Are stratocasters the most 'needy' guitars in terms of pedals?

F

Flying

Well-known member
My only electric guitar for many, many years was a strat and I enjoyed discovering the tubescreamer, blues breaker, klon etc, then I got an Epiphone Les Paul 50’s and stopped playing the Strat, then I let the Strat go in exchange for a tele. Now my pedal board has a looper, tuner and delay pedal, and two overdrives neither of which I can remember turning on in months.

I just don’t seem to need the assistance of overdrive pedals with the LP or Tele, I just use the amp and the guitars volume controls, I also use all three pickup options, whereas on the strat I was 90% on the neck pickup and never enjoyed the bridge pickup!

It doesn’t bother me all that much as I really don’t miss the strat, but the downside is that I enjoyed making and discovering new pedals!

Just wondering if anyone else feels the strat needs more help than other guitars to get ‘the tone’!
 
Ha! Oh definitely! I have HB Gibsons, P90 Gibsons, Filter'tron Gretsches and none need more than one good pedal to keep me happy. But my Strat is still proving difficult. Obviously it depends on the kind of sound you want - I am very much not the "Strat + TS or Klon" kind of player. That sound has zero appeal for me.

I do like a Skreddy Muff with a Strat, but it's not my main sound. The Strawberry Red is probably the closest I have found to a one-pedal sound with a Strat. I want to get a big sound out of a skinny pickup I guess!
 
It really depends on the pickups and what sound appeals to you. My main guitar for 30+ years has been one Strat or another.

I’m a big fan of Fender’s’57/‘62 pickups. I rarely use the neck pickup. I wire mine for tone control on the bridge pickup. A dimed fuzz face with the tone rolled back to 4 or 5 on the bridge pup is pretty magnificent. YMMV.
 
I generally like a boost added to my Strat, but once that’s done, I feel like it’s on par (in terms of signal strength) with other pickups. On the other hand, I don’t have any hot wound pickups, and generally just like to imitate my amp being played a bit louder, to the point of breakup, but not all out mayhem. If I was only playing SSS strats, I’d definitely want some sort of EQ to pump up the midrange a bit more.

i also think though that starting with a weaker signal gives you more latitude to muck around without pushing things too far (which in my case is generally not all that far…) so in that regard, yeah, Strats make pedals seem more fun.
 
I feel this way about my strat even w/ upgraded pickups. I'm not a fan of single coils in general but on another guitar, swapping out the stock singles to EMG singles removed any feeling of this I had in that guitar.
 
The only reason I persist with a Strat is that the whammy bar can create some heavenly sounds. It definitely has a thing but it can be extremely frustrating too!
 
HamishR said:
The only reason I persist with a Strat is that the whammy bar can create some heavenly sounds. It definitely has a thing but it can be extremely frustrating too!
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The whammy bar is pretty fun even though it only goes down, but I'm eagerly waiting for the Evertune Tremolo system whenever it comes out (I noticed they finally got the bass version out btw). Maybe I'll eventually get a tele or LP style guitar with that. But tbh the Fender Vintera I have stays in tune pretty well.

As for strats and pedals I'm afraid I can't comment too much since I basically have a couple of guitars I'm not a huge fan of, my strat, and a Solar metal machine which I don't use much since I don't really play metal very much anymore. That one works fine without pedals though. But usually modern metal tones just uses a TS style pedal as a boost for drive pedals, relying mostly on amps IME.
 
I've owned a few strats and currently own none. I do still have a Mexican standard strat body from an old project that I think about resurrecting occasionally. Every few years it seems I get the itch and think it'll be different, but I've never really vibed that much with strats. I should probably have one around just to test guitar pedals with.

I do love the strat neck pickup sound and the Hendrixy in between sound with the pickups in parallel. As a humbucker guy, the bridge pickup is just too thin plus I hate having that volume right up next to the high e string. Maybe if the strat would have been my first guitar these things wouldn't be an issue.
 
I would tend to agree with that notion.... have always had kind of a weird relationship with strats. A Strat was always kind of the image I had in my head before I ever got my first guitar and was my "dream" guitar for the longest time. I've owned a few and it's always been a mixed bag for me....in terms of comfort I feel like they're still hard to beat for me. At the moment my strat is probably my favorite guitar to play, at least when it comes to playability/etc but tonally does seem to need the most help, to the point that I've converted it to HH rather than SSS because I was always having such a hard time getting the pickups where I wanted them to be.



