Bruce Campbell
Junior Member
- Messages
- 162
I just set up a reverse angled Strat bridge pickup in my Warmoth Strat with Fralin Split Blade blues output pickups. There are $12-ish pickguards on Amazon available with this feature. There is only one good demo on YouTube that I could find of someone demonstrating this; I didn't have the patience to do a full consistent demo, but did record stuff for my own personal comparison. So here is my anecdotal opinion, if it helps anyone interested in trying it:
Clean tones with bridge only are improved IMO - closer to a humbucker in terms of roundness, but not muddy, just more even across strings in terms of frequency balance. Bridge & middle together is a little different clean, but not altogether different from normal angled - more interesting if you're playing a wide spread across the strings consistently like funk strumming.
Dirty tones with bridge only are WAY better, again closer to a humbucker but not quite. I feel really good using it for heavy stuff now, though - doesn't sound weird like a normal Fender bridge slant (this is one reason why Baroness's recent guitar tones irk me heavily, despite the incredible music). Dirty tones with bridge & middle are kind of a mixed bag but still a valid unique tone especially if only moderately overdriven.
Both the clean & dirty tones unique to the Freeway switch (bridge & middle in series, bridge & neck in series and parallel, and all 3 in parallel) are a bit different than the normal slant, not really in a preferable way except maybe the neck & bridge in series. Bridge & middle in series is OK, but the bridge by itself is closer to a usable humbucker-ish sound than the series options IMO.
So, if you really want the bridge single to be useful with distortion, and a bit more even clean, and don't necessarily need the same results in bridge & middle together, this is a great cheap reversible mod to try. I've ended up basically with a hardtail Hendrix Strat, and although I tend to really like the neck pickup, I bet the bridge will be in play much more now.
Clean tones with bridge only are improved IMO - closer to a humbucker in terms of roundness, but not muddy, just more even across strings in terms of frequency balance. Bridge & middle together is a little different clean, but not altogether different from normal angled - more interesting if you're playing a wide spread across the strings consistently like funk strumming.
Dirty tones with bridge only are WAY better, again closer to a humbucker but not quite. I feel really good using it for heavy stuff now, though - doesn't sound weird like a normal Fender bridge slant (this is one reason why Baroness's recent guitar tones irk me heavily, despite the incredible music). Dirty tones with bridge & middle are kind of a mixed bag but still a valid unique tone especially if only moderately overdriven.
Both the clean & dirty tones unique to the Freeway switch (bridge & middle in series, bridge & neck in series and parallel, and all 3 in parallel) are a bit different than the normal slant, not really in a preferable way except maybe the neck & bridge in series. Bridge & middle in series is OK, but the bridge by itself is closer to a usable humbucker-ish sound than the series options IMO.
So, if you really want the bridge single to be useful with distortion, and a bit more even clean, and don't necessarily need the same results in bridge & middle together, this is a great cheap reversible mod to try. I've ended up basically with a hardtail Hendrix Strat, and although I tend to really like the neck pickup, I bet the bridge will be in play much more now.