Stratocaster Mod 1
New Suhr V60 Pickups and
Back Plate Silent Single Coil System (BPSSC)
(August, 2006)
I recently purchased a Fender American Stratocaster. I’ve never owned a Strat before and I rarely ever played one. There is a reason there are so many Strat collectors who consider this model the best of the best. All of my other guitars have traditionally been a “Super Strat” style per se but this is the first time I owned the real McCoy. Due to a small dent at the bottom of the guitar, the retailer was practically giving this guitar away. When I played it, it just felt good so I bought it. The specification for this guitar is as follows:
2006 American Made Fender Strat
Body: Alder
Top: None
Finish: 3-Color Sunburst
Pickups: 3 staggered Fender single-coil pickups
Pick Guard: 3-Ply Parchment on Olympic White
Neck: Maple
Neck Shape: Modern “C” Shape
Fingerboard: Rosewood 9.5’ radius w/Medium Frets
Scale: 25.5” Length (648mm)
Hardware: Chrome
Bridge: Fender two-point synchronized tremolo w/Stainless Steel Saddles
Controls: 5-Way Switch, 1 Volume, 2 Tone. All pots 250K with .022uf capacitors
What I love most about Fender Stratocasters is that they just feel good to play. The body feels comfortable, the action is decent and the neck is easy to fret and solo. The quality of the finish is superb and the curves are classic. It’s a very reassuring guitar. On this particular Strat, the setup needed some work and I didn’t like the way the vibrato bar worked either but Floyd Rose and now Music Man vibrato bars have spoiled me.
What I couldn’t get past was how terrible the pickups sounded. Is it just me? Perhaps these were just bad pickups but they sounded thin and way too bright and brittle. I couldn’t tame them to save my life. And…the noise….jeezzz, how do people put up with this?
So, I decided to make a few changes. I love the basic Strat guitar sound. I love the combination of 3 pickups with the 5-way selector switch. Position 2 and 4 are classic sounding and very usable. I also love the neck position pickup for soloing. However, when it comes to position 1 and 3, I don’t use these positions at all.
Looking for replacement single coil pickups was a lot harder than I thought. There are so many styles to choose from that after a while, I became confused about what I was looking for. Instead, I decided to turn to some of my favorite modern players and see what they were using. I looked to some of the current blues players like Joe Bonamasa, Doyal Bramhall, Matt Schofield, Derek Trucks, Brian Kahanek, and even some other guitarists who caught my ear like John Mayer, Papa Chubby and Coco Montoya. These are great players with great tones. I didn’t want to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughn (not that I can play like him) but I wanted to steer away from that particular trap. I found out that many of the modern blues players use a variety of boutique manufacturers such as Kinman, Lace, Lindy Fralin and Kent Armstrong. Main-stream builders like Dimarzio and Seymour Duncan were also used. What I wanted was a traditional Strat sound without the noise but I wanted a little stronger mid-range presence. I knew I did not want high-gain or mid-range “heavy” pickup but more classic in nature.
Then I saw one of my favorite players, Scott Henderson, on the Xotic website showing off the Xotic AC Booster and RC Booster. He was using his new John Suhr guitar with Suhr V60 pickups. After further exploration, I called Eddie Berman at Indoor Storm for his advice. Eddie always seems to point me in the right direction and he inevitably gives me the straight scoop on gear. He too seemed to be excited about the Suhr line of pickups. I decided to buy them sight unseen. To help eliminate the noise, I also purchased the Suhr Back Plate Silent Single Coil (BPSSC) system to help eliminate the pickup noise.
As you can see, I also changed the pick guard on my Strat. Although I love the traditional burst with white pick guard, I just wanted a little twist to the look and feel of my Strat.
The Wiring Plan
I looked up a standard Stratocaster wiring schematic and used that as the basis of my wiring scheme. I also had to install the BPSSC silent system which came with very clear instructions. I would still have a single volume and two tones. I’m still not sure why there are two tones but I’ll play with it for a while and make a judgement call later. There is an excellent wiring schematic shown here at GuitarNuts.com.
Working on a Strat is never fun. You gotta remove all the strings, remove lots of screws and flip the pick guard around working dangerously on top of your guitar. I use a towel to cover the Strat when soldering and wiring.
Pickup Installation, Pots and Capacitors
Fitting the pickups on the new pick guard was fairly simple. I purchased new 250K pots for the volume and both Tones. The pots on Strats are almost always audio taper. I’ve also read that using 500K pots might give you a little fatter sound but I wanted to stick with tradition at this point.
