2000 Fender Standard Stratocaster

Once in awhile, you find good cheap guitars. Here is mine. This was a used Strat in the store that I teach at, and I played it for a few days. Now, normally I wouldn't choose a single-coil guitar, but this one played really well...like, crazy well. It played better than any USA Fender I have tried. I wasn't planning on buying it, but it was cheap. I picked it up and decided to have some fun with it. The color is called Midnight Wine, which is the color of blood! BLOOD!

I added Schaller locking tuners, because I had them from my last Strat project. I added a pearloid pickguard, String Saver graphite saddles (I hate the bent steel saddles, they cut into my hand). I added Shaller Straplocks too.

Electronically, it is pretty interesting. I bought CTS Pots, an orange-drop cap and had an E- Model Megaswitch left over from my Brian Moore. The Megaswitch is like a normal Strat switch, except in the middle position, you have the neck and bridge pickups on. I also have the tone knobs controlling the neck and bridge pickups.

Speaking of pickups, I chose a Seymour Duncan Classic Strat Stack Plus calibrated set. I shielded the cavity with copper tape.

Now my Strat is dead quiet. The pickups are louder than the stock models, and it gets about 90% as quacky. This guitar is a great match for the Mesa Blue Angel I use. It sounds better clean than distorted, but I like humbucking distorted tones a little better. This is a great guitar to play when I need quiet, loud, clean, single coil sounds.

This is a guitar project that was fun to build. Since I haven't been using single-coil guitars professionally for years though, I sold it.