NPD/NGD American Standard upgraded with pickups by Timbo :)

[Rockhorst]

In the beginning of October I bought a 2015 American Standard Stratocaster. These are incredibly well made guitars IMO. Fender really has its act together at the moment. The only thing I disliked were the Custom Shop Fat 50s pickups. The bridge and middle pu were fine, but the neck just sounded bland and lifeless to me. So I asked Timbo to wind a modern Strat set. He suggested combining Alnico II and Alnico IV magnets and wound them pretty hot (8k5 bridge, 7k7 mid and 6k7 neck). I wired these up with a master tone control (33 nF cap) and a series blender for the mid and bridge to get a sort of humbucker.





It's absolutely glorious. The neck pickups is nice and full, plenty of bottom end but also a lot of high end sparkle. And it's loud. I think I could almost gig with just that one pickup and playing with the guitar's volume a bit. I'm not a big fan of just the mid pu by itself on any strat and this time is no exception (it's a good pu, just not my fav strat position). However, together with the neck however you get very nice, stratty funk tones all around. The bridge is crazy hot if you just look at it's DC resistance, but it actually balances very well with the neck. I even had to lower the neck and raise the bridge a bit to even their level. It's nice, firm and trebly without any 'ice pick'. Blending the the mid pickup in series with the bridge actually kills a lot of the highs, more than I anticipated. Could be due to the 250k pot or it's just the nature of that setup. Not really suited for cleans, but it does work nicely with some gain (somewhere between a bridge and neck humbucker...guess that was to be expected). It's a nice flavor to have on board and could make it very versatile when switching amps. I'll have to take it out gigging and see how it works. I also put on a mint green pickguard.



The pickups made a nice, but bland guitar into something that has me grinning from ear to ear and makes me wanna rock out. So, highly recommended. I'm not done modding by the way. I ordered a deluxe bridge with pop in arm and some locking tuners. Basically, I'm turning it into a Deluxe, which may be a bit silly

[pickdropper]

I am a huge fan of Olympic White Strats.  This looks great.


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[cooder]

Looks sweet! Looking forward to sticking Timbo's PU's in my Tele....

[jubal81]

That's a real beauty! It's a great feeling when it all comes together like that. Big Congrats!