Doing some research on pickups for the project. Was originally considering Fralins / Seymour Duncans but have been turned on to Kinman Woodstocks by a member of the Fender-Talk forums. Listened to a few samples, and read the tech articles on the site, both are equally impressive.
From the Kinman website
CAUTION: If you want a Strat on steroids with heaps of punch, heaps of dynamic range, aggressive attitude and an exciting feel with a huge sound, then look no further than the 2nd generation of my Woodstock’s (revised in late 2001).
Named for the Woodstock era (not just for Jimi), my Woodstock sets are very powerful and dynamic pickups that pack such a wallop that they may require a little experimentation in height adjustment to tame the performance to what you are accustomed to with regular single coils. They overload the front end of an amp easily. Turning the volume control down a tad [with my bypass filter fitted] sweetens the sound up nicely.
This set has a big powerful darker sound and features aggressive fast semi-aged attack and superb dynamic response. Accenting the dynamic, extremely fluid and super responsive feel of one of the great inspirational Stratocaster* masters of all time. Bright and bold, extremely responsive with loads of feel and punch. It’s almost too easy not to sound polite with this set. Retains remarkable definition, clarity and presence under heavy overdrive. These pickups behave and sound better than most all Strat pickups when cranked. The non-wound strings are unusually powerful. Perhaps surprisingly switch positions 2 and 4 produce recognozable Knopfleresque quack sounds.
These Woodstock’s make it easy to sound more like Jimi than Jimi himself did, and you won’t have to use a curly cord to get his sound. These are a Strat Virtuoso’s delight and packs such a wallop your playing will project with a voice of authority. If you own a Fender with stock pickups you are in for a REALLY BIG surpise.
The AVn-69’s are great for matching bridge humbuckers both in terms of sound character and output. No regular Alnico Strat pickup comes close.
My decision has been made, just need to place the order and await their arrival.
Well, it turns out I was wrong about the Squier. It is not circa 1992, but 1989-1990… doesn’t seem like much, but it’s actually a significant difference.
I traced the seral number through Fender, and it appears this is a USA made Squier which is actually a pretty rare thing.
From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squier#USA_Squiers
USA Squiers
USA Squiers are very rare and some of them have a serial number with a E prefix. While the specific year of manufacture cannot be determined, they were made for less than a year spanning 1989 and 1990.
So yea, that’s neat…. not sure it’ll stop be from completing the project, but I’m going to dig a bit deeper and see if I should just keep this as is and move the project to another guitar. I’d hate to piss off the guitar gods by gutting something rare. Thoughts?
Picked up a Squire Stratocaster circa 1992 from a buddy of mine to try out, I like it so much I’m going to go ahead and buy it.
It has a white body, maple neck/headstock with a black pickguard or rather… had
Went to guitar center and bought a gold anodized pickguard, matching knobs, new potentiometers and tremolo arm (read: whammy bar). Upon taking off the pickguard and looking at the innards, I decided that I needed to do more to this than just a minor face lift, and that’s when Project Stratofeller started.
The wiring was a hack job at best. The previous-previous-previous owner(yes the guitar has been around the block a few times, and no it wasn’t wearing protection) at some point put in some “new” volume and tone potentiometers and used speaker wire to connect them to the pickups. Seeing as how I wasn’t merely going to solder some new pots (potentiometers) in place with the existing crappy wiring I went about procuring some. Here is a rough time line of the events that lead up to and followed:
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5:49 pm: arrive home from Guitar Center with shiny new parts
5:50 pm: crack open a beer and unwrap parts
5:53 pm: crack open second beer, curse “The King of Queens” for being the only thing on television
6:35 pm: head to Home Depot, pick up battery powered handheld soldering iron
7:20 pm: remove strings and pickguard, discover electronic spaghetti
7:45 pm: start de-soldering connections and making my way through the mess, figure out handheld soldering irons fucking suck
8:10 pm: head back to Home Depot to get proper soldering iron and to look for wire to replace the spaghetti with
8:35 pm: Discovering Home Depot doesn’t carry anything appropriate, call Guitar Center to see what they recommend, the clerk suggests Radio Shack
8:36 pm: After calling a friend, discover all of the Radio Shacks are closed or about to close.
9:30 pm: Look around the house for electronics that I can salvage wire out of, begin eyeing home computer suspiciously
9:40 pm: Decide that playing the Guitar is more important than my home PC; open it up and cut the wires off the power supply
9:50 pm: Begin re-wiring guitar
11:00 pm: Have everything soldered in and begin reassembling and restringing the guitar
11:20 pm: Plug the guitar in and discover it sounds like a completely new instrument
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Thus, project Stratofeller was born. Since I completed the above, I’ve begun shopping for a new neck/bridge and pickups. Going to hot rod my guitar and see what I can transform this humble Squire into. Looking into Floyd Rose bridges and Lace Sensor Pickups (looking at a few different types, I like the sound of the gold series, as that is what Clapton uses in Blackie). As far as the neck goes, I’m leaning towards a standard rosewood strat style neck, although I’m going to shop around and take a look at the “superstrat” necks (24 frets instead of 22) and see what the pro/cons are of going with that setup. It’ll get other upgrades as well, I plan on shielding the entire body cavity and wires with copper shielding. This will help eliminate hum and external interference.
Stay tuned for pics of the project and its progression, here is how she sits now though:
Project Stratofeller.