Yesterday I picked up an 07 Fender American Strat. Now it's time to mod.

Man thats painful, a friend of mine who owns a store has this used white strat thats 10-15 years old and almost never played. Its sounds great and I can't afford it

White strats age so nice, enjoy

Sorry Mertay, I hope you can add it to your collection someday. It looks like this Strat is similar in that it has very little play time on it from what I can tell. I can't find any fret wear at all. I was told it has only been played a handful of times in the last 8 or 9 years.

Thanks The metal wears most as played but I couldn't see anything from the pic.s, very nice find! even if kept in the case for years the white slowly turns cream and I love that color

Me too man , love the finish! But now I think I am going to need some suggestions for some noiseless replacement pups that will retain the tone and dynamics of the stock pups but get rid of that pesky stratohum.

This post has been edited by AK Rich: Feb 9 2016, 07:37 PM

Well for the fender line, a friend of mine bought vintage noiseless and we didn't like them. The voicing is a bit too humbucker-ish and chords don't come out sweet.

Though I haven't tested as far as I know, check out the n3 singles. I have heard nice things about them and also Chris used to own a guitar with that set and he commented good about them too. If the store near you has a few high-end Fender's I'm sure you2ll find them on a guitar to test how they feel.

IMO - none.
But if you're set on noiseless then these are the 'hot tickets' these days ...
http://www.fralinpickups.com/bpncs.asp
http://www.ilitchelectronics.com/
http://www.kinman.com/guitar-pickups/strat...r/#WoodstockSet

*I've tried at least 5 different brands of noiseless in one of my Strats - Kinman, DiMarzio, Duncan, Fender and David Allen. And multiple models of several of those. All were just eh for me. I actually settled for a Regular sized HB in the bridge (Duncan custom '59) and two Robert Cray Strat pkups in the neck and middle.

Nice Strat by the way! I love the cream with a white guard.

This post has been edited by klasaine: Feb 10 2016, 03:55 PM

I was hoping that you would have a silver bullet bullet for me on this, Ken. At the same time I was worried there might not be a good alternative that satisfies what I want to achieve. If there is not really a clear choice for a noiseless replacement that will retain the other qualities of the originals then I guess I will just embrace the hum. I don't think I want to wade through multiple pup setups that are just going to be "eh". Maybe additional shielding would be a better solution?
Thanks for the response, Ken.

This post has been edited by AK Rich: Feb 10 2016, 06:23 PM

Good Shielding - copper tape on the underside of the pick guard, copper paint inside the cavities and cloth covered hookup wire will definitely help to minimize the hum.
If you want to try a set of noiseless singles, I recommend the Kinmans. They were the 'stratiest' of the ones I tried.

*The Ilitch system works really well (though not totally noiseless). It does retain all the groovy Strat tone but it is labor intensive and pretty expensive.

This post has been edited by klasaine: Feb 10 2016, 06:39 PM

Right on , Ken. Thanks again man. I will look into the pups you have recommended. But first I think I will go the route of shielding to see how much that will minimize the hum. Not sure why I didn't think of that at first. Hopefully that will do the trick and I can continue to use the originals which I love.
However, I am still open to recommendations for pups if anyone else has any.

Those Kinman pups look somewhat promising. And the Ilitch system seems to have a way to reduce hum that I had not heard of before which is interesting.

This post has been edited by AK Rich: Feb 10 2016, 07:32 PM

Something to remember when selecting pickups, either SC or HB, is that the closer they all are in impedance - the quieter they will be. This goes for humbucking pkups as well. A lot of great LPs, SGs and 335s from the 'golden era' (late 50's to early 60s), have mismatched PAFs, and consequently are a little noisy ... but they sound fucking great!

