10 Strat Tones You Should Know If You Own A Stratocaster 

It's always nice to listen to people who appreciate the genius of Leo Fender, who somehow managed to get everything so goddamn right first time with everything he invented. Lovely demo 😊 Thanks!

The neck position outputs golden soundwaves.

I've owned a Stratocaster for a couple of years and hadn't thought of some of these settings. Thanks for a great video.

I’m just getting into playing a Strat and found this very helpful in getting some classic tones. Great lesson.

Strats are now wired with the bottom tone pot for bridge pickup alone and middle tone pot for both neck and middle pickups. From 1954 through the ‘90s the bridge pickup had no tone control. When I bought my first Strat (a ‘66, forty years ago) I had my guy wire it the way I described-bottom tone pot for bridge alone, middle tone pot for neck and middle. Rolling some treble off the bridge pickup is quite useful, especially when using overdrive/distortion.

I think the key to the strat's versatility is how similar the bass response (almost none) is for each position. The neck pickup on a tele or les paul is so dark and bassy that you need to adjust your amp and bridge pickup tone control to an extreme amount. Pick any amp and set all tone controls to noon and put your bridge pickup to 6 or 7. The strat will have useable tones in all positions straight out of the box. Do the same with any other guitar type and you'll find you need to fiddle with the amp a lot more. That complete lack of bass response from the strat makes it sit in the perfect frequencies regardless of what position you choose.

I always marvel at how broad and beautiful a Strat sounds. The only thing I'd add is the sheer volume that the great guitarists were used to playing at , from day to day.

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. I was never a huge fan of the quacky strat sound, so it's nice to get some alternatives. Much appreciated!

Thanks for not neglecting the middle pickup position. I find so many strat players never use it, but it is my go to, most often used position. Flick to neck or bridge for solos or when I want a more driven rhythm tone. In between positions to get some more pop in my rhythm or clean it up, but middle is my standard rhythm tone.

Great video, Michael. Some wonderful tones there. Makes me realise I still have plenty to explore/learn with my Strat.

Hey Man, every demo was on point! Goosebumps on the SRV tones. Keep inspiring.

This is exactly the video I was looking for when I got my strat a little over a year ago. Better late than never, thank you!

You've earned yourself a subscriber. Great visual presentation, very little filler, and usable/practical techniques. Bravo.

Stratocaster = Greatest & most versatile guitar ever made. Nothing like those Pristine Cleans.

Came from your 10 Tele tones vid. I learned as much about compression and other effects as I learned about pickup positions. Subscribed, Thank you!

Wow, I can see some places where you drew from to make those demos, and I'm glad somebody else payed attention to Stevie's solo in Let's Dance by David Bowie. Simply fenomenal and absolutely what the song needed after that instrumental bit. Every demo left me thinking how beautiful it would be to play like that. Congrats!

Thank you for another killer demo! I have rarely seen a more pedagogically savvy player. Also kudos for the relatively basic, but highly effective videography.

12:26 that walking bass underneath the 7#9 chord is definitely something i’m gonna steal from this video :) amazing playing and very interesting!

The Strat is the Swiss Army knife, the AK-47, of music. Country? Classic Rock? Metal? Jazz? Fusion? Alt? Yes to all. Telecasters, too.

Wow! Really great demos! Thanks.

I am buying an ME-90 Board for this christmas and this video will be my starting point for tones to learn to achieve. Your channel is golden, I watched a few videos now, thank you! It wish the names of the songs you play for each example would be shown somewhere, then I can combine it with learning new songs. Anyways, cheers have a great end of the year!

Fine demo of the versatility of (possibly) the world's most versatile guitar. Really authentic tones and splendid playing. Thanks.

Hey Michael! I recently found your channel and just wanted to share that your passion for music shows through the screen. I’ve learned a lot about tone and BOSS pedals (which I recently got more into). Truly inspiring. Thanks for such great videos! 🙂🎸

Excellent presentation and commentary. I love the strat sound, and even though I own only a humble copy (Harley Benton ST-62 VT series), I've always tried to get as many sonic flavours out of it as possible. Your demo and playing provides some fresh ideas, thank you! Oh, BTW, I've had my strat rewired so that now the second tone knob controls the bridge pickup which has become a lot more useful for me as a result.

Discovered your channel just now. Great tone, great playing and very informative. Brilliant!!

Brilliantly useful overview!

Fabulous .loved your playing...love strats and fender amps .. Have subbed ..

I enjoy the narrative you put into your videos and I admire your passion and playing skills. Subscribed!

Very well cataloged. To the point, no filler. (:

I really like how you didn't play the inspo pieces verbatim- helped me focus on how the tone sounded vs how it sounded compared to the original song. Love this vid!

