I recently bought a 2010 American and changed the white pg to a black one, so I was able to see inside and the MIA guitar is set up for HSH and that is great. I wanted a HSS but
ended up with the SSS and I love it. Now I have two SSS guitars and the american one just feels so much nicer that Im not playing the white one at all. I thought about selling it and buying a epiphone or some other type of guitar but a friend of mine who plays in a band and owns lots of guitars said that if I really like the way a strat feels in my hands
( i do, I do !!!) and that the neck is really nice ( it is, it is !!!)then my best bet would be to just buy a pre-wired pickguard to get a different sound. I really like a H H but think a H S H
would be even better, and have push-pull pots to give more options on sound, 10 instead of 5.

I would appreciate any help in this as there are so many kinds and names of coils.
I want my sound to be low and grundgy !!!!!! Kinda rock and metal both.

I just bought a Mesa Boogie ta15 and a MB 2 x 12 Cab and the V30 speakers sound so nice with the Black MIA strat !!!!!!!!!!!!


Here is the pearl strat to the left:


Mesa Boogie I liked the fact that the Mesa Boogie was made in the USA
and puts Americans to work !!!!!!!!!

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the MIM Standards are routed HSS under the hood.

Go for HHH and throw in a third humbucker in the middle position. You can't go wrong with this extremely versatile setup. From bright and glassy single-coil to dark and smoky humbucking, the HHH layout does it all.

Your axe looks GREAT !!!!!!!!!!! I like that a lot !!!!!!!! Are those standard Fender
pups? You think my 2006 is routed for that configuration???? (hope so)

I wish you had a youtube video where I could hear this guitar....
Thanks for info

Some Custom Shop Factory Special Runs (FSR) and 1980s Japanese Contemporaries as well as the earlier (and later) Squier Stagemasters such as this 1999 example in Galactic Purple (not mine, sorry for any inconvenience) had the full HHH route.

Since your guitar is HSH routed, you can make an HHH setup by throwing a single coil-sized stack humbucker in the middle pickup slot and adding a push-pull pot for coil-tap.

I was looking at mostly all Duncan's as im not familiar with Dimarzio or emf or what ever it is. If I went with a SH12 on the bridge, a sh6 for the neck and a hot rail for the middle,
after I buy the push pull pots and pickguard, Im up to about 336.00 PLUS SHIPPING

I really dont want to spend that kind of money on a guitar that is only worth 350-400
bucks. If I buy just a HSS pickguard and only get the SH12 and the new push pull volume
its not so much.........Heck, this just sucks not knowing if putting the money in will be worth it as I have spent a lot on the amp and speakers and they do sound great.
(im the wink link) Liberator solderless pickup change system is 24 bucks?????

I still have to sell a few things before I can buy, but its good to know beforehand what I want.

I recently built a HSH strat on a MIM Floyd Rose Strat body...I used Lace sensor pickups in mine..
Neck=Blue,Gold
Mid=Silver
Bridge=Red,Red

In the end for myself it was a huge mistake..The reason why is i already own a Strat ultra that is a Lace sensor SSS equipped guitar with the Blue in the Neck Silver in the middle and Red,Red Dually in the rear..
Bottom line there wasn't that much gained from having the Blue,Gold in the neck position even with the coil split..
I just prefer the sound of single coils in the neck position so having the Dually Blue,Gold (Dually is Lace sensors name for humbuckers) in the neck position didn't pay off for the extra $125 it cost me..
I would suggest that before jumping into a HSH to checkout a HSS see if that fits your needs ..
I own 5 Strats now and two are of the HSS configuration (90 Strat ultra and a 08 CS) ..Even though i felt all the extra pickup possibilities where the coolest thing since sliced bread in the end it just didn't work out that way..

Just to let you know ..I posted the exact same question you posted before building my HSH guitar and the suggestions i'm giving you now many of the knowledgeable forum members warned me about..

In the end i took a pretty big hit on the guitar..The guy i sold it to ended up pulling the dually out of the neck and put a single Hot gold in that position and the Blue Gold into the bridge..To make a HSS also..

If you do go with a HSH i would highly suggest you use one of those Humbucker in single coil size like the Seymour Duncan Lil 59..That way if you decide it was what you were expecting you don't have to change the pick guard out again ..

Well its a darn good thing I opened her up before I went to GC and bought the wrong size pups !!!!!!!!!

My 2006 mim strat was routed for HSS as john had stated.


So the new Duncan pups really made such a great difference in
sound that now I wont mind playing both guitars.




The amp with the new pups in the white strat really rocks now !!!!
I wish I had upgraded a long time ago !!!!!!!!

So now that Ive changed my MIM over to a HSH , and I love it so much, I cant help but wonder if I should also do my MIA strat as well ......... GAS is a crazy thing to have, but
sounds are just so kewl !!! I started looking into buying a Epiphone or a Michael Kelly Patriot, but I just love the weight, shape, and feel of my strats !!!

At least my MIA is a HSH so I can change things and make it nice !!!

I am thinking SH8 invader for the neck and a SH15 or sh12 for the bridge.

The seymour duncan liberator 500K volume and some Dimarzio 500K push pull pots
for tone and I should be looking good. I will go with a FE-099-2231 black pearl PG.

The Model 59 I put in my MIM sounds really nice, some may say I should go with
one in the neck and one in the bridge....... I just dont know yet.

Very nice stuff. Great pictures also.

Feb 20, 2012 I ended up selling the cab for 500 and the TA15 for a trade in on a
VOX AC15C2 twin combo amp. I took the other money and upgraded my computers
video card for a GTX 580 with 3 gigs of mem. I just did not care for the sound of the
Mesa Boogie at all, I bought the setup because it was Made in the USA only, and
ended up never playing it.
I ended up really liking the white strat, put a lot of money with different mod parts and now it just sounds so great !!! I can always take the guts out and return it to original
state, but that would only be to sell it, and I will NEVER do something like that !!
Ive tried so many guitars and only strats make me happy, ones with Hss or HsH or HHH
as I just like the deeper sounds !!!!

I also got rid of the windows laptop and M-Audio Fast Track Pro
and bought a Presonus firestudio mobile and a
Mac Mini from 2010 that is really great for recording
and now have no more driver issues. Im learning more notes and
chords and am pretty happy with how things are going.
Just wish I had computers and all this equipment available to
me when I was 15 instead of 57 !!!!!

http://s968.photobucket.com/albums/ae16 ... AC15C2.jpg

Still breaking in the Vox amp.

I was at guitar Center one time and I picked up a used HSS usa strat that was the high end one in its day, and was now older and a little beat up for 600 bucks and I plugged it
into a Fender Amp that I cant tell you the model or how much or if it was solid state or
tube.........But I have NEVER found a sound I liked more then those two put together and Ive spent a lot of money for other things and never found anything that was as nice.

Live and learn to take the amp and guitar and tell GC to put em on lay away and hold em for ya and you will find a way to buy em. So when you get it home...do you still like it?


http://s968.photobucket.com/albums/ae16 ... nt=vox.jpg
I had purchased the AC15C1 but the grill cloth was funny looking and I just really like duel speakers for some reason.

http://s968.photobucket.com/albums/ae16 ... rStrat.jpg

The white Strat has so many new parts on the inside, Blenders and push pulls so that
the front and back hums can be blended any way I like and the hum coils are both split so the push pull can affect each one. The liberator makes it easy to switch wiring around with out having to re-solder everything, although I have not touched it at all.

I really do like the way this guitar looks and would LOVE to hear how it sounds !!!!