GET VERSATILE! DO MORE WITH YOUR STRAT

There’s so much you can do to improve and mod the guitar you have – here are some of the best ways to start

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GIVE THE SINGLEBUCKER SOUND A GO

Got single-coil pickups but want to imitate fat ’bucker tone? First, add tons of overdrive to your sound via a decent mid-rich pedal – two pedals, preferably. Don’t be tempted to turn the treble down on your amp or pedals: around six to eight, no lower. Keep the guitar’s volume up full, but knock the bridge pickup tone control down to about half or lower. Sounds much more like a humbucker, right? Vintage-style Strats don’t have a tone pot wire to the bridge pickup, so you’ll need to mod this.

GET FRESH POTS

If you have a low to mid-price guitar there is usually some room for improvement in the electrics department; and the standard wiring and potentiometers (pots) are a good first port of call. Cheaper pots tend to have quite inconsistent resistance values. The higher your resistance, the more treble you have on tap. It can make a significant difference to Strats especially with 250k pots being regarded as the ideal value for them.

FIT A TREBLE BLEED