Just on a surf note, both Dick Dale and Hank Marvin were getting a lot of their sound after the guitar. The Dick Dale tone is the bridge pickup but both the reverb tank and the amp are adding a tiny bit of drive that makes it sound fierce. Hank Marvin had a complex double-delay setup (even on the classic early records) that gives that wonderful bell-like tone to his late-50s pickups.

Great demo, Michael! Thank you for this and other videos on your channel! Recently I have discovered magic clean Strat tone, you have not mentioned. It is totally counter intuitive, but Fuzz Face on max volume and fuzz, with min volume on guitar into a decent tube amp set up as a clean platform, gives you that magic touch sensitive clean tone on the edge of breakup. With volume knob on guitar you can find infinite varieties of dynamics from your hands. Up to 8 (with logarighmic pot) you can have cleanish tone, and from 8 to 10 it starts to be fully distorted. To me it sounds like cranked up Super Reverb, but with reasonable hum and lower volume level. But with this kind of set up you sacrifice swells and volume tremolo effect from you volume knob. I have just discovered it and started to getting used to it, but I am totally grabbed by this tone setting. Interestingly enough with Fuzz Face (MXR Classic 108 Fuzz in my case) you can have magic tone with just it and some analog delay or two. That is a great set up for a modest situation like Jam Session, where you are not supposed to have your full pedal board. You can have your always on FF and delay pedals on the top of an amp, pretending you are playing straight into the amp, but with infinite control over your tone from you volume knob on guitar. Keep on making your great short and useful videos! They inspire me a lot!

Great playing! Also very instructive video.

great video, this is what i was looking for

Very Cool, Thankyou. Awesome lesson, gave me lots of ideas to work on. All the best. Cheers

Supremely helpful and very well explained. Thank you so much.

Love this video! And great playing as well.

Lots of the recorded Gilmour solos were all 3 pickups. You can wire a normal 5 position switch with a push pull pot as a neck-on switch that works in pos1 & 2. You can also wire a 2 pole 5 position switch (1/2 of a "super switch") along with a push pull to get neck-on only in pos1. Others sacrifice a tone pot to do either a 1/2 or 1/4 blend with a no-load pot where the sacrificed tone pot was. I have guitars with both, the blend knob version is something of a bass-boost for the bridge which is helpful for players who dont much like the bridge on its own. Fully blended there's a bit of Tele middle position (but its really its own sound.) Something Ive done to all my SSS Strats is install a steel baseplate on the bridge (I also put the plate on the neck pickup but its a matter of taste.) None of my middle pickups are bridged t the neck tone control either, again a matter of taste and particular uses, I like pos3 to be wide open so the pickup is only loaded by the volume pot, it can get me out if a swampy mix quick. Another slightly radical manuver is us to install a Tele bridge pickup tho not many are wound the same direction with South poles up. They usually fit in the bridge humbucker route if youve got one but the pickguard needs a little surgery. The difference is dramatic

Fabulous playing and an excellent reference for all.

So helpful Michael. Thx!

Ready for some fun? An SG is a strat with balls, lets discuss. I find i can get very glassy, straty tones out of my SG, which are great for country, funk, blues, etc, and of course SG's are rock and blues machines too. As well, it has more "umph". Of course, its not a strat, but I will say much more strat-like than a Les Paul. If you've played strats all your life and feel like dipping your toes in the enemy camp, you may feel more tonally at home with an SG. Great vid! Do a tele or Les Paul ( or SG lol) next!

I've been playing Strats since the mid 70's. My current favorite is a 93 deluxe plus that I've owned since 96. 3 color L Sensors give me so many different sounds and having a TBX tone control on both middle and bridge P U again gives me just so much more. To all the rookies, get someone who knows how to hook your bridge PU to your tone control. Just makes a big difference.

My first “real” guitar, meaning my first good quality and not a beginner guitar was a American standard strat from 2010. I definitely wasn’t good enough to take advantage of the beautiful and amazing tones you can get out of strat. I sold it after a few years and I feel I was never able to enjoy it. Many years later I got a second strat and then I got a third. It took me 3 Strats to learn to appreciate them for what it is and appreciate each of the tones it helps me get now that my tastes and style has changed. After watching this I’m sure I still have tones to learn about my 3rd strat. But needless to say, I’m in love with the Stratocaster

Excelent vídeo! I've Just bought my First Strat and always have used humbuckers... It's been quite a challenge to get a great "Strat Sound" from It... This vídeo Will help a Lot! Greetings from Brazil!

The glassy tone is so wholesome to me .I love just playing that tone for hours.

Very useful info. Thanks.

Very informative and helpful video and you get great sounds from your strat. I know that you already did a comparison of 4 amp in a box pedals some time ago. But I noticed in this video, and in another of your videos (possibly 10 telecaster sounds?), that you use a Catalinbread Formula 5F6 amp simulation pedal. It sounds great with the strat. A review of that pedal and a comparison with other pedals of that type would be great. Thanks for the great videos.

