Your Tone

Thank you @charlie chitlin . I made the mod the mod you suggested this morning. It wasn't quite as simple as moving the middle pickup up and the neck pickup down. FCS cut the wires short to make the pickguard wiring look neat so I had to splice in an inch of ground wire between the now neck pickup and the tone pot and retape the wires so they fit back into the routes, but that was no big deal. Positions 1, 2, and 3 are exactly what you'd find on a three way Telecaster switch with neck and bridge in position 2. Position 4 is neck and middle and position 5 is middle. It makes perfect sense. Neck and bridge CS '69 Strat pickups sound beautiful together and I had no real use for the Stratocaster position 2 quack. I play clean with at most a little grit. This mod makes my #1 even better, now maybe #1+. Thanks again.

 

I’m at the point of knowing what I want to hear and what basic instrument and signal path architecture and/or settings will get me there. For the past several years my continued gear search has not been about seeking some as-yet-unrealized sound; but streamlining the equipment needed to amplify guitar, bass and lap steel to my liking without feeling like I’m living in a pawn shop.

Turns out an inexpensive modeler driving a power amp and a neutral-sounding cab is working well enough for me. Zero vintage visual mojo in my rig at this point, but I’m getting sounds I genuinely like—more of them than I really need, in fact—at a variety of useful volume levels and the rig addresses three pretty different instruments quite well while remaining relatively portable.

And weird-looking.

 

Keep the change, kid
Glad it worked out.
I do this to all Strats and love the results.
I used to rewire them and one day I thought...wait a second...

 

I like to play straight into an amp. My favorite tone is a Stratocaster through my Dr Z Maz 18. Right now I’m in a country band and I am using a Telecaster into a Deluxe Reverb.