Let’s Talk About Fender Strats [Sounds, Bridge Setup, Pickups & More] – That Pedal Show

Stories are that SRV started the night with the volume on his old Fender amps at 7.5 and went up from there. It takes volume to get that tone

All your pedals looks like a space shuttle control board

For quite some time I intentionally avoided owning a strat, because everyone under the sun had used them, seemingly attempting to channel SRV, Hendrix or John Mayer. I grew so tired of the various blues demo guys and I began to associate strats with that guitar player archetype. Yet after trying out a vintera 50’s strat and eventually purchasing a jv modified 60’s strat, I truly believe that the strat is the best designed guitar on the market today. It’s extremely comfortable, the pickups sound so articulate, the range of diversity between the 5 positions. You can always add gain to a strat, that’s the only logical complaint I could levy at it, is that some models lack gain, but you can always add overdrive, distortion, or fuzz. It’s the voicing of the pickups that does it for me, the bell like clarity, it’s so musical.

YT just notified a jump in premium subscription from AU$22.95 a month to AU$32.95. I'm going to cancel my subscription and ditch YT. Hope to see you on Patreon.

I love my 2013 59 Strat other than it's 8.4 lbs. I'd like to find one around 7.5 lbs.

A musician once told me, if you play a wrong note, play it again so people think you meant to do that.
Came to mind after watching the opening.

I always loved the way Blackmore would play a phrase on the bridge pickup then flip to the kneck pickup and answer it

Tony Iommi WAS a strat guy ‘till his pickup died in the studio forcing him to grab his backup guitar…..an SG.

Your stretching it a bit with Vai and Van Halen. Not really Stratocasters. Clapton and Beck both played Les Pauls early in their careers. Jimi is my hero! I am at heart a Les Paul guy, but every guitar player NEEDS a Stratocaster in their collection

I just installed a Seymour Duncan SSL-5 (Perfect Tone version/clone) and it works great in the bridge! Gilmour was up to something good!

That intro - Wow

It's a compression SPRING... Not screw....

Hey Mick, I was a little confused by the bridge tone diagram. How/where do you recommend wiring the bridge pickup, to the middle tone knob or neck tone knob? Or somewhere else? Looking to tame my bridge pickup on my new (vintage-wired) strat! I’ve read some stuff that there’s maybe adverse effects to doing this, like the times of the pickups somehow change?

I have very Yngwie type pickups. I put on a ROTHSTEIN passive mid-cut/mid-boost POT. I can now get humbucker like sounds, Yngwie type sounds and Knofler like tones on one Strat. I love boosting the mids on the bridge pickup it takes out that icepick sound. On position 2 and 4 I use the mid-cut to get those more Strat like tones. Other mods Titanium saddles, brass sustain block, Dimarzio Virtual Solo in the neck and bridge and area 61 in middle.

The best bridge pickup should be a Tele one !

About bending, I’ve had 2 Classic 60 Strat, and it was impossible to bend more than a half a tone around the 10th and 12th fret, no matter the neck relief was and the string height.
9,5 inch rules ! 😉

How about increasing or decreasing spring resonant frequency by tightening the god forsaken claw… Hardly ever needs loosening.
You guys have spent an Arnie amount on your playing and comprehension.
✌️

Nice playing friends,awesome😎

Hey Mick I always under appreciated your strat but when you played it against the humbucker in the white strat I gotta say I liked your sound better. You're running all 3 Kloppmann ST 60 in your strat? Also you did the tone mod on the bridge? I'm thinking of doing that mod & the Gilmore mod on my Affinity. Wish I would of know about that mod before I just restrung mine.

I really enjoy The Pedal Show and how Dan and Mick dig deep on the construction and all the parts of the guitar that are integral to their sound!

Still wrapping my head around people loving vintage Strats but having to screw with their entire chain and use gobs of pedals just to get a usable sound out of it. Which begs the question…does that person REALLY like vintage strats? I submit that if one doesn’t like the sound of the guitar straight into a good amp working in the sweet spot then you don’t really like the guitar.

