Crayon Sky Music

How do you change the pickups on a Fender Stratocaster?

Let’s say I wanted to put humbuckers on my Fender Stratocaster (mine has three single-coil pickups), what do I need to do?

There are actually humbuckers made to fit into single-coil spaces these days, which would save you a lot of routing and alteration to your pickguard. Here are some links to some of them:

http://store.guitarfetish.com/singlecoil.html

The Guitar Fetish site sells incredible pickups and I use them in all the guitars I build. They’re as nice as pickups from big-name companies, but happen to cost a fraction of the price.

If you don’t want to use the humbuckers that fit into single-coil slots, you’ll have to use a template to rout humbucker holes in your pickguard (or buy a new one) and rout the body of the guitar to make room for the larger pickups. I’ve done it with guitars and it’s not as big a job as you might expect, but I’d be hesitant to alter a Stratocaster, since it will lower the value.

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