OT: Upside Down Pickups

[javacody]

The highs on the bridge pup aren't as shrill and the bass is a little less, well bassy. It is subtle.

[Fret Wire]

Ok, so what have we figured so far: This is a difference in tone if we restring backwards on the bridge pickup because of the slant. If you have pickups with staggered pole pieces, there will be an output volume difference between the strings. These things you can hear, on your own amp. It's small enough that the differences in other's amps and pedals will overshadow it. Then there's the theory that the tone is different because of the headstock being reversed: different tension's on the bass and treble strings. I don't even know if you could hear that on your own amp/setup, let alone recognize it in someone else's sound.

Then there's the playability issue. The tremelo bar is now at the top and is easier to reach. SRV did that. As for volume and tone controls, it's a personal preference. It would be hard to do volume swells with the volume on top. Same with the pickup selector. Personally, I can hit the bottom mounted strat types faster than the LP top mounted types.

[javacody]

The way I look at it, is Leo went through a lot of trial and error with the stratocaster. He tried to make it comfortable, with easy to reach controls. If it were more comfortable to play the thing upside down, I'm sure he would have designed it that way.     Jimi only chose to play them upside down so that he would have more of a selection. He could pick and choose and find the better instruments.

I did the slanted pickup thing as an experiment, with the idea that it may make the strat bridge pickup, which I normally never use, sound less shrill. It works, to a degree. The thing that helps the bridge pickup most, is having the dang thing hooked up to a tone control.   :lol:

[Ammscray]

I think the main reason Jimi played upside-down at first was just because there weren't many left-handed axes to be found...then he stumbled upon the differences and found he liked them...

In my experience, having a righty strat strung upside-down with all the differences that were mentioned makes for a very different playing and sounding guitar...although the polepiece reversal on Jimi's probably didn't make much difference since he always had his pickups so far away from the strings to minimize microphonic feedback, and take out some of the shrillness from those underwound late-60's pickups...most of the time they were flush with or sometimes even slightly under the face of the p-guard...

Jimi also preferred the then-current strat models to the earlier ones because of the bigger mass of wood at the headstock as opposed to the smaller pre-cbs models...that difference is not subtle, either...you can hear it and feel it...although the early-60's pickups with formvar wire were wound hotter and sounded much fatter than the crappy late-60's poly-wire pickups...I'm surprised he didn't have those rewound right away, though later D Armstrong did rewind some...

 Add to that 10 gauge strings tuned to e-flat (a no-brainer) and you no longer have a "stock" strat anymore...much fatter sound with more bass and sustain...

 Fender always said that Hendrix was their best rep, and I believe that had he not come around Fender may not have gone any further because Gibson was kicking their little butts, they were in real trouble...let's face it they're cheap kit guitars compared to a "real" guitar like Gibson...no offense to anybody I played strats exclusively for years and still use them for some things but I have to admit, the radius was always too round (what were they thinking?) the frets were too thin and 9 times out of ten the pickups were wimpy...and 20 years ago I used to change all of those things so I could play 'em...

 the one to go for is a 66; big headstock, stock medium-jumbo frets(!) and for some reason for that year they experimented with a different wire and wound the p-ups hotter...very big sounding strat!

[WGTP]

Gross Generalization.  If your rolling off the lows and highs, your increasing the mid's relatively speaking

The Seymour Duncan Hot Strat pup I use has a similiar effect, in that it has lots of mid's.  Works nice with distortions, smooth lows and mellow highs, for a strat.  It's cheaper than re-routing your guitar.

[javacody]

I wouldn't suggest re-routing your guitar. Fortunately, most modern strats now have humbucker routing in the bridge, and it is a simple pick guard change. I also designed my guitar (as much as one could design a strat) around this feature. Like I said, its a subtle change. Also, replacing a pickguard is far cheaper than buying a new pickup, especially if you have pickups that you already like and don't want to descend into the hell of constant aftermarket pickup swapping. Besides which,it is just damn fun to tinker with your guitar. But hey, if you want to advise people to spend $50 to $100 on a new pickup, that they may not even like, go for it.  

[WGTP]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to sell anyone on anything, just suggest an alternative mechanically/tonewise.  Most of the "Vintage" type strat pickups are way to puny for my taste and the Hot Strat is about as Phat as you can get in a single coil.  My Tokai doesn't have the swimming pool routing and I forget that newer ones do.  I'm even more short on patience to do a new pickguard than I am on cash to bye a pup.  Your right about the aftermarker hell.  Another former obsession/area of current recovery.  I would like to see some sort of swivel mechanism to spin in the middle and twist about 30 degrees, so you could spin between the extremes and stop inbetween.  

[javacody]

Sounds like you just invented something new.     You could even mount a circular shaped piece of plastic  on the pickup and have a circular cutout on the pickguard, that way you wouldn't have a gaping hole as you adjusted the pickup. Cool idea!