driven hard with lots of gain (not much of a vintage tone though).

Between the two, I prefer my AVRI. I think by pure luck, my AVRI body and neck just plays better.

Good luck.