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Post subject: Re-Evaluating my strats, and what they are....
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:43 pm
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I'll try to keep this post as short as possible, but if a ramble a bit, you'll have to excuse me...

I've been playing Strats for a while.

I think the first time I really, really wanted a strat was back in 1985 or so. I had just started playing (and as a leftie....yeah, that was a major battle with my music teacher. Couldn't help it...the other way felt sooo wrong) and of course, when this happens you start listeing to a lot of music.

At the time? Hendrix had a major push going...Clapton was out there. Jeff Beck. Even shredders like Malmsteen and Dave Murray of Iron Maiden...and of course, there were color/texture players like the Edge....

Playing strats.

Man, I fell in love with that guitar the first moment I saw it.

Now, you think I'd have gone out and rushed to buy one....but even though this wasn't too long ago, it was still a different era. The era before online shopping. The era before music stores by and large started stocking the token leftie guitar.

So, for a few years? I had me a Harmony flying V. It was easy to convert. Then, I had a couple of strat knockoffs.

By this time you started to see a lot of Floyd Roses on guitars and Eddie Van Halen was all the rage. Yeah, I had a Kramer. Bought it for 300 bucks and played it for 2 years. Then, I got into an Ibanez when those started hitting. It had a great setup (or so I thought). 2 humbuckers, single coil, solid black finish with a fast neck and a Floyd Rose to boot!

I played that guitar a couple of months ago before donating it. It's amazing what people think sounds "amazing" at the time. And eventually I gave up on Floyd Rose tremolos because when alternate picking, I rest my hand on the bridge...just like you're supposed to.

It's really annoying to have your guitar go out of tune because you're applying pressure to it while picking as taught. Just an opinion there. All of those moving parts were a nightmare to service as well.

I don't think I got my first strat until about 1994. I had already been playing for 9 years, but it was just something that no matter how hard I tried to push it out of my mind, I couldn't let go of it. I had to have one. And, just at the time when I had some change in my pocket...there it was....a 1968, natural finish reissue. All set up for me....

I bought that sucker. It's still one of my main guitars, and was the one I posted pictures of a couple of days ago after doing a complete rewire job on it.

Now....back to the story. When I first bought it? I hated that single coil hum. I loathed that nasally, thin sound that emanated from the bridge single coil. But by then I was used to the humbuckers.....

...So, I had the local shop install some Seymour Duncans in it. I was happy for a long, long time and it served me well for about 7 or 8 years.

Then, I put my guitar down for a few years while I got serious about a career, and travelled so much that a guitar became more of a nuisance than a blessing...especially in the Middle East.

Well, fast forward a few years. I'm playing my guitars again after losing my mind in the Middle East (Hey, it happens.) Things are sort of the same, but they're not. And when starting out, I still have this mentality that the strat is one of these guitars that can do anything, sound like anything, and should be tweaked slightly because of this with modifications. I was still thinking like this when I bought my HWY 1 some months back.

Then, 2 things happened. First, I got another brand of gutiar. "The other guy's guitar". With humbuckers...and it was designed to do a certain thing. Great guitar. And, the second thing? I started recording.

Those 2 events changed my attitude about the strat. First? All of those modified pups in my strat? They sounded like garbage vs. the guitar that was designed for humbuckers. Worse still, I couldn't dial in that fantastic single coil tone because I had all of these ceramic pickups that were not designed for tone and response, but to ride a lot of crunch. This became especially apparent when doing direct plug ins.

And in the end? The strat barely got heard at all, while the other guitar did most of the work, and is the guitar predominantly heard on the recordings I did.

After the recordings were done, I started to really think about not only my tone, but the strat and the role it has in delivering a certain kind of tone. On the HWY 1....I stuck the old pups back in. They sounded great with a partial crunch that is ideal for recording rock. On the other? Well, that took a bit longer for me to come around on (14 years had passed with those pickups in that guitar) but I changed those back out to vintage.

Why?

In re-evaluating my tone, my guitars, and my playing style....I'll always love the strats. But the biggest mistake I made was believing that the road to a better strat lie in making it this supposed guitar that can be adapted to any environment. When you make your strat a "Jack of All Trades" in terms of sound and tone, it is a master of none.

In other words, your strat, if it's anything like my strats, will sound more like a knockoff of some other guitar vs. the real thing which shines when dialed in correctly.

I've also grown to love that thin, nasally bridge sound...especially for rhythm. And, I've also learned that when applying crunch, the strat is actually NOT dialed in like other guitars....the neck is where the sweet spot is in terms of pups...not the bridge.

