Hey everyone!
Coupla questions-

I have a Seymour Duncan Hotrail in my bridge position and I find the tone is a little bit too blocky, it's a little bit too harsh switching from the texas specials that I have. Would putting as backplate on the hotrail help smoothen the tone out a little bit?

Also, I have a MIM Roadhouse Strat and am looking to replace the bridge systems. I currently use Graphtech's String Saver saddles and plan on keeping them. What are some good bridge upgrades? And if I upgraded the trem system and left the saddles, would my tone still get better? I think that's about it, will post any more questions if I have them.

Thanks!
-Matt

Welcome, Matt!

I don't know what you mean by, "blocky", but all a backplate on the Hotrail will do is to shift the frequency response of your pickup to more mids and lows. As a consequence, the pickup will be perceived as a bit more powerful. As to the harshness of the Duncan vs. the other two Fender pickups, this is because Hotrails use ceramic magnets whereas Texas Specials use Alnico magnets. The tonality you are perceiving between the Duncan and the Fenders are the exact differences between the two magnet types.

In answer to your second question, this is rather subjective where people will rant and rave about one system or the other or, the waste of money between one system or the other. Yet, the bottom line is, the alleged 'improvement' can be achieved with your current system and a tweak of the amp. I may be in a minority here but if I were you, I'd quit while I was ahead for by the time all is said and done, you'll wind up spending more on a bridge system than the guitar cost and here too, the results would be subjective where at the very least, you'd never recoup your expense.

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Thank you! What I described as blocky was probably the difference in the magnets, it doesn't really sound natural flipping from Texas Specials to the hotrail. So do you think a backplate would make it sound even more like a humbucker or less like one? I'm looking for less of a humbucker sound. I do have the stock Texas special bridge pickup, I could always put the backplate on the stock pickup because I remember that it was noticably thin, and I was able to recognize it as a beginner. I'll just change my strings and see what I get from there.

more mids and bottom end will be more pronounced will make it more humbuckerish.
i had the exact same setup on my american standard strat, what i did was lower the hotrail to 9-10/64 pretty much even, it removed a little of the harshness of the hr pickup.
i also raised the ts 6-7/64, making it more even.
you could get a seymour duncan pearly gates and wire it like lonestar.
or dimarzio paf pro and wire it like a richie sambora for a true humbucker tone.
but you will have to replace the volume tone pot with a 500k.
or the dimarzio tone zone, has imho the closest humbucker tone that ive heard,
havent tried alot of other seymour duncan, but basing it on ones ive tried and heard.

sorry, i posted this prior to reading your response to martians suggestions. you want a less hb sound, i would replace the texas special pickup on the bridge and wire it to the bridge and middle tone control.
or ala eric johnson, wire the 1st tone control to the neck pickup and the last tone control to the bridge pickup, leaving the middle pickup wide open; by doing this if you play with some distortion or high gain, put the selector switch inbtwn bridge and middle
and lower the bridge tone control to about 2-3 for some interesting tones.
imo the bridge pu sounded thin because it had no tone control.

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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

You're welcome.

Yes, a backplate would enhance the standard sized humbucker aspects but again, you will still have that brittle timbre from the ceramic magnet. As you've stated, a possible remedy would be to put a backplate on your stock pickup and take it from there. A string change in this context though would be irrelevant as it treats a symptom of your malady and not the cause.

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You dig?