Kind of odd to me as generally I lean more towards favoring single coils than humbuckers. My main guitar for years has been a Nashville-style Telecaster (ironically enough with a strat middle pickup) and after that I have a Jazzmaster that gets pretty heavy rotation. For pretty much every Strat I've owned I've ended up feeling like I prefer the single coil tones from a Tele instead. I don't know if maybe I need to branch out and try some higher-end strat pickups (typically have just played stock Fender pickups) or if that's just chasing after the wind and perhaps I just don't like traditional strat pickups that much. With regular strat pickups I'm always having to make a lot more adjustments with pedals/amp settings, fiddling with the guitar volume/tone, etc...My Tele and Jazzmaster both feel like I can just plug in and not have to mess with nearly as much. Now that I've got my strat set up for HH...even though it's tonally very different from a single coil Tele or JM it still feels closer to "plug and play" than a traditional strat setup. So I don't really know...



And the weird thing is like...I LOVE the sound of traditional strat pickups for others. I cut my teeth early on learning riffs from guys like Clapton, Hendrix, Gilmour, SRV, Frusciante, Mayer...so many others I'm sure too. It sounds great for all of them and kind of like I said above is one of the sounds "in my head" when I think of the electric guitar...so it's not like I don't like the sound of a stratocaster. and it's not like I don't like playing them...but that classic strat sound just never seems to work out just right for me unless i've got a LOT of "help" for it... I always WANT to make it work but just never seems to mesh quite right when stock.
 
I agree with above. After dialing in my telecaster shaped objects I have no desire to play my strat anymore. It feels soulless. It sounds great, plays great, I just don't feel like playing it. I love the middle pickup but my pick is always hitting it.
 
All my heroes played Strats, it was the only guitar I dreamt of, there are two iconic images that had a profound affect on me, the first was “The Cream of Clapton” album cover, very 80’s and the other is David Glimour’s red strat he played during the Pulse tour. My mum thought I might like the light show, but I was soon totally captivated by that guitar and the tones falling out out it!

I’m coming to terms with the fact that I love the sound of the strat in other guitarist hands, just not mine!
 
since getting a guitar with a P90 I started to enjoy amp gain because the P90 sounds fat and gooey whereas single coils sound thin, grainy and harsh.

The exception being the Gold foils in my Japanese cheapie. Especially the neck pickup into my maxed out amp gets me in Neil Young territory. That pickup is never clean to bring with but with tubes...ooh mama

Anyway I love my Strat but the bridge pickup is thin. I like it clean or with fuzz.
 
I play a lot of acoustic without amp. Strats sound just fine without pedals. That said, I think out of my electrics I like my 78 American deluxe tele with lollar pickups the best - a close tie with my rics 420 or 620 tho. I like having different guitars just SO I can get different sounds.

And, really, I think the AMPLIFIER that I'm playing out of makes a hell of a lot of difference in if I need a pedal. My self build Hiwatt DR504 is clean, clean, clean. The only breakup is the speaker at super high volume - enough to go deaf with. If I want anything other than plain jane sounds I need a pedal.

OTOH if I'm playing one of my other amps I built, like my 1987 or 5e3, I can get incredible grind and compression without any pedal. The 5e3 can get a little muddy, but with the proper english you can get these 'thuuuuup' sounds out of each note as you deplete the energy stored in the preamp tube bias caps which recharge almost instantly - almost like vintage dreamscape sounds, the 1987 is seriously clear and so volume responsive you can get different sounds with just a half a notch on the volume.

So I'm going with amp, not guitar!!!!
 
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I have thought about building a Strat with Filter'tron pickups because I LOVE the sound of Filter'trons and I once had a Tele with Filter'trons in it and thought it sounded great. I love the Strat whammy bar so Filter'trons could be a beautiful thing.

And then I realise that I have a 6120 and a fantastic Duo Jet both with Bigsbys and Filter'tron pickups. Both play nicer than a Strat. Why would I bother??
 
IMO, most single coils guitars sound the best close to directly into a low-mid gain amp. One or two things like a Fuzz Face and a wah or delay, maybe. I probably feel that way because I really like the character of a single coil pickup, which gets lost in high gain situations.
 
I think you're right. Mind you, I think ALL guitars sound best in a lower gain setting! When you crank the dirt the white noise starts to overpower the actual guitar sound. Then you may as well be playing a Squier (no disrespect to Squiers).
 
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