Your favourite strat mods

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perceive

New member
I am interested to hear what strat mods people hear have done for themselves, and what their favourites were.. i.e. their fave modded pups, necks, anything you can think of really...

For reference I have a warmoth neck on my main strat with kinman pick ups.
I guess its sort of a frankenstrat now but its all good!
 
Hot Rails (all three of them), set to give two humbucking coils in series in any position (requires a 4P5T Super Switch).

No load tone pot on the neck pickup, and a TBX control on the bridge/middle.

Push/Pull volume pot which adds the neck pickup, no matter what position the switch is in (so I can get neck/bridge or neck/middle/bridge combinations).

Gotoh 510 gears.

Dunlop 6150 frets, on a 7 1/4 inch radius fingerboard (THAT'S a bitch of a fret job, let me tell you!)

String Saver saddles on the Hardtail bridge. I'm a BIG fan of these things, `cause I when I went to that traditional string-thru-body bridge I was breaking at least one or two strings a week for about a month before I got the string savers. I basically never break strings on that guitar anymore. Ever.

Of course, the whole thing is made from Warmoth parts, and me and dad built it when I was 13 (good lord, that guitar is 20 years old this year!). It has a different neck these days, though, and I refinished it about 15 years ago (HoK Cobalt Blue). It also used to have just a bridge humbucker (an original Gibson PAF, which I stupidly sold YEARS ago, and which would be worth more that the rest of the guitar if I still had it these days), `cause I really wanted to be Eddie Van Halen back then.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light said:
Dunlop 6150 frets, on a 7 1/4 inch radius fingerboard (THAT'S a bitch of a fret job, let me tell you!)


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
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I eventually settled for a 9 1/2" on mine but I do sorta wish I had gotten a 7 1/4 I must say. I think the thing that made me happiest with the neck was I got a boat tail and not a thin neck.. I seem to be much more comfortable with that...? Oh well it suits me at least.
 
dragonworks said:
strip the paint off and leave it natural, always my favorite mod.
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Unfotunatly, that was the 1st strat mod I did on my original sunburst '66 strat...when I was 17 years old. The body was 2 piece alder and the "natural" sucked. It is lake placid blue nitro now. Fuck, I wish I had left the original sunburst finish alone. But alas. the damage is done.
(to be fair, a '66 strat was not considered "collectable" back then)

NEVER TRUST A 17 YEAR OLD WITH A VINTAGE STRAT!
 
Bending the strings wears down the nickel frets, If I ever had a warmoth neck made it would have stainless steel frets that never wear down so they say.

When I used heavy strings, I took the braided cloth off of some wire and put it in the saddle of the G, B, and E strings, like SRV.
 
I put a washer on the strap botton and screw it on over the strap so it won't come off. I use a duncan quarter pounder at the bridge and it sounds pretty good, I think. I also use a knob for an mxr effects box in place of the volume knob because it's a little bigger around and easier to hold onto. You can also slip the rubber on there for when you do volume swell stuff.
 
Would I get shot on here if I said adding a Floyd Rose? I can't help it, I grew up in the 80's and have always played Floyds. I just can't get used to a vintage trem no matter how hard I try...
 
mike2731 said:
Would I get shot on here if I said adding a Floyd Rose? I can't help it, I grew up in the 80's and have always played Floyds. I just can't get used to a vintage trem no matter how hard I try...
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Well ... not shot .... exactly. But yeah I always figured if you want a strat style guitar with a floyd you'd just go and get one of the many clones with them already?
My .02c of course...
 
capnkid said:
Bending the strings wears down the nickel frets, If I ever had a warmoth neck made it would have stainless steel frets that never wear down so they say.

When I used heavy strings, I took the braided cloth off of some wire and put it in the saddle of the G, B, and E strings, like SRV.
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Damn, how heavy were those strings exactly?
 
Light said:
...String Saver saddles...
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I put a set of these on my vintage style trem (I have a mexicastor) and I can whole heartedly say that its the best $35 I've ever spent to modify one of my guitars. Things stays in tune MUCH better and I break strings much less frequently.
btw, I have the springs cranked all the way down so the trem doesn't move (I dont use it). Am I sacrificing tone by having a trem vs a fixed bridge? Is there a way to "convert" to a fixed bridge. like, is there a kit or something?
 
i throw away the whammy bar, disconnect the tone controls, put a piece of sandpaper in the neck pocket to help with stability- i push the magnets on the pickups out a bit on the bass strings- or sometimes the g string magnet needs to go in- depends on the pickup- i have my own stagger
i throw away the backplate, tighten the spring to full tension possible