It is very relaxing to watch you speak and teach! as well 2 learn some wisdom on the way :]

Really enjoyed your video very interesting thank very much cheers . Got another subscriber

hey man, good job done, very informative..

Fantasric video sir!

Great video! Have my first strat in a long time coming in tomorrow. Look so much forward to it. Consider me subscribed!

Hear me out; HSS strat, 2 Texas special singlecoils, 1 Shawbucker II in the bridge position, 1 250k volume control for the singlecoils, 1 500k volume control for the humbucker and 1 Fender TBX tone control with Fender's hot rod capacitor. This will give you a great setup for anything dirty blues, classic metal and everything in-between. It'll also have the option of cleaning up the single coils by backing of the volume while keeping the humbucker at full volume, resulting in the ability to use the pickup selector almost as a channel switch between clean and crunch.

golden rule for Stratstyle Guitar Videos: everytime let the 5-Way-Switch visible through the video.!

Beautiful

I like the way the strat is used in African music, Soukous and High life, a clean warm jangly sound, typically neck pick up into a Roland jazz chorus amp using a bit of chorus and delay.

Wow! Another great video! I am a new subscriber! Related but different, the sound from the amp without EQ but instead Tone or ISF, any of your tips?

Awesome!

Excellent video and excellent information. Please, I ask you to answer some questions for me. What do the terms "glassy" and "harsh" mean sonically?. I understand that both refer to high frequencies but I don't know to what extent. Apparently harsh is an unpleasant excess of high and upper mid frequencies. Can a tone be glassy without being harsh?. Does the glassy tone imply that the mid frequencies are attenuated (scooped)?. Thank you very much for answering.

Best tone for the middle pickup is Jerry’s alligator tone!

Great. Thanks

EXCELLENT.

Your video about a Telecaster is amazing! Can you please make the same video about a Les Paul as people play different genres on it?

Shows how Strat is actually more versatile than what most people believe. I actually prefer to use mid+bridge pickup for playing rock. sounds fuller especially if you're playing in a trio

just perfect.

Hello Michael, I am a new subscriber. ❤

Nice demonstration. Could you do the same for a Les Paul style guitar with two humbuckers? (I have a Gretch G5220)

I have squier strat but with a humbucker instead of an angled single coil so it works great to get a good rock sound

Can you do a tone video on the Fender Classic Player Jaguar that I saw you play in your Boss EQ video?

Wow...thx for give them middle PU the deserved honor👍👍

Great vid - you just earned a Sub...

Nice vid

Very useful for a beginner

What string gauge are you using? Great video :)

does Your variation of Pride and Joy has any transcribtion written on tabs? I would love to see one!

I LOVE my American Performer. It’s beyond my skill level, but I’m still working on that. 😊

Thanks

a question from a fellow 60 series strat player: how would you compare the 69 customs to the original pickups?

I have a Jaguar and would love to see how many tones u could get.

I personally love single pole pickup noise. The sound of my youth 1968-72.

i really like the full neck pickup sound but when i play in a band i get lost in the mix so have to switch to others, any ideas how to overcome this?

A single coil bridge pickup in Strats stands for everything I hate about ’em😅 Otherwise, great video👌🏻

MIKE BANFIELD, I don't know which guitarist used the strat tone controls or when to turn the tone controls on which guitar effects. Make a YT lesson about how to use the strats tone controls

Can we get one of Les Paul tones?

Hi, I have a Squier Strat. It's a $200 beginner guitar. Can I get these same tones with it?

Hey buddy, have you ever gotten a chance to play a Starcaster?

I never liked the Fender single coil pups, too brittle and too ice pick instant, even in the neck/middle positions.You get a nice braap sound which is limiting melodically..But it's a great platform for pedals.

I have a ‘62 avri Strat made in 1993. It sounds identical to yours. What year is yours?

When it comes to electric guitars there''s the Stratocaster then the rest !

Thank you🎉. Less embarrassingly clueless now 😂

Your best is the Surf

i know 8 and 1/2 tones ?

Think about retubing or maybe turnig up that deluxe reverb. Don't know what that Marshall amp is but on the recording it sounds more like a nice fender amp. Something's definitely wrong with your fender. Maybe an idiot tech changed something. I own a original super reverb and super lead. Not reissues. Prefer super reverb with strat for everything except Bryan Adams old hit records from 80's Always used amps as compressors but have nothing against trying one in a pedal

Have a Tele and a Strat. In the strat i spend more time searchin sounds than playin.

12:21

Jimmy Page played a tele in the early years.

My favorite guitar is a Strat. But I can't stand the way they sound. They play great, fit the body great, look great, but in my opinion they are always a challenge to get them to sound good. A strat with 2 or 3 P90's helps a lot to give it a bigger sound.

Those pickups are sky high, and all the same height. Not the best way to set them...

I prefer a Telecaster.

Honestly, for my ears you use way too much effects! Do not know any funk song using your sound. And a strat is not made for clean sounds in my opinion...