Hi everyone,
New to the forums here. I have a 50s Road Worn Strat in Sunburst. I bought it used for $500. It was your average, run of the mill, unremarkable Road Worn Strat, other than the fact that it played better than others I have tried out.

When I got it, I was not really happy with the Tex-Mex pickups that came stock in it. Yeah, they are vintage sounding, but I'm more of a high gain guy. I pretty much knew from the get-go that I was going to replace the pickups. I had it narrowed down to either Hot Gold Lace Sensors, or Fender Hot Noiseless pickups. I decided on the Hot Noiseless. I put them on my Christmas list, and while I waited, I started to notice that the guitar looked worn, but somehow not like a real vintage guitar. After looking at it, it hit me. It wasn't shiny enough. The stock finish on it was dull. Most real vintage guitars still have some gloss to their paint. I tried guitar polish, but it didn't really provide the results I was lookin for. I ended up using some Meguiar's Deep Crystal Sytem Carnuba car wax, and.....Success! After about 3 light coats, it looked much better. In fact, the shiny finish made the finish checking on the body really visible, where it wasn't even noticable before. It was a dramatic difference. It went from looking like a beat up Highway One Strat to looking like a vintage guitar.

I then went to work on the neck. The problem with the neck was it looked too clean where the wood was exposed. I mean, it almost looked bleached out. In an effort to darken it up, I went to my pencil sharpener, and rubbed the neck down with pencil shavings. At first, it was rediculously dark, but when I rubbed it off with a t-shirt, it was just right. After a couple hours of playing, even more of the darkness came off where your fingers make contact with the fretboard. This leaves it darker in the areas around the strings than the areas between the strings, which looks very realistically vintage.

After Christmas, I put my Hot Noiseless Pickups in. Talk about a tight fit! There is literally no room to spare. The pickup route on the body is very shallow, and the Hot Noisless basically has another pickup on the bottom side of the pickup. The big trouble spot was the middle pickup. I couldn't get the pickguard to lay flat on the body. I had to carefully place the two wires from the neck pickup between the pole pieces on the bottom of the middle pickup. They are in, and they sound absolutely amazing. With the volume on 8, they sound pretty much like a hot single coil strat pickup, from 8 to 10 is where the magic happens. This guitar now sounds just as at home playing through a Dual Rectifier as it does through a Twin Reverb.

If any of ya'll have a Mustang amp, check out my presets on Fuse, under author's name Nobozos.

Good post!

The first thing I did with my Olympic White Road Worn was to buff it to a gloss. It looks absolutely amazing.

Regarding the pickups I kept the pickups, they great to my hears. If you want high gain you will have to change them but I'd put a hot rail in the bridge if I were you.

Don't forget to connect the middle pickup tone to the bridge pickup too, it takes away the brashness of the neck pickup allowing it to sound much better with high gain settings.

Thanks. I play high gain most of the time, but wanted a guitar that could do high gain, and then turn around and sound great on cleans. This is a very tall order with humbuckers, because the cleans always sound broken up. These pickup are just perfect for what I was looking for.

What I'd really like to do, is get my hands on a Black 50s Road Worn Strat, drop some Vintage noiseless pickups in it, and set it up with a mid-boost and TBX tone control. Pretty much a vintage-modern Blackie tribute. I know it would involve some routing under the pickguard for the mid-boost circuit and battery, but it would be one kick-ass mutha.

I love my Road Worn Strat (60's). I swapped out the Tex Mex for Klein S-5's, then swapped out the S-5's for CS 69's. I think the next step is blocking it. I love the smaller neck as it makes for easy Hendrix chording. Congrats on the purchase.

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2010 American Standard Strat - Sienna Burst (Big Dippers)
2008 50's Road Worn Strat - 3 Tone
2004 Squire Strat - Gold
2009 72 Deluxe Thinline Telecaster RI - 3 Tone
2008 Taylor 426CE