The story behind Custom Fender Stratocaster Pearson Serial #HSSFS10B. 5.30.2009

This guitar started as a Fender FSR "Straight Six" guitar, with real lacquer finish on the lightweight body, and a good maple neck, traditional C, medium jumbo frets, Fender-logo tuners, and standard 6-saddle vintage-style bridge.

I stripped out the electronics and most parts, saving the tuners, input jack plate, and the Fender Atomic Humbucker pickup.

The guitar then had a setup: a full fret dress, level, crown, end-shape, polish, and fretboard edge softening. The whole neck was treated with some Fret Board Juice to clean it up and bring out its grain.

Added a signature touch: a genuine fender "F" neck plate to replace the plain plate previously installed.

I took a Fender synthetic bone nut and shaped and adapted it to this guitar - one end is a little long off the slot, but the nut has excellent resonance, tuning ability, is very well filed, grooved, seated, shaped, and height-set.

I acquired a custom pickguard, but didn't like its shielding or its weight. I ended up purchasing a second pickguard: a genuine Fender HSS with B/W/B layering, traditional Fender 2+1 mount screws on the humbucker - and a complete genuine Fender black "accessory kit" (switch tips, back plate, knobs, pickup covers, etc.)

I searched through several combinations of pickups with the Atomic as the bridge pickup and the sound base. I probably spent too much time monkeying around with combinations of pickups, but hit on the perfect combination: I settled on a NICE GFS AlNiCo middle pickup for its clarity, warmth (looked at several before settling on this one), and touch of hot on top of traditional Stratty-ness.

I originally chose a Fender SCN pickup for the neck, but decided that it sounded out of place and out of character when set up with the Atomic and the AlNiCo staggered pickup. I ended up settling on one of my DiMarzio True Velvet series pickups for the neck - an excellent choice... loud and strong enough to balance nicely with the other two, but adds a smoothness and silkiness to the first two positions that is truly breathtaking in clean or in Tube-screamer or in plain tube overdrive modes. The GFS and the True Velvet were made for each other. The GFS and the Atomic are soul mates. The combination of the three is matchless. Five excellent sounds for one guitar. Distinctive, unique, STRONG, yet still a Strat!

5-way blade setup:
1 (closest to the neck): neck only
2: neck and middle humbucking
3: middle only
4: middle and strong coil of Atomic together humbucking
5: full-on humbucker Atomic bomb-ness in your face to outer space get down around town

I chose a Sprague USA .0333 tone capacitor for a blend of warmth and some allowance for more mids and highs to swing through when the tone knobs begin to be turned.

I chose to use the greasebucket circuit design combined with a traditional Seymour Duncan-style Treble Bleed mod - all slightly different to set up to my sound preferences. Both tones are SWEET and roll off like they're made in heaven. The volume rolls off VERY smoothly, without killing all the different EQ bands in the process. I used shielded wire where I could, and lots of high-quality copper and tinned copper wire. With the joining wires, I kept them clean and to-length. With the pickup wires, I left them completely at factory length - they may live another life sometime, so I double wrapped them and bound them to keep things neat. ...dressed up wire paths to keep in the Strat body's cavities nicely, the 'guard just drops on. No fussing or fiddling around required.

Added a nice solid Switchcraft USA jack with shielded signal wire from the tip lead to the volume pot. Takes out a little noise, strengthens the signal just a tiny touch - and worth every cent of it...

Assembled, common-grounded with good silver solder with real Fender pots, hardware, screws, knobs. Finished stringing and set string height to "warm butter", set intonation, clipped, cleaned, and dressed the back of the neck with some fret board juice to smooth it and bring out its excellent coloring. Springs are adjusted, claw set to balance bridge height and ease of tremolo, wiped down and documented.

It's done. Easily one of my finest. Maybe my finest to date.

A picture is worth a thousand drools