And, there's no point in trying to make a strat sound like something off a Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, or ZZ Top album. It's not that kind of guitar.

It's better left alone.

Nowadays, my strats have specific roles.....one strat is used for playing clean, or if it's with crunch, it harks back to a bygone era. The other? I use it on rock songs when there's something that is needed beyond that humbucking crunch.

The single coils do sing.

So....in light of this revelation, if I happen to hear of your musings for dropping a humbucker into a strat which was designed for single coil pups, or utilizing aftermarket pups, I'm going to shake my head, silently think to myself "Well, there goes that strat's tone and responsiveness" and I'll probably try to talk you out of it.

Just to be fair...


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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:51 pm
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Personally, I don't understand putting a humbucker in a strat either. It's not a strat anymore. No more great chimey position 2. No more bell like tone from the bridge. If I want a humbucker tone, I'll grab a humbucker guitar. Might as well get a Jackson if you want that HSS setup. Why ruin a strat? But that's just me. If someone wants to do it and loves the results, who am I to say their wrong? It's just not a strat anymore.

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Is that a mexican poncho
Or is that a sears poncho?
Hmmm...no foolin ...." FZ


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:03 pm
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cryingstrat wrote:
Personally, I don't understand putting a humbucker in a strat either. It's not a strat anymore. No more great chimey position 2. No more bell like tone from the bridge. If I want a humbucker tone, I'll grab a humbucker guitar. Might as well get a Jackson if you want that HSS setup. Why ruin a strat? But that's just me. If someone wants to do it and loves the results, who am I to say their wrong? It's just not a strat anymore.


I'm in total agreement. I just wish it hadn't taken me so long to get to that point. I think on a lot of older recordings, and a lot of shows I did back in the day....I would have had a much, much better guitar tone if I had just stayed true to the guitar first vs. how much bottom end and distortion I could squeeze out of the amplifier....

But, I suppose I had to grow a little...


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:10 pm
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The_Sentry wrote:
cryingstrat wrote:
Personally, I don't understand putting a humbucker in a strat either. It's not a strat anymore. No more great chimey position 2. No more bell like tone from the bridge. If I want a humbucker tone, I'll grab a humbucker guitar. Might as well get a Jackson if you want that HSS setup. Why ruin a strat? But that's just me. If someone wants to do it and loves the results, who am I to say their wrong? It's just not a strat anymore.


I'm in total agreement. I just wish it hadn't taken me so long to get to that point. I think on a lot of older recordings, and a lot of shows I did back in the day....I would have had a much, much better guitar tone if I had just stayed true to the guitar first vs. how much bottom end and distortion I could squeeze out of the amplifier....

But, I suppose I had to grow a little...


I'm guilty of it too. I put a humbucker in a MIM about ten years ago. I didn't get what I was after and I lost what I had.

_________________
"is that a real poncho...i mean
Is that a mexican poncho
Or is that a sears poncho?
Hmmm...no foolin ...." FZ


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:12 pm
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Location: Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA
Hello The_Sentry and cryingstrat,

No humbuckers in a strat for me.

I play one every blue moon but-------

SSS for me.

Cheers.


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:19 pm
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Fender Strat's with single coils
Gibson LP's with humbuckers

And that's the way it should be.

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:43 pm
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CAFeathers wrote:
Fender Strat's with single coils
Gibson LP's with humbuckers

And that's the way it should be.


very well put mr. feathers


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Post subject: Re: Re-Evaluating my strats, and what they are....
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:44 pm
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Joined: Wed May 21, 2008 10:33 am
Posts: 669
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The_Sentry wrote:
I'll try to keep this post as short as possible, but if a ramble a bit, you'll have to excuse me...

I've been playing Strats for a while.

I think the first time I really, really wanted a strat was back in 1985 or so. I had just started playing (and as a leftie....yeah, that was a major battle with my music teacher. Couldn't help it...the other way felt sooo wrong) and of course, when this happens you start listeing to a lot of music.

At the time? Hendrix had a major push going...Clapton was out there. Jeff Beck. Even shredders like Malmsteen and Dave Murray of Iron Maiden...and of course, there were color/texture players like the Edge....

Playing strats.

Man, I fell in love with that guitar the first moment I saw it.

Now, you think I'd have gone out and rushed to buy one....but even though this wasn't too long ago, it was still a different era. The era before online shopping. The era before music stores by and large started stocking the token leftie guitar.

