Whether you’re shopping for your first Strat or looking to breathe new life into an old favourite, when it comes to killer Strat tone, we have the answers. It’s time to turn on, tune in and rock out…
From Hank and Buddy through to Jimi, Clapton, Gilmour, Knopfler, SRV and beyond, the Fender Stratocaster has been at the heart of popular music for more than six decades. Despite its familiarity, its charms are still the source of mystery and wonder to many ists today.
When we think about improving our tone it’s just too easy to focus on the micro and ignore the macro. Although it must be said, buying electronic components, lumps of metal and so forth is a lot less exciting than waiting six months for a set of boutique pickups recommended by some random forum dude to arrive from the frozen wastes of Alaska. Nevertheless, in this tone quest, addressing the system as a whole is more likely to produce the desired results than a potentially dispiriting and financially ruinous cycle of smaller upgrades. This principle applies to all s, but none more so than the Stratocaster.
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Over the next 12 pages, we’re going to provide you with what amounts to a holistic approach to Stratocaster tone optimisation. The topic is approached from various angles in the order we believe they should be addressed. Beginning with string choice and setup, we will consider hardware and electronics before moving on to pickups. This is based on a firm belief that the starting point for tone is a Strat that is properly set up and sounds good acoustically.
Before we continue, it’s worth noting that we’re going to be assuming you own a traditional stock Stratocaster here, with the usual pickups, controls, hardware and the like. If your Strat has humbuckers, a locking vibrato or other major mods then obviously some of this won’t be applicable – but equally a lot of it will. Let’s dive in…
Selecting your strings is crucial, because a Stratocaster should be set up with the actual string gauge that you intend to use. The core diameter and tension of your strings determine how the Strat’s spring claw must be set – which in turn carries over to saddle heights, intonation adjustment and truss rod tension.
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A great setup means two things – the will play well, and you’ll actually be able to play the damn thing for more than five minutes! That may seem like a statement of the obvious but Stevie Ray Vaughan’s reputed predilection for ultra-heavy strings has led plenty of us to ponder the optimum pain to tone ratio.
Fat strings can sound fantastic with vintage-style single coils because they solidify and fatten up the tone, and provide higher output levels without the dullness of overwound pickups. However if you’re struggling to bend a full tone and your fretting hand cramps up after a few minutes, your may indeed sound great, but you won’t.
Remember that SRV detuned a half step, which would have made the 0.012-gauge sets he preferred when his fingers were sore feel more like 0.011s. Also consider the material, because pure nickel sounds warmer than nickel plated steel and round cores will sound more ‘vintage’ than hex cores. Base your string choice on what sounds good to you, the pitch you prefer to tune to and the gauge you can realistically manage.
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The alchemy of setting up a is deserving of a publication all of its own, so we’ll restrict ourselves to the aspects that have the most impact on tone – and that starts with the vibrato. It’s up to you whether you prefer to block it off, have downward movement only, or float it for up and down pitch shifts, however what you choose does have some bearing on sonics.
Blocking off a trem by wedging a piece of wood between the block and the back of the spring cavity tends to thicken the midrange and soften the transients for a more compressed tone. Some claim it improves sustain – Clapton is a fan. In contrast, floating the trem tends to open up the sound and allow the treble harmonics to ring a bit clearer. You may also discern a bit more of the Strat’s springy ‘internal reverb’ and you can enhance this effect by removing the spring cover.
For a Strat to sound its best, the strings must be able to ring cleanly and this is achieved through adjustments to the truss rod tension and saddle heights. Strings vibrate in an arc with minimum displacement near the nut and bridge. If the fingerboard is set too flat the strings tend to buzz against the frets and a very slight degree of upwards curve (aka neck relief) can prevent this.
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Even if you aren’t experiencing fret noise, you may notice that the tone becomes warmer and fuller as relief increases. However the may feel harder to play, so try to find a compromise setting by trusting your ears and your fingers. Similarly, you have to rely on your ears when you’re adjusting the action. Set too low, the strings will choke out against the frets when you bend them, and this is most apparent on B and top E strings. If you want clean bends and maximum sustain you have to set the saddle heights so that the strings can be bent without choking out.
The fingerboard radius and, to a lesser extent, the condition of the frets determine how low the action can go. Since modern Fender Strats have 9.5-inch radius fingerboards and vintage spec is 7.25 inches, the unwound strings must be set higher for optimum Strat tone than they might be on s with a flatter fingerboard radius. If you’re struggling with higher action, try lighter strings.
With three pickups, a five-way switch, three control potentiometers and an abundance of space under the pickguard to play with, it’s hardly surprising that there are more wiring mods for Strats than any other type of . Here, were looking at what you can do with a Strat with stock features. When we consider Strat electronics, one aspect is often overlooked and it plays a subtle yet important function in the vintage tone equation – from the late 1950s until 1967 Fender used a 14-gauge aluminium shield under the pickguard.
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Various metals can be used for shielding however the effectiveness of a single layer under a pickguard is questionable. More interesting is the effect aluminium has on Strat tone due to ‘paramagnetism’. Fitting an aluminium shield has a clearly audible effect, with rounder mids and a vocal ‘ooh’ tone for single notes. You can buy a shield for around £10 and they’re easy to fit – it doesn’t even require any soldering.
The value of the tone capacitor is another often overlooked feature. Contrary to popular belief, tone controls continue bleeding treble even when they’re supposedly turned off.
If you need convincing, consider how the bridge pickup of vintage-style Strat sets usually sounds disproportionately bright compared to the middle and neck.
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It’s because stock Strat wiring leaves the bridge pickup unconnected to a tone control. If you ever feel the need to even things up, simply install a jumper wire to allow the bridge and middle pickups to share the same tone control. Since tone controls are always in-circuit, it follows that the tone capacitor’s value must influence a Strat’s treble characteristics. In 1964, the Strat’s 10th anniversary coincided with a change in cap value from 0.1uF to 0.047uF.
In circuits, there’s treble roll-off and a resonance peak at the roll-off frequency. All things being equal, a Strat will sound brighter with a 0.047uF tone cap than it will with a 0.1uF. This is due to the roll-off frequency and resonance peak occurring higher in the audio spectrum.
Until now, we’ve been considering ways to optimise your , but this is where we move onto modification. So long as you are not buying some fancy relic’d replicas, tone capacitors are cheap and easy to find. You could try paper/oil, ceramic or modern film capacitors to discover which you prefer, and while you may discern some subtle difference in tone and response between the various types, it’s the value that’s paramount.
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If your Strat sounds too bright, try fitting a 0.1uF cap. If you want to brighten things up, go for 0.047uF. If you’re using hot wound pickups and find them too dark, you could even go to a 0.022uF or 0.033uF. Potentiometer values have a big influence on tone, too, because they effect the resonance peak at the cutoff frequency. Large value control potentiometers make s sound brighter by accentuating the resonance peak.
Fender has always used 250k pots in Stratocasters, except for a brief period in 1954 when the very earliest Stratocasters had 100k pots. We’ve tried these in a 1954 replica and there is a very noticeable sweetening of the treble and a smoother quality to the tone overall.
However, you do lose some glassy sheen and shimmer. You can darken, brighten, smooth out or add edge to your tone
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