This post has been edited by klasaine: Feb 11 2016, 03:40 PM

Ok,
When I get back in seriously looking at an interface, this looks great as does the Focusrite equivalent. In all going to use my GT 001 for effects for the time being but having a separate interface allows for more experimentation
I'll post a separate thread in the gear section with reference to this thread as this is fast becoming a tome of information that everyone can learn from

Link to dedicated interface thread HERE
Cheers

This post has been edited by Phil66: Feb 12 2016, 02:18 PM

My local music store just picked up Orange amps and now this thing is sitting in there calling to me. I am going to take my axe in there sometime soon and take her for a proper test drive.

https://orangeamps.com/rockerverb-50-mkiii-head/


Ah yes! Somewhere in the back of my mind, this info was locked away. Thanks for the reminder, Ken.

I LOVE Orange amps! Unique beasts. That probably doesn't help, does it?

Not in the least. Well, maybe it helps Orange. I have heard lots of good talk about them so I am looking forward to trying them out to see if they appeal to me. From what I have heard and read they could be just what I am looking for. Orange is pretty proud of their gear it seems when I look at the price tags, so I plan on camping out next to that amp for a good long while getting to know her before I lay down that kind of coin.

Oh man , somehow I missed this post. Sorry Mertay. I will certainly look into the N3's. It's on my list. Thanks man!
I actually tried a Malmsteen Strat before I bought the Strat that I have. The stacked humbuckers disguised as single coils really turned me off as well as the pickup switch being 3 way instead of 5 way. I really liked the scalloped neck though.

This post has been edited by AK Rich: Feb 16 2016, 06:07 PM

No problem

The thing about single looking humbuckers is though the freq. responce is a bit less complex like humbucker, like the malmsteen model they have to cut the high freq.s to perform humbucker-like on distortion.

Malmsteen models still have good high-end but can't do traditional nice cleans, as the traditional sounding pickups can't sound humbucker like with heavy distortion.

You can however use something to filter like maybe seymour duncan pickup booster or the ibanez bass booster that I use, but thats for a bit later. Just saying not all noiseless single's sound alike, give them a shot

When I went in to check out the Malmsteen, I figured I would love it and probably bring it home, but for me the stacked humbuckers kind of made the Strat less versatile than a Strat with the traditional single coils.
I feel like I can get a Malmsteen like tone from those single coils but couldn't get a more traditional vintage like tone that I wanted from the humbuckers.
In other words I feel I can cover more ground in terms of tone and dynamics with the singles than I could with the stacked humbuckers.Which is basically why I didn't like the 3 way switch either.To me, it was another thing that takes away from the versatility of the guitar.
But like I said, I love the neck on the Malmsteen. I may order a neck with the scalloped fretboard from Fender to swap out with the original.Or I might just look for another kind of guitar to get with a scalloped fretboard. Perhaps a Musicman

If noise wouldn't be an issue yeah with some pedal help a lot is possible, thats why rather than high check low output noiseless PU's my friend as the tele version of the n pickups and they are amazing with both cleans and heavy distortion.

But one more option is if you have a humbucker loaded guitar you can disconnect the tone pot and lower them, it will add good amounth of high freq.s which is a huge part of yngwie's tone. Haven't seen much for a while but many shredders of the 80's 90's used guitars that didn't have tone pots for this reason.

If you have an experienced luthier ask them for scalloping price too, might be more affordable but beware he must be experienced.

This post has been edited by Mertay: Feb 17 2016, 07:14 PM

Wow , that's interesting about the tone pot trick . I had never heard that before. I wasn't really looking for a Strat to sound like Yngwie though. The scalloped neck alone is what lead me to try out the Yngwie Strat. Honestly, buying it would have gone against my little personal rule about buying signature guitars. I actually called every music store I could think of before hand asking if anyone had a guitar with a scalloped neck and all I could find were the Yngwie and Blackmore Strats. But owning an American Standard Strat has always been a bucket list kind of thing for me and now I finally have one. Basically I guess I was thinking I could kill 2 birds with one stone so to speak when I was considering the Yngwie Strat.

I do have a line on a great Luthier up here. The guy that has had a Fender shop up here for at least 40 yrs has a brother who owns a violin shop next door and he is a highly reputable Luthier. He has told me he could do the scallop job and refret to super jumbos if I decided to go that route.

PS: I went and had the Strat setup the other day at my local music store. Normaly I would do it myself but I have been busy. I was surprised to see that the bill was only $34!