So, for a few years? I had me a Harmony flying V. It was easy to convert. Then, I had a couple of strat knockoffs.

By this time you started to see a lot of Floyd Roses on guitars and Eddie Van Halen was all the rage. Yeah, I had a Kramer. Bought it for 300 bucks and played it for 2 years. Then, I got into an Ibanez when those started hitting. It had a great setup (or so I thought). 2 humbuckers, single coil, solid black finish with a fast neck and a Floyd Rose to boot!

I played that guitar a couple of months ago before donating it. It's amazing what people think sounds "amazing" at the time. And eventually I gave up on Floyd Rose tremolos because when alternate picking, I rest my hand on the bridge...just like you're supposed to.

It's really annoying to have your guitar go out of tune because you're applying pressure to it while picking as taught. Just an opinion there. All of those moving parts were a nightmare to service as well.

I don't think I got my first strat until about 1994. I had already been playing for 9 years, but it was just something that no matter how hard I tried to push it out of my mind, I couldn't let go of it. I had to have one. And, just at the time when I had some change in my pocket...there it was....a 1968, natural finish reissue. All set up for me....

I bought that sucker. It's still one of my main guitars, and was the one I posted pictures of a couple of days ago after doing a complete rewire job on it.

Now....back to the story. When I first bought it? I hated that single coil hum. I loathed that nasally, thin sound that emanated from the bridge single coil. But by then I was used to the humbuckers.....

...So, I had the local shop install some Seymour Duncans in it. I was happy for a long, long time and it served me well for about 7 or 8 years.

Then, I put my guitar down for a few years while I got serious about a career, and travelled so much that a guitar became more of a nuisance than a blessing...especially in the Middle East.

Well, fast forward a few years. I'm playing my guitars again after losing my mind in the Middle East (Hey, it happens.) Things are sort of the same, but they're not. And when starting out, I still have this mentality that the strat is one of these guitars that can do anything, sound like anything, and should be tweaked slightly because of this with modifications. I was still thinking like this when I bought my HWY 1 some months back.

Then, 2 things happened. First, I got another brand of gutiar. "The other guy's guitar". With humbuckers...and it was designed to do a certain thing. Great guitar. And, the second thing? I started recording.

Those 2 events changed my attitude about the strat. First? All of those modified pups in my strat? They sounded like garbage vs. the guitar that was designed for humbuckers. Worse still, I couldn't dial in that fantastic single coil tone because I had all of these ceramic pickups that were not designed for tone and response, but to ride a lot of crunch. This became especially apparent when doing direct plug ins.

And in the end? The strat barely got heard at all, while the other guitar did most of the work, and is the guitar predominantly heard on the recordings I did.

After the recordings were done, I started to really think about not only my tone, but the strat and the role it has in delivering a certain kind of tone. On the HWY 1....I stuck the old pups back in. They sounded great with a partial crunch that is ideal for recording rock. On the other? Well, that took a bit longer for me to come around on (14 years had passed with those pickups in that guitar) but I changed those back out to vintage.

Why?

In re-evaluating my tone, my guitars, and my playing style....I'll always love the strats. But the biggest mistake I made was believing that the road to a better strat lie in making it this supposed guitar that can be adapted to any environment. When you make your strat a "Jack of All Trades" in terms of sound and tone, it is a master of none.

In other words, your strat, if it's anything like my strats, will sound more like a knockoff of some other guitar vs. the real thing which shines when dialed in correctly.

I've also grown to love that thin, nasally bridge sound...especially for rhythm. And, I've also learned that when applying crunch, the strat is actually NOT dialed in like other guitars....the neck is where the sweet spot is in terms of pups...not the bridge.

And, there's no point in trying to make a strat sound like something off a Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, or ZZ Top album. It's not that kind of guitar.

It's better left alone.

Nowadays, my strats have specific roles.....one strat is used for playing clean, or if it's with crunch, it harks back to a bygone era. The other? I use it on rock songs when there's something that is needed beyond that humbucking crunch.

The single coils do sing.

So....in light of this revelation, if I happen to hear of your musings for dropping a humbucker into a strat which was designed for single coil pups, or utilizing aftermarket pups, I'm going to shake my head, silently think to myself "Well, there goes that strat's tone and responsiveness" and I'll probably try to talk you out of it.

Just to be fair...


man reading this made me tired.


