Searching for that great Strat tone

[Chevy]

Originally Posted by LtKojak

I by chance got something that helped my Squier Std Strat to get that "hollowness": I've put a metal plate to all three p'ups and it made it sound... "better". And by "better" I mean I've nailed John Mayer's strat recorded sound.

The p'ups are these:
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electron...e_Pickups.html

At first I didn't care that much for the neck and middle ones, but the bridge one is excellent (I've got the hotter of the two) from the get go.

In the states, the only one I know sells baseplates for strat p'ups is Lindy Fralin; you should visit his site.

Hope that helps,

Woah..... very cool!! Now see, that's not something I would've done... just buy some generic pup's like that... but the results seem to be surprising.
The base plate I idea is awesome, too. Wonder if I could just make some up....
Anyhow, on the Fralin site they're $10. each, and claim that it just affects the bass, not the mids or highs... so this again may just be an EQ thing...
Thanks for the tips!

[srvyjm]

Dude,
I'm not sure what is so complictated here. ANY strat with real single coil pickups (not noiseless Cra@) will produce glorious tone in the fifth and forth positions (neck and neck/middle) on ANY Fender amp with a Ibanez Tube Screamer or decent overdrive pedal in front of it. My personal favorite it eh MJM Blues Devil, beats my TS-808 every day and I leave it on all the time. Just perfect tone, all day long. Very responsive to the volume knob on the guitar.

If you've had Strats and Vibrolux's you should already be there. Spend time learning the nuances of a players vibrato and where they play on the strings. Really, this isn't mysterious or elusive. You have the tools at your disposal, spend time mastering what you have. Gear alone isn't going to solve your problems, technique and subtly will.

[daz]

I know and love that tone. unfortunatly it's a product of the amp as much or more than the strat. i have gotten it in spades with one amp and the same strat that didn't get it at all with a different amp. In fact, i've been building my own amps for the last couple years and heard that sound come then go as i change the circuit around. i'll tell you one thing thats gets it incredibly well Take RAT pedal with the gain fairly low, the tone at full bright, output normal, into a VERY clean amp with the tones on the amp turned to counteract the rats' tone being on 10. Put a clean boost in front of the RAT to drive it, particularly a tube screamer with the output on 10 and the gain at zero. tone set to taste. Then finally readjust the rat's distortion till you g=have just the amount you want. It will end up being very low because the clean boost hitting the RAT's input drives the heck out of it. It's not a setting thats usefull for anything other than fairly high to high gain leads. But try it on the neck pickup and do some 12th fret soloing and i think you'll agree it's at least as much if not more of that tone than SRV got. I chased that tone for many years. but that was the only way i was sure to get it in spades.

[BarryW]

sure - Practise.

;^}

[Steve Conner]

Did Chevy ever find his holy grail of tone?

The nicest Strat tones I heard in recent memory were on Bill Perry's Live In NYC album.

[billyz]

From Reading the previous posts I know I am will be the exception, But. The very best sounding Stratocastors I have played and or owned have all been early Swamp Ash with Maple necks. 54,55, and 56, Woody and Warm with everything you could ever want in a Strat. Many newer Ash bodies have been less than good though. I have owned over a dozen various precbs strats of all flavors, My next Favorite is the Earliest Slab Rosewood boards then the Thinner veneer board strats.

As for Pickups , the best I have heard are the Lindy Fralin models. They are the closets to my favorite vintage ones. And every time I outfit them in a newer guitar it comes up a couple notches. I have not liked any of the current Fender made pickups, especially the Texas specials. The best thing you can do for an SRV model is change the pickups. Those overwinds don't do it. Marketing, hype, more is better, NOT.

Absolutely, get the best Metal parts you can, Callaham seems to be it right now.

Frets make a difference too. Large , wide, frets do not give the best Strat tone either. they make the guitar hard sounding.

Of course the paint job affects the tone too.

I had the Fender custom shop build a 1956 style for me years ago. The lightest one Piece Swamp ash body, clear straight grain maple neck. Nitro Lacquer finish. It took about five years for that guitar to start sounding really good.

[blueschicken]

I have an alder body american strat with a Seymour Hot Rail in the bridge position set up to use the middle tone pot as a single to Hum. tap, a lace silver in the middle and neck positions that I set up myself, and I'm playing through a Silver face deluxe reverb fender tube amp with a modified RAT and get pretty close to the tone you are talking about. The trick is taking your time and playing with the amp tone knobs and the pedal and a little bit of time adjusting your pickup heights and putting them all together. This is not an overnight process but with the right equipment and quality time you can get pretty close to what you want!

[Moses]

Well I really don't have that much to add to this conversation...but I'm going to give you all my 2 cents worth anyway

So I wrote a list of all the things I could think of that would have an effect on tone (in general. Obviously there are about a billion different factors involved in the tonal characteristics of a pickup, but I left that at just one item), and put them in order according to which one, in my very humble opinion, has the greatest effect on tone. I based this off of the theory that the sound produced originally is the "true" tone and everything that comes after that initial sound production is secondary tone-wise. Of course this is all very much up to debate, but hey that's what we're here for. So this is what I think.

1. Fingers and Technique
2. Strings
3. Nut and Bridge
4. Frets
5. Wood
6. Pups
7. EQ
8. Amplifier
9. Cable length, pot and cap values, etc.
10. Construction
11. Interference ( in single coils )
12. Finish

A few more words of explanation:
By construction I basically mean how the body is set up, and how the neck is attached. This is so low because to me it seems like it has greater influence on sustain than tone.
Finish is low because in my opinion a good finish on a well-made guitar is going to have a negligible effect on tone and a hardly noticeable effect on sustain. On cheaper guitars, finish may be too thick and have more of an effect, but I choose to ignore that :P

Ok well.....have at it. Tell me why I am wrong!