(kremitmusic- you could do this and then hammer a wedge of wood into the trem cavity- but with yur springs fully tensed and bridgeplate against the face of the guitar its pretty fixed as it is- the wedge of wood may add sustain- or make yur guitar sound shitty-)

then i just beat the shit out of it, replacing/upgrading things that break. i like gotoh tuners, bone nuts, and sometimes dimarzio stacked humbuckers. ive chiseled out the pickup routings to create a larger air chamber on a couple of heavier bodied/darker sounding strats- it works nice
and i carve the word "fraser" on the back
i dont say much around here- but i love strats lol
first thing i always do when i get a new one is take it apart and make it mine
i like the nickel rockers 012-n54 set- i think they call it 1400
 
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perceive said:
Damn, how heavy were those strings exactly?
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not very, They were special 11 guage or something but the cloth did keep the strings from snapping on that 90% angle bend into the bridge. I guess if you bend the strings a lot it wears them down in that area faster and they go boink.
 
Welp, on my Strat I've replaced the stock pickups with a pair of humbuckers- Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates at the neck and Screemon Demon in the bridge position. I got a new pick guard to accommodate from Warmoth (in tortoise shell on a antique white guitar- looks good). I replaced the stock pots and switches with a 3 position blade type switch (switches like a gibson, but looks like a Fender). The pots are stacked- 1 volume and 1 tone for each pick up. The knobs were custom milled from a bar of stainless (my bassplayer is a machinist at his day job ;) ) The back plate is also milled from a solid piece of 1/8" stainless steel. I replaced the stock tuners with the Schaller locking tuners in a brushed finish (same as youd find on an Am Strat) and I replaced the saddles with the string savers.

I like my strat... but I've been thinking about picking up something with a set neck and fixed bridge...
 

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kremitmusic said:
Is there a way to "convert" to a fixed bridge. like, is there a kit or something?
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Not a good one. It CAN be done, but it requires a lot of finish touchup, and is quite expensive if you have it done. It is also pretty tough to get a good job if you haven't done it before. If you really want to go that way, it is much cheaper (and probably better) to just buy a different body.

As to the "is it better" question, no neither one is better. They ARE quite different, but which one you like is a personal thing. Look at the Clapton Strat; it comes standard with a blocked trem, because he doesn't use it, but he prefers the sound of a trem to a hardtail. If you like the way it plays and sounds right now, why change it?

The only reason mine is a hardtail is because dad wouldn't let me build one with a trem when I was thirteen, partially because he didn't want to pay for it I'm sure, but also because he didn't want me fussing around with that when I needed to be practicing scales and shit. If I were to make one today, I would probably go with a hardtail, but only because I don't really ever use the trem on my "super-strat" (figured maple top, Schaller Floyd copy, Sperzels, and a Seymour Jazz/JB combo). Of course, it could well be because I rarely play that guitar at all. Who knows.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light said:
Not a good one. It CAN be done, but it requires a lot of finish touchup, and is quite expensive if you have it done. It is also pretty tough to get a good job if you haven't done it before. If you really want to go that way, it is much cheaper (and probably better) to just buy a different body.

As to the "is it better" question, no neither one is better. They ARE quite different, but which one you like is a personal thing. Look at the Clapton Strat; it comes standard with a blocked trem, because he doesn't use it, but he prefers the sound of a trem to a hardtail. If you like the way it plays and sounds right now, why change it?

The only reason mine is a hardtail is because dad wouldn't let me build one with a trem when I was thirteen, partially because he didn't want to pay for it I'm sure, but also because he didn't want me fussing around with that when I needed to be practicing scales and shit. If I were to make one today, I would probably go with a hardtail, but only because I don't really ever use the trem on my "super-strat" (figured maple top, Schaller Floyd copy, Sperzels, and a Seymour Jazz/JB combo). Of course, it could well be because I rarely play that guitar at all. Who knows.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
Click to expand...

I wonder if the fixed bridge fenders will be worth something more in the future?
 
Mine (a MIJ '62 reissue) isn't very modded, but I have done some minors:

- blocked the trem
- replaced the neck pickup with the Fender Vintage '57/'62
- replaced all the plastic parts with aged/yellowed Fender accessories
 
On my USA Vintage reissue strats (57 and a 62) I always do three things; move the middle PU tone control to the bridge that leaves the middle PU without a tone control and replace the stock PUs with Texas Specials. Then refret the necks with Dunlop 6150 frets. Oh yeah before I refret the 57 maple neck I also like to steel wool the complete neck to take off some of that lacquer, it makes the neck a little smoother feeling.
 
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