Yes, this is the right spot because the guitar isn't that interesting (well... it is, but the pickups are more interesting 
).
I have a customer who wants the impossible, which is kinda fun. I'll give you the brief in short:
- have a lefty strat, strung righthanded, with an improved trem, premium choice timber, thin skin gloss nitro finish
-have the clean single coil tones of hendrix as well as the ballsy power of a humbucker
So I deviced a method of having a hotrail under the pickguard next to three SSL1's, so the hotrail would be invisible. I adjusted the neck pocket so the neck sits closer to the pickguard, in essence closing the gap between string and pickup. On the first proto, I made a few mistakes in the routing and pickguard so I had to redo the body.
At this point in the build I was kinda feeling annoyed by the entire project so I grabbed an allparts swamp ash strat body (righty, cause this is just a prototype and I tend to keep my own prototypes ), sanded it flat and added a nice walnut top. So, there we go.
Ash body, walnut top, maple neck, ebony board.
Gotoh bridge, Sperzel locking tuners, bone nut.
Seymour Duncan YJM set + Hotrail. (wanted to try out the YJM set so badly!).
I wired it to be fairly straight forward: 1 volume, 1 tone. The middle pot is now replaced by a 4 way rotary for 2 reasons. 1: I didn't wanna waste one of my 2way rotary switches for this proto due to cost (the ones I have are quite expensive). 2: I wanted to try out various wiring combinations such as parallel and series. SO now I have it like this; YJM, both parallel, both series, Hotrail. I have to say, I really like the 2 outer positions, the inner positions aren't that useful: the parallel setting loses the sparkle, the series setting isn't that hot after all.
So, yeah, there you go. A totally useful strat, designed to go from late 60ies tones to more modern tones. Except... it doesn't.
I really don't like the YJM pickups. That's my only gripe. The basis is really good, plays like butter, sounds great on the hotrail but the YJM's are way too warm for my taste. Consider this, I'm a major fan of the SSl1's. To me, they're close to the best affordable strat pickups around and the YJM's fall short, as far as I'm concerned. They're not BAD. Really, they're fine. but the SSL1's are better. despite the hum.
I had to make 2 pickguards because I forgot to slide the hotrail to the right spot. I used the same center line for the 2nd bridge single as I did for the first and that was kinda stupid
Oh well. Live 'n learn.
Lt.Kojak/Pepe wanted to see the final results so, well.. here you go
here's a pic of the guitar with the old PG. Notice the blue in the spring cavity? That's the old color still there. Didn't bother to sand I recut the neck joint and added the screw bushings. I never ever use neck screw plates. Why should I? Because this way, I can make the neck joint so much cleaner and rounder and smoother. Also, I made a spring cavity cover from the same material as the pickguard (not yet installed in the pic).
Don't bust my balls about the chrome vs gold hardware. I was waiting for the gold parts to come in but wanted to try this out ASAP so I could give the customer my findings report. I had the tuners+bridge already from an old project and getting new gold trimmings was cheaper than getting new chrome parts
). I have a customer who wants the impossible, which is kinda fun. I'll give you the brief in short:
- have a lefty strat, strung righthanded, with an improved trem, premium choice timber, thin skin gloss nitro finish
-have the clean single coil tones of hendrix as well as the ballsy power of a humbucker
So I deviced a method of having a hotrail under the pickguard next to three SSL1's, so the hotrail would be invisible. I adjusted the neck pocket so the neck sits closer to the pickguard, in essence closing the gap between string and pickup. On the first proto, I made a few mistakes in the routing and pickguard so I had to redo the body.
At this point in the build I was kinda feeling annoyed by the entire project so I grabbed an allparts swamp ash strat body (righty, cause this is just a prototype and I tend to keep my own prototypes
), sanded it flat and added a nice walnut top. So, there we go. Ash body, walnut top, maple neck, ebony board.
Gotoh bridge, Sperzel locking tuners, bone nut.
Seymour Duncan YJM set + Hotrail. (wanted to try out the YJM set so badly!).
I wired it to be fairly straight forward: 1 volume, 1 tone. The middle pot is now replaced by a 4 way rotary for 2 reasons. 1: I didn't wanna waste one of my 2way rotary switches for this proto due to cost (the ones I have are quite expensive). 2: I wanted to try out various wiring combinations such as parallel and series. SO now I have it like this; YJM, both parallel, both series, Hotrail. I have to say, I really like the 2 outer positions, the inner positions aren't that useful: the parallel setting loses the sparkle, the series setting isn't that hot after all.
So, yeah, there you go. A totally useful strat, designed to go from late 60ies tones to more modern tones. Except... it doesn't.
I really don't like the YJM pickups. That's my only gripe. The basis is really good, plays like butter, sounds great on the hotrail but the YJM's are way too warm for my taste. Consider this, I'm a major fan of the SSl1's. To me, they're close to the best affordable strat pickups around and the YJM's fall short, as far as I'm concerned. They're not BAD. Really, they're fine. but the SSL1's are better. despite the hum.
I had to make 2 pickguards because I forgot to slide the hotrail to the right spot. I used the same center line for the 2nd bridge single as I did for the first and that was kinda stupid
Oh well. Live 'n learn. Lt.Kojak/Pepe wanted to see the final results so, well.. here you go
here's a pic of the guitar with the old PG. Notice the blue in the spring cavity? That's the old color still there. Didn't bother to sand
I recut the neck joint and added the screw bushings. I never ever use neck screw plates. Why should I? Because this way, I can make the neck joint so much cleaner and rounder and smoother. Also, I made a spring cavity cover from the same material as the pickguard (not yet installed in the pic). Don't bust my balls about the chrome vs gold hardware. I was waiting for the gold parts to come in but wanted to try this out ASAP so I could give the customer my findings report. I had the tuners+bridge already from an old project and getting new gold trimmings was cheaper than getting new chrome parts
Sorry to hear. My guess is that this works because the YJM's are noiseless. 
