software

I ordered the quot;Everything Axe Setquot; a couple of days ago from Musicians Friend and I am anxiously waiting on it to arrive. I bought these for my 1957 USA Re-Issue Stratocaster (White Blonde / Ash Body / Maple Neck). I love everything about this guitar, and it has grown such a part of me that I literally probably wouldn't change it for an original, but the only thing I wasn't getting along with was the pickups. Im into guys like Steve Vai and Jason Becker and Satriani and the rest of the gang, and I needed a higher output pick up, to get more of a shred tone, just the hard driven tone I am looking for. At first I thought of doing a complete overhaul and going with a HSH configuration, but then I saw this Everything Axe Set that includes the JB JR for the bridge, the Duckbucker in the mid, and the Little 59 for the neck so I thought I would give that a shot. I ordered through the magazine, and when I went on MF to see the ratings (AFTER I ORDERED) I saw that they were pretty poor (granted there have only been three ratings). This has kind of made me a little nervous about my decision. Would I be better off sending these back before opening them and inquiring to SD about some custom shop pickups? Or will I be perfectly content with these. Much thanks for helping me with my first post, I'll appreciate any help I can get!!! --Wilkie--
PS: If anyone has any good links for wiring guitars or could help me out let me know, its something I would like to be able to do myself if possible for me to do a professional job, if not Ill take it in somewhere.

Welcome to the Forum.

I think that you should be fine with the set you chose. It'll get pretty close to the feel of a HSH axe without all of the routing.

If it were my guitar, I would keep the standard swithc, but replace the pots and do some extra wiring.

I would get a trio of 250k or 500k push/pull pots and an Orange Drop cap.

First, I would wire the top tone control to the neck pickup only and the bottom tone control to the bridge pickup only, leaveing the middle pickup wide open. I like having tone controls to warm up the neck and bridge pickups, but preffer to leave the mid pickup a bit brighter for more quot;quackquot;.

One of the push/pull pots I would wire to switch the neck pickup to parallel and the other push/pull to switch the bridge pickup from series to parallel. When you switch the neck and bridge to parallel, it'll get you closer to a vintage strat 2 and 4 pos. tone and will be humcancelling all around.

The other push/pull pot I would wire so that you can get all 7 switch positions (neck, neck and mid, mid, mid and bridge, bridge, neck and bridge, and all 3 together).

Have fun.