Dan’s summation of this presentation said it all for me.
Thank you Mick for the myriad of possibilities and things worth thinking about.
I play both Strats and Teles and love them both. Thank you so much to you both as always.

Watched all the way. SOLID !

Wow, those or some great Strat tones!

Just wanted to say that I saw and enjoyed this when it first came out, but it just came across my feed again, and I decided to watch it again, and I'm so glad I did! Wonderful vid and so much interesting and useful info there (as always).

Rory Gallagher

Hi gentlemen,, Don, here from Connecticut, 40 years in the music, business 25 owning my own store, currently at Guitar Center, and you guys are just wonderful,, please come to my store, and do a show here, someday,,! What you’re talking about Dan and Mick about over playing your guitar, or pushing it and trying to squeeze a little bit more out of it,, relaxing, and let some notes ride, and let the Guitar do the work, is more catastrophic than you even realize,, tends to be the bottom line. Sometimes, even Stevie Ray Vaughan as hard as he played. He definitely let the instrument breathe in between pounding on it. A younger player will pound, the whole song through,, a mature player will pound a bit, then let the instrument bring you home,, biblical

Stratocaster is the King of electric guitars. Period!

Robbie Robertson!

In my herd of 60 odd guitars, 24 of them are Strats of various types from the traditional styles like the 80s Stage CS-327 & the '92 Fender Mex Standard, to vintage 80s SuperStrats like the '86 Ibanez RG450, '89 RG565R-CA and the '86 Charvel Model 4, to modern SuperStrats like the 2000 Squier StageMaster HSH Deluxe and the 2013 Ibanez S420-BK.

Funny thing is that of all the Strat styles, I prefer the traditional styled Strats with modern features: pickguard mounted electronics, reversed headstocks with flatter 10 to 12" straight or 10-14" to 12-16" compound radii fretboards with 22 to 24 jumbo frets and at LEAST one or more humbuckers that is/are coil-splittable.

I think it can be safely said that I like Strats.

That said, I still love the other styles of guitars too. My herd includes Les Pauls like my 2012 Agile AL-3010SE & 2013 Epiphone Limited Edition Genesis Deluxe Professional (AFAIC, it's a double-cut LP). I have two Vs, a 1994 Jackson JRR-94-BLK Concept V and a 1980s Cort Flying V. I have several offsets like my 1984 Yamaha SC-300T, 2005 Yamaha EGV-103C and '80s "MIJ "Concert" Jazzmaster.

I still wanna get a few Explorer types and a few SGs and a few more semi-/full-hollow body guitars than just my modified Firefly 338 with '09 Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro zebra humbuckers (BB3 & 57C).

Oh, Dan, don't feel left out, I just recently started having Telecasters in my herd. I have two Telecasters that I love dearly, they're both are Squier Contemporary Telecaster HHs (2017 & 2020). These are traditional Telecasters with modern features: 22 tall/thin fret (on next refret I'll go jumbo stainless) on 12" boards, pickguard/control plate mounted electronics, one being a coil-splittable HH and the other is a hot stacked SSS Nashville. As a guy who loved his Strats for their unparalleled ergonomics, I appreciate the fact that these Teles came with tummy cut. I just wished they also had forearm cuts.

This is probably the fourth time I watch this and every time I learn something new. Thank you for the fantastic content.

"I'm enthused by Strats." Really? Never would have known if you hadn't said so. Really interesting deep, deep, deep dive into Strats.

Telecaster sound better in my opinion. Strats have the 2, 4 positions and the tremolo that are unique. Faster neck shape. Telecaster are simplistically good sounding. Slab of wood with a bridge and a neck? And might add that telecasters are very modifiable. Can put thin c neck on em. Humbuckers. I like em both for different reasons

One reason that I think that so many great players play strats is because it is such a personal instrument. A strat sounds like the person who plays it.