On this particular Strat, the middle pickup was reverse polarity from the other two pickups. This is how you cancel some of the noise when in position 2 and 4. Personally, I prefer that all three pickups be in phase as it gives a fatter sound to my ear. It is also required when using the Suhr BPSSC system.
When it came to the tone capacitor, I used a .022uf capacitor for each tone knob as this is a good match for the 250K potentiometer.
BPSSC Wiring and Intent
I love the sound of the pure single-coil pickup, but the 60-cycle hum that it generates has been an annoyance that most musicians grudgingly deal with. For years, one answer to this problem has been stacked single-coils pickups, dummy coils, and active electronics. Although these come with their own unique tone, they have always compromised the classic single coil sound.
Today, specialty electronics are available to help eliminate noise without compromising tone. The Silent Single Coil (SSC) system from Suhr was originally only available as a built-in system on their Classic model guitar. However, the SSC is now available in a back plate (BP) version that covers the tremolo spring cavity.
According to Suhr, the BPSSC is optimized to work with single-coil pickups with the DC resistance ratings between 6K Ohms and 8K Ohms. The BPSSC requires the middle pickup to be the same polarity and the same direction winding as the bridge and neck pickups. Reverse-wound reverse-polarity middle pickup will not work with the BPSSC. The wiring instructions that came with the BPSSC were simple and straightforward.
Pickup Height Adjustment
John Suhr recommends that the base side of each pickup be 8/64 below the string and the treble side be 6/64. These are starting points. I ended up with all the pickups about 10/64 below the string, which didn’t seem to affect the output too much but it helped reveal the highs and add a little more sparkle.
Tones
These pickups are great for anything you would play with a Strat. After a little experimentation with height adjustment, I began to hear that distinctive tone and “sparkle” that these pickups are known for. The clean tones are brilliant for country, blues and funk. My favorite clean rhythm sound is position 4 followed by position 2. For dirty sounds, these pickups growl with just enough mid range to make your solos singe but enough high-end character to retain that “single coil” sound. My favorite dirty lead sound is the neck pickup (position 5). I also love the higher gain and more focussed sound of position 2. These pickups just sound marvelous through my Fuchs ODS and Xotic pedals.
While I was tearing apart my guitar, I decided to change out the tuners as well. I love the locking tuners on the market. I’m not exactly sure how these effect the overall resonance of the guitar but it sure makes it easy to change the strings. As you can I see, I remove the stock Fender tuners and replaced them with Sperzel Locking Tuners. Sperzel's rear thumbscrew locks the string which are ideal for tremolo guitars. String posts have graduated heights and the tuners feature a 12:1 ratio, sealed lubrication, metal knobs and threaded peg-head bushings. The single pin mount keeps tuner from rotating, no mounting screws needed.
The Sperzel tuners come with three mounting holes at the base of the tuner. Standard Strat tuners only have two so I had to drill a small hole to accommodate the new tuner. This was fairly simple to do and the tuners work great!
Conclusion
I generally feed my Strat through the Xotic RC Booster and the into either the RC Booster or BB Preamp and then into my Fuchs ODS amp. This arrangement is perfect for the music I play in my band Relish (Soul, Funk, old Disco and some contemporary blues pop like Los Lonely Boys and John Mayer). The stock Strat pickups were thin and noisy. The new Suhr pickups are clean and classic. I can get the classic single-coil Strat sounds without all the noise and high-end shrill. I am very happy with the output and believe that the tone is on par with the best. My favorite rhythm position is the Bridge-Mid position (Pos 4) but the neck pickup (Pos 5) is is my favorite for soloing as it really has a great tonal response for that whaling “woman” sound. I also love position 2 for the poppy rhythm pluck sound that is great for soul and R&B tunes. Position 1 and 3 are still useless to me though.
I should mention that getting the "sparkle" out of the V60 was difficult at first. Playing with the pickup height adjustment helped and allowed me to “dial in” the sweet spot for sparkle. I adjusted the height lower than John Suhr’s recommendation and the clarity and high end response seemed to break through.
The Verdict
These are well designed, well balanced and beautiful sounding pickups! They completely satisfied my expectation and I will be happy with them for years to come. I would recommend these pickups along with the BPSSC Silent System to anyone looking for the classic single-coil Strat guitar sound without the noise and thinness. Great job John Suhr!
Below are a few sound samples. This will give you a good idea what these pickups sound like without lots of effects.
Sample 1 - Clean
Here is my Strat plugged directly into my Fuchs ODS. No effects. Good example of what this pickups sound like raw.
Sample 2 - Dirty
Here is my Strat plugged in an Xotic BB Preamp and then into my Fuchs ODS. No effects. As you will hear, these pickups can get mean and sing’in!
