Stratocaster Build - From Scratch

[John Coloccia]

Here's some setup hints for those guitars:

1) take the tone knob off the middle pickup and install it on the BRIDGE pickup instead. Should be a matter of moving one wire on the switch
2) drop the middle pickup WAY down low to the pickguard

Doing this accomplishes several things. First, the bridge pickup needs the tone control more than the middle, especially since the middle pickup typically doesn't get used very much. It also gets the middle pickup out of the way. Depending on your playing style, your fingers will forever be hitting the middle pickup and it gets annoying. I have a strange right hand style. I can very quickly switch back and forth between using a pick and using my fingers...don't ask me where the pick goes when I'm playing with my fingers. If I think about it too much, I can't do it and it falls on the floor. Anyhow, the main reason I started playing a Tele more than a Strat is that the middle pickup just always got in my way.

But the magical things that happens if you do all of this is that you will get the trademark Strat "quack" when you have the neck and middle pickups selected. With the tone knob on the middle pickup, you are loading down the pickup too much to really get the best quack, even with the knob on 10. It's best to not have the tone knob on that pickup at all. In addition, lowering the pickup height more than you think is reasonable also makes for the best quack.

This is my standard setup for strats. I usually recommend this to my customers, and I tell them that if they don't like I'll put it back to the factory setup. Everyone likes it.

[Julie Moriarty]

Whew! Lots of info there John. But certainly some great stuff! The one thing I haven't played with much is setting the pickup height. But I have noticed the difference when I do. I've been spending a lot of time lately fine tuning a Tele drawing and I just got started on the Tele neck. I have no idea what kind of maple it is (it was marked "HIWM" but it has a grain like I've never seen. And so far, it seems stable. I'm going to print your suggestions out and put them to use.

[Greg Peterson]

+1 on Bill Lawrence pickups. Haven't tried the JBE or Fralins, but Bill's pickup in my Tele sounds fantastic. His pickups are very articulate and dimensional. Unlike many humbuckers I tried in the old days from some of the more popular names, Bill's pickups are not one trick ponies. I dare say that it would be challenging to find a pickup that delivers more bang for the buck. It would be hard to go wrong using Lawrence pickups as a stock configuration.

[John Coloccia]

+1 on Bill Lawrence pickups. Haven't tried the JBE or Fralins, but Bill's pickup in my Tele sounds fantastic. His pickups are very articulate and dimensional. Unlike many humbuckers I tried in the old days from some of the more popular names, Bill's pickups are not one trick ponies. I dare say that it would be challenging to find a pickup that delivers more bang for the buck. It would be hard to go wrong using Lawrence pickups as a stock configuration.

They're quite reasonably priced, too. Like I mentioned earlier, Bill just died a little bit ago. I'm assuming that his wife, Becky, is keeping things going as the websites are still up. http://wildepickups.com/

Don't go to billawrencepickups.com. It's a long story, full of drama, but just trust me on this one. This is Bill's old partner, and he's spent the better part of 2 decades fighting over and using the name Bill Lawrence. Of course, Bill's name isn't Bill Lawrence either...it's Willi something or other. They're both Germans, actually, and started the company in Germany. Anyhow, I don't know anything about this guy and his pickups, but I will tell you that he spends half his time chasing people down on ebay that list Bill's pickups as a "Bill Lawrence" pickup, and he spends the other half of his time trying to explain that he legally owns the Bill Lawrence trademark, and has no current connection with the designer, Bill Lawrence, who used to be his business partner.

So from all of this, without knowing anything else about his pickups, I'd just as soon not get involved with a character like that.

[Julie Moriarty]

In the world of humbuckers, I've seen the doubled up ones and ones that take up the same space as a single coil. I prefer the single coil look. #2 has SD Everything Axe pups and all are humbuckers but only take up a single space. Is there and advantages or disadvantages to one arrangement over the other? Is what's in a dual-spaced pickup crammed into a single space?

On another subject, does anyone here know what kind of maple this is? It was marked "HIWM". I just can't figure out what the "W" stands for. These are all from the same piece of wood.

[John Coloccia]

The stacked humbucker configuration is OK, but it's definitely a compromise. You get the noise canceling of a humbucker, but you also get the bit of compression and dullness of a humbucker, but because it's still only senseing over the single coil sensing area you loose the fullness that the humbucker brings. So it's basically a noise cancelling pickup with every other disadvantage. They were popular in the 90s when everyone had big hair, huge stacks, crappy distortion pedals, etc. There was also far less choices in guitars back then. There weren't really any boutique builders catering to the market. PRS was still a fledgling company. Your choices were basically a Strat, a Super Strat (the style....humbuckers, Floyd Rose...basically anything from Kramer, Ibanez and Jackson), or a Les Paul. It didn't seem unreasonable at the time to take a Strat and stick stacked humbuckers in there.

These days, it just seems like a dumb idea. The only guy out there still doing that is Yngwie....more or less because he hasn't changed since the 80s so he keeps doing the 80s kind of things. Eric Johnson occasionally uses a stacked humbucker, but he only uses ONE COIL...essentially turning it into a single coil. He just found that one particular stacked humbucker sounds particularly good as a single coil...so that doesn't even count.

[Shawn Pixley]

Total guess here, but could HIWM be hard instrument wood, maple?

[John Coloccia]

Of course, it could also be:

HIMW
WMIH
MWIH

Can you call the guys and ask them? They should know, I think.

[Greg Peterson]

I had no idea Yngwie was using a stacked single coil. As for Eric Johnson, I have to wonder what is the color of the insulation on the wires in the pup.

[John Coloccia]

I had no idea Yngwie was using a stacked single coil. As for Eric Johnson, I have to wonder what is the color of the insulation on the wires in the pup.

Dimarzio HS-2 and HS-3, I think, in the olden days. Duncan YJM signature pickups these days. I think his original setup was the strat into some sort of DOD piece of junk pre-amp/boost, into cranked Marshalls. The single coil hum must have been incredible. If you listen to some of his studio interviews, even with the stacked humbuckers he still gets a tremendous amount of hiss and noise. Again, nothing a fast pinky can't fix

Interestingly enough, Eric Johnson likes the top coil of the HS-3 or HS-2...I forget which one but I think it's the HS-3. I do too. Long ago, when I had HS-2s and HS-3s in my own strat, I discovered the same thing completely by accident when I botched the wiring. I was like, "Man, this thing sounds GOOD!". It's only recently...last year...that I swapped them out for the set of Lollars I have in there now. Those stacked Dimarzios lived in my strat for almost 20 years.