Every now and then, it strikes me what good guitar players these fellas are. ❤

Wow love a Strat. So much tone in so many ways.

Has anyone tried the Ilitch Noise Reduction-system? Does it change the Tone in any way? Do you still get positions #2 & #4? Thinking about getting one, and would love some input if possible?

An HSS S-style guitar is by far the most versatile and comfortable guitar on the planet.

The Strat is the best, sexiest guitar ever. From the contours, scale length, Tremolo, straight string pull, super expressive single coils, ability to change necks & parts. I myself slap on a 22 fret neck & a Humbucker in the bridge and I'm in heaven. The Strat is a part of body.

Anyone knows what Mick means by "adding some glass"? Thanks in advance.

Pete Townsend and Sterling Morrison too

Robert Cray is a huge one for me

I liked the advice about decking the bridge. I never deck the bridge on my strat style trems and of course my Floyd Rose equipped HM strat is not decked or blocked. However, I only use the vibrato on string bends. I like to make the vibrato bring the rest of strings slightly back into tune with a bit of vibrato to get an interesting harmonic from the notes. To me it is a way of finding the harmonic sweet spot you usually get from a solid bridge guitar and the process certainly has an interesting musical effect especially when dialing it a bit of gain.

Interesting note on the interaction with vintage style wiring and running the gear a bit hotter then backing off the guitar controls. The idea of turning up the amps a bit more and backing off the guitar is not a new one, but the mention of vintage wiring is a big deal. I found that this trick is a little less useful on "modern" wiring with both Strats and Les Pauls, but the vintage wiring tends to be a little more interactive and can help the bring the gear and guitar alive with simple tweaks of the knobs.

Mick, you've made me fall in love with my strat all over again! Thank you!

I can't lubricate my own nut slot, I'm catholic. Besides, I already wear glasses, so...

Jeff Beck, Vini Reilly, Mark Knopfler, Richard Lloyd- Tom Verlaine played one too later.

I enjoyed this episode quite a lot fellows.

I've enjoyed so many of the videos you guys have done. But this one goes to a whole new level.

For so long, I wondered how it was that a small number of guitarists were able to get such nice tone out of Fender guitars, whereas the majority get horrendous tone. Uli Roth was one of my favorites, with late 70's work in the Scorpios. There was so much intensity to his playing that I imagined him really digging in with the picking hand. Then in recent years I've seen video from late 70's Scorpions, and what grabbed my attention was his right hand. So relaxed. Barely touching the strings. Almost just lightly caressing them. And over since noticed it with a few others who have gotten nice tones. But maybe it was too small a sample size.

This video really nailed it for me. I don't know if the longer scale length makes them prone to the strings swinging out of control. Or what it is. But si often this metallic sound comes through that is grating. Sometimes it reminds me of when speaker cones are swinging so wildly that the voice coil starts slamming against the limit. And it creates a horrible sound.

Even Stevie Ray Vaughn, whose playing amazed me from when I first heard him playing with David Bowie, the tone on his albums was hard for me to take. Too much of what I dislike about the sound of Fender guitars. I don't know what exactly causes it, but it seems to plague so many of those who play that type of guitar.

Mick did an amazing job. I was bracing myself to deal with what I so often expect to hear from someone playing a Fender type guitar, but was pleasantly surprised. Well, until later into the video, and the picking became more aggressive, and some of those tones started breaking through.

I don't know if it's the woods used. Or the scale length. Or what. But shorter scale guitars, with woods such as mahogany (not maple, etc), pickups that don't use the magnet slugs that point at the strings, por what it is. The closest two guitars that come close to strat are ones that I built. Neither with a neck made from maple. One having a mahogany body, and the other having a chambered Koa body. They seem to escape part of it. But I did find myself using lighter strings and tuning down a half step, to minimize those effects. But then, they don't quite really fit the place of an actual strat guitar.

As I enter retirement, I'll be able to dive back into the world of guitar, and give more effort on something closer to an actual strat. This video will be quite helpful.

Thank you so much for making and posting it.