Flat Fifth Fury
Member
Strat junkies are to me a strange lot. They get all googly eyed about them and yet they are painfully simple instruments. "Yes" they say "but just look at this Daphnie Blue strat with the birdseye maple "C" neck ... " blah-blah-blah. Worse they spend $3,000 on a custon Strat that is still a Strat just put together well with good pickups. I don't get it at all.
The single coils of a Strat are great for chimy cleans, no doubt but to me single are the worst thing for an articulate overdrive tone. Yngwie's gain tone is far from "crushing" or precice sounding - it's fuzzy and soft but that's ok, for him. I have a Jackson strat that I got just for recording clean tones. It plays great since it has a Jackson neck and the Wilkinson trem is pretty good for not being a Floyd but it won't ever take the place of my Jackson Archtop Soloist for articulate and powerful gain tones.
That said, there is little difference between a $500 mexican strat and a $1,000 USA strat besides the finish and a bit better hardware on the US. I say get a good sounding Mexi-strat and expect to put good sounding pickups in it. Listen to the sound of the body not the pickups as the cheap Fender pickups are crap. If the guitar has a nice acoustic sound then the body and neck are good sounding and good pickups will bring that out - good pickups in a bad sounding body sounds bad.
The single coils of a Strat are great for chimy cleans, no doubt but to me single are the worst thing for an articulate overdrive tone. Yngwie's gain tone is far from "crushing" or precice sounding - it's fuzzy and soft but that's ok, for him. I have a Jackson strat that I got just for recording clean tones. It plays great since it has a Jackson neck and the Wilkinson trem is pretty good for not being a Floyd but it won't ever take the place of my Jackson Archtop Soloist for articulate and powerful gain tones.
That said, there is little difference between a $500 mexican strat and a $1,000 USA strat besides the finish and a bit better hardware on the US. I say get a good sounding Mexi-strat and expect to put good sounding pickups in it. Listen to the sound of the body not the pickups as the cheap Fender pickups are crap. If the guitar has a nice acoustic sound then the body and neck are good sounding and good pickups will bring that out - good pickups in a bad sounding body sounds bad.