What to do with 20 year old Fender Strat?

[Old Tooth Hopkins]

Since I've got two gurus on this thread, I might as well fire away my questions...

I found out more about this Strat (which I did ages ago, before my guitar building days, so now with more understanding).

The pickups look like Alnico type but internet says it's ceramic. I think I am now more keen to swap them out for Tonerider ones.

What is preferred, pure vintage or blue set? The RWRF in pure vintage sounds promising.

Do the Benson Pickups and Entwhistle (can't look at that without thinking about John Entwhistle...) worth looking at?

[Simon Barden]

You need to look at the back of the pickup.

Here was my MIM Strat pickup:



You can see the two ceramic magnets stuck to the rear.

With proper Strat pickups, the Alnico magnets are the pole pieces, so there won't be anything stuck to the rear of the pickups.

So you'll need to remove the pickguard to check. It's very hard to tell just from the top unless you have examples of both types of pickup that could have been fitted to hand.

[McCreed]

D'oh!!! Simon beat me to it! But anyway...

The pickups look like Alnico type but internet says it's ceramic. I think I am now more keen to swap them out for Tonerider ones.

You may need to take the pickups out (or at least lift the pickguard enough to see) to identify what type of pickups they are.
With ceramic bar pickups the pole pieces are just steel rods with ceramic magnets attached to the bottom of the poles, as opposed to each polepiece being an individual magnetic rod such as with Alnico single coil pickups.

If you lift the pickguard and can see a long rectangular block (the ceramic magnet) you'll know. Also, sometimes you tell just by looking at the tops of the pole pieces. If there is a concentric circular pattern (like from a machine/lathe) they are likely steel poles. If they are plated with chrome or something similar they are also likely to be steel. Steel poles = ceramic bar underneath.

As far as the Toneriders go, it hard to go wrong IMO. It just depends on what sound suits you. Vintage, modern, hotter over-wound etc.
I have owned and played the Pure Vintage in the strat sets, I have an unused set of Classic Blues waiting for a guitar, have had two sets of Hot Classic Tele pickups and currently my single pickup strat has an Alnico 4 humbucker in it. They all deliver!

I can't comment on the Bensons or the Entwistles as I've never played them (or heard them TTBOMK). I have tried some Entwistle noiseless (ASN-57) they sound pretty good but not as good as the Fender noiseless models I have, and they're really tall so don't fit average cavity depths. NOTE: I don't know that to be true of his regular alnico single coils. You'd have to investigate.

[Simon Barden]

I've never fitted Toneriders in a Strat so can't comment on any specifics.

It all comes down to your own preference in guitar sound. The more vintage the set, the cleaner and crisper the sound will be. the hotter the pickups are wound, the more inductance the pickup has and (for a given magnet choice) the lower down the frequency range it's resonant peak will be and the more the high frequencies are reduced.

This can be combatted to some extent by switching to a more powerful magnet (as a rule of thumb, the more powerful the magnet fitted to a given pickup, the brighter the sound of the pickup). You can also offset some of the treble loss by switching to a 300k volume pot or even a 500k pot.

But in general, the hotter the pickup, the more mids and the less treble you get. I also feel that you tend to get less dynamics from a hotter pickup.

I'm not a fan of pickups that are too hot, as I like versatile guitars. So almost all my guitars a have vintage to overwound vintage specs, nothing hotter (apart from on ny EX-1 kit). You can make a vintage pickup sound really distorted, but it's much harder to make a hot pickups sound good clean.

There are so many pickups out there that it's impossible to say how they all sound, especially how they compare to the ideal sound you have in your head. The Bensons will probably sound a bit different to Toneriders and will probably increase the perceived sound quality by a few %, but not by the giant leap the price difference would suggest. However the Bensons are good value for USA made hand-wound pickups. Pickups like the Toneriders have really raised the bar for low-cost quality pickups that have 90-95% of the character of expensive boutique pickups (though some models will shine a bit more than others, it's just the way it is).

[Simon Barden]

In the end it all comes down to budget and how much you are prepared to spend.

Don't forget that a set of really good pickups can always be put in another guitar.

If hum is an issue for you with single coils, then look at the current (v4) series of Fender Noiseless, or Kinmans (I like my Kinmans, probably in the same way as McCreed likes his Fender Noiseless). Both will fit without any modification to the pickup cavities.

[McCreed]

If hum is an issue for you with single coils, then look at the current (v4) series of Fender Noiseless, or Kinmans (I like my Kinmans, probably in the same way as McCreed likes his Fender Noiseless). Both will fit without any modification to the pickup cavities.

I'd love to get a set of Kinman's but they're very nearly 600AU bucks with shipping. Then there's the issue of "what if I really like them?". Then I'd have to buy another set, and another set...

[Simon Barden]

Available from around £200 a Strat set in the UK, so almost AUD$600 seems excessive, especially as they are supposed to be an Australian design.

[Bakersdozen]

Another suggestion @Old Tooth Hopkins , if your concerned about keeping the guitar original and most of the talk here is about pickups and electronics, why not experiment with a whole new pickguard? Take your old one out and set it aside, it can be simply dropped back in down the track if so desired. This way, you get full reign of new experimentation without feeling guilty. Do whatever wiring mods and pickup shenanigans you desire. While the guitar is apart, give it a general clean up, polish, tighten ALL the nuts, check the fretboard, check the tuners, polish the frets etc. You could also look at loaded pickguards - there are plenty around.

[McCreed]

Available from around £200 a Strat set in the UK, so almost AUD$600 seems excessive, especially as they are supposed to be an Australian design.

Yes, I agree. You'd think we'd get an Aussie discount!
AFAIK, they're now made in the Philippines, and have been for a while.

I based my prices using the Kinman website (which is just horrible IMO) which only lists in USD, and using the "SRV Set" as an example, are $375US (without shipping) that's $521AU. I have since found a couple of domestic retailers where they're $479AU, however that's plus shipping.
There are some sets as low as $389AU, and mix & match singles from $140-$185AU each! However you don't a choice of cover colour through the shops. White only.

Fender Gen 4's range between $329-$375AU, so I guess they're less expensive than I previously stated, but still pretty dear IMO.

Then there's "The Bonamassa" set at $465US... too rich for my blood!

[madmikedynamite]

In AUS there is an absurd glut of used gear and guitars on fb Market Place, Gumtree etc right now and has been for quite some time.
I reckon you'd be hard-pressed to even get 500 for it, and don't expect it to sell overnight.

Where are you seeing these? Plenty of squiers but not may Fenders here in Brisbane for that sort of money.