Vintage/Cool Rails to tame Stratitis?

[Teleplayer]

All great stuff and things I have checked on both guitars. The gotoh bridge is on the Warmoth now. You are correct that I do like very little relief, just enough that I can feel the string tap. However, I have tried more exaggerated relief and higher action, fretting every note gently and cleanly with zero fret buzz and with 10-46's. Made no difference. Only thing I haven't done is try pickups with that rail design or Lace sensors. Bridge humbuckers sound great on both guitars, notes ring true. It's only with the single coils that it's all warbly.

I suggest to try a bit more relief to get improvement on the lower frets, such as 7th fret and lower. Leave the saddles where they are and you can end up with a little bit more relief and higher action by only adjusting the truss-rod. The difference between 0.004 and 0.008" relief will slightly change the geometry and feel of the strings. The saddles should be positioned to get the cleanest sound around the 12th to 17th fret. That's about my experience with setting up necks as a diy hobbiest. I'm sure you have your own ideas and experiences, so that's fair enough. I just hope you can solve this issue. The only other idea I had is about playing style. Perhaps you can use slightly more gain on the amp, and then practice picking more lightly. I saw a good online lesson about that. It may allow better sounding clean and is supposed to help the player develop technique to use effective dynamics.

Please report back if changing to blade style pickups can make a difference to the issues you are experiencing.

 

[Mjh36]

Well the Cool Rails neck sounds excellent. Punchy, fluid, still kinda stratty. It did help with the warble a lot, or more like hides it better. I think it's a product of the humbucker width, sensing more string area. I bet a full size humbucker in the neck position would eliminate it even more. For example, when I split the Cool Rails neck into a single coil, I get all the same G string warble. Put it back in humbucking and it reduces by a good amount. Next I'm ordering a 24.75" Gibson scale Warmoth neck to test a theory.

So a success I guess. Also got a 59/Custom Hybrid on the way. Tough choice between that and the Screamin' Demon.

 

[Teleplayer]

Thanks for your response. Because you mentioned you can still hear the problem with the humbucker split, I get the feeling its more related to fret buzz. The magnet field would not change if the cool rails is used as a humbucker or split coil. Coolrails is a very nice pickup.. i like it too!