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Post subject: Re: Re-Evaluating my strats, and what they are....
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 7:00 pm
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highwayoneplayer wrote:
The_Sentry wrote:
Types out a really, really long post :twisted: ...


man reading this made me tired.


If it made you too tired to think about swapping out pickups....mission accomplished! (And, I didn't even need to put on a flight suit!)


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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:43 pm
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Sentry
I just posted yesterday for some insight into pickup replacements. As of 5 minutes ago I was going to purchase a JB JR. i love the single coil sound but find it annoying that when playing the strat, i kick in the overdive and can't get what I want to hear. Only annoyed because i love the feel of the strat and wish I could get all sounds without having to go pickup my les paul. I thought the pu swap would be the solution.

To me, if the swap gets what I want for now and gets me to play more, i will probably still do it. But after reading your post, my old single coil will probably sit patiently waiting to be reinstalled. another option may be an upgrade to some better single coil pickups? Either way, you got me thinking.

Nice post


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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:51 pm
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redbird wrote:
Sentry
I just posted yesterday for some insight into pickup replacements. As of 5 minutes ago I was going to purchase a JB JR. i love the single coil sound but find it annoying that when playing the strat, i kick in the overdive and can't get what I want to hear. Only annoyed because i love the feel of the strat and wish I could get all sounds without having to go pickup my les paul. I thought the pu swap would be the solution.

To me, if the swap gets what I want for now and gets me to play more, i will probably still do it. But after reading your post, my old single coil will probably sit patiently waiting to be reinstalled. another option may be an upgrade to some better single coil pickups? Either way, you got me thinking.

Nice post


I had the same issues for a long, long time redbird. But, I found something out.

A strat can handle the crunch....but the sweet sounds don't come out of the bridge as far as a dirty sound goes....

They come off the neck.

As I've gotten older, and I play leads, I tend to dwell more and more in that position (or in phase with the middle pickup) as far as leads go. As for the bridge, now that I've put that back as stock...

I can do a pretty good imitation of a telecaster, and get that Nashville sound which wasn't even possible with the hot rail pu's or the JB Jr. I had in those guitars before.

I can't really state one man's preferences, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to dictate 'em.....but I can beg to give those old single coils a second chance. Some advantages over the humbuckers...you have much more control over your midrange with your knobs...and, volume swells are much more effective with those stock single coils....

And as far as crunch goes...I tend to think in "reverse" with the strat vs. the Les Paul or other humbucking guitars. As far as that crunchy, loud as hell bridge distortion that demands a humbucker? Ha....there's only one place to go. And even though this is a Fender forum, that specific sound has served as a model for so many other manufacturers to base their own sound off of.

But if it's a warmer sound you want? Check out that strat in the neck position. It's actually got more bite than the Les Paul does when playing dirty.

couple 'o cents...


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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:00 pm
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Thanks for the insight Sentry.
I will try those tips.

You know if i spent more time playing than reading posts and posting, I might have figured that out!

PS Do you have any opinion on the Fender noiseless pickups?


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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:15 pm
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redbird wrote:
Thanks for the insight Sentry.
I will try those tips.

You know if i spent more time playing than reading posts and posting, I might have figured that out!

PS Do you have any opinion on the Fender noiseless pickups?


Nope. A lot of people swear by 'em though.....

(I also sort of just learned to live with a little bit of hum. The only time the noiseless aspect comes into play is when you're playing dirty....and usually I'm so busy playing....well.....not much space for open hums...and the volume control is so effective on the single coil...If your singles are good, you can dump your volume pot from 10 to 8 and suddenly you've got a nice rhythm sound going....)

I will endorse the '69's I just put in my 1968 reissue though. Alcino V magnets....lots of presence...very, very responsive. Yeah, they squeal a bit, but man, what a tone!!!!


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:18 pm
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I've never understood the complaints about single coil hum. There are ways to mitigate that and once your playing it's no problem at all. It's really never been a problem for me at all. There's a volume knob for inbetween songs.

_________________
"is that a real poncho...i mean
Is that a mexican poncho
Or is that a sears poncho?
Hmmm...no foolin ...." FZ


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:24 pm
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cryingstrat,
The hum has never been a problem when playing at home, it is when i am together the guys. We have three guys playing, and when I bring my strat the feedback and hum become really annoying. i am sure it is amp interference, but it was so annoying the last time, that i have taken only my LP the last three times together. This is the only reason i was looking at the noisless. As I stated earlier, i love the strat and would play all the time, but little things like that dampen it. Thanks for the input!


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