What is your quintessential Strat rig?

[jeremyb]

Love it! But why did you take the hello kitty face off?

[slash-ed]

Love it! But why did you take the hello kitty face off?

[Voxshall]

I am a Les Paul guy that is slowly transitioning more towards strat playing. Some of the things I have enjoyed in this journey is playing the guitar differently.

How you play the guitar -

With the Les Paul I was holding screaming sustaining bends or sustaining vibrato or fast runs a bit more, with the strat I'm doing more mixing of leads and chord work or transitioning between them hummering, pulling off and sliding using multiple strings, which requires less gain to sound good, compared to a Les Paul where a bit of more gain sounds great for sustaining vibrato. Also the whammy bar is a massive change, setting up the whammy bar in a way that works for you can take some experimentation. Also fighting the strat and playing it hard and nasty compared to a Les Paul, which is so easy to play.

Less gain or more variation of gain with a strat -

With a strat if it's straight in an amp or using pedals, I prefer a tone that can clean up well with the guitars vol. Often having it on vol 8 or 7 is great between clean and dirty or sustaining clean thing. Strat should sustain using less gain, rather than having a hard attack and having it's sustain choke off.

Fuzz pedals -

If I miss the thick fat tone of a Les Paul using a strat there is some cool tones you can get with a variety of fuzz pedals, like the sunlion sunface and beano boost on at the same time, thick sustain.

Pickup settings-

I lower the strats pickups much more than on a les paul, lowering them gets clarity at the expense of some low/midrange/bite/output. On the treble strings I have the height at that sweet spot between clarity and bite and on the low strings drop it even more towards clarity and snap.

Amps -

Loved strats in certain Marshalls but not all Marshalls, Fenders and my Two Rock, but into a Vintage AC30 is my all time favourite for a strat it just brings out all the best qualities of a strat.

[handsoffmatt]

Advice needed on where to set the middle pickup height to get more quack out of positions 2 and 4? Trying not to have to wind it up too far if possible as I just keep hitting it (years of playing HH guitars I guess).

For more quack, lower is better than higher, and you should wind the bass end of the pickup down lower than the treble side.

I suggest the following as a starting point:

1) Depress the string at last fret and measure the gap between the bottom of the string and the top of the pickup pole at the middle pickup.
2) Adjust the pickup to achieve a gap of 2mm at the treble end and 2.5mm at the bass end.
3) Adjust the neck and bridge pickups to taste, to match output to the middle pickup. Keep the bass end < > 0.5mm (or more) lower than the treble on each pickup.
4) Use your ears to tweak from there.

[Slowy]

Well done, that man!

[Bg]

1) Depress the string at last fret

I really hate how you do that... you're absolutely perfect till that last fret, then SHIT. I hate you. You're worthless!

something like that?

[Molly]

tidy wiring.PNG

Well done, that man!

I aim for that every time I do a new drop-in but fall miserably short.

There's something strangely satisfying about neat wiring; making something mint even though nobody will see it.