stratacaster pickups

Hi guys...
fist time poster long time strat owner, I seem to have fallen into a large group of people who want to fatten that strat sound a little.

Has anyone any pointers?? comments, opinions, I am starting to lean towards putting a g&l s500 in the bridge?

I've been swapping pickups in my mexi-strat to give her some more juice.
For now I've settled on an MFD in the bridge and middle and a velvet hammer at the neck position and I'm pretty happy.
The MFD's are hotter than most stock strat pickups so if you just add an MFD at the bridge you might find the volume difference between pickups a little too much.
The other thing I've noticed is that to get a good quack in positions 2 and 4 it's probably best to have pickups that closely match. Otherwise the sound spectrum is shifted in unexpected ways . I get a nice balanced quack in the bridge/middle position (both MFDs)
but not so much with the middle/neck position (MFD/velvet hammer). The VH has a nice classic hot sound for the neck position so I'll deal with that for now.
The clean sound of the MFD's is wonderful , much clearer than the stock strat pickups.
I find that I have to tweek the EQ a bit for overdriven sounds when changing from Alnico to MFDs due to the brightness in the MFDs being magnified by the overdrive.

Having an MFD in just the bridge might work well if the pickup is lowered some to compensate for the difference in output giving you a little boost when going to the bridge position...but you might be searching for hotter pickups (more MFDs?) in the middle and neck positions once you hear the MFD at the bridge.

I shielded my strat as best I could and haven't noticed too much noise from not having
properly matched pickups and a RWRP in the middle to allow for humbucking in positions 2 and 4. You might want to get a complete set of MFDs to have proper humbucking in pos. 2 and 4 if your using alot of overdrive/distortion.

The other thing to consider is that the MFDs are deeper than stock fender pickups so unless you deepen the pickup cavities you'll find it might be a very tight fit. I can't lower the pickups much if I wanted to. The bridge position isn't much of a problem with this issue since there is more clearance to the strings but it can get pretty tight at the neck position (one of the reasons I tried the VH at the neck).


I like my mexi-strat alot and it's a good test-bed for experimenting. If it was a spendy USA model I would consider keeping her stock and saving for a S-500, Skyhawk, SC3, etc.
to have an ax with MFDs that still feels like a strat with the added overall goodness G&L's bring to the table.

Hope this helps,
Kris

Hi guys...
fist time poster long time strat owner, I seem to have fallen into a large group of people who want to fatten that strat sound a little.

Has anyone any pointers?? comments, opinions, I am starting to lean towards putting a g&l s500 in the bridge?

Strats with the vintage setup have the bridge pickup wide open that makes that position pretty unusable for me.
Short of replacing the pickup...I'd say wire your bridge pickup to the bottom tone control.
That takes the ice pick off the top and makes it much more usable.
That's how my Eric Johnson strat is and no one can really say that he has a wimpy bridge pickup tone.