So, I've been feeling adventurous lately, and I decided to do an experiment on my Stratocaster.

I've had Lace Sensors (Gold at the neck, Silver in the middle, Red at the bridge) in my Strat since 1994. It sounds quite good. But, after reading all of these online forums, I can't help but wonder if it couldn't sound better. And after hearing good Strats like Daddy Dex's SRV model, it REALLY made me feel a vague unease. So today I did a simple switch:

1) I took off the pickguard, and swapped the Gold to the middle and the Silver to the neck. No soldering, I just swapped the pickups in the slots of the pickguard.

2) I really like the difference. The Silver neck pickup does sound better.

3) Even cooler is that the 5 way switch now gives me the option of neck and bridge together I may be fooling myself, but I think this sounds kind of Tele-ish. That sound (Silver and Red if you are keeping score) is really nice.

4) So now the 5 way goes : Middle; Middle/Neck; Neck; Neck/Bridge; Bridge. I feel like I have a brand new guitar, and all it took was five minutes.

On another note, when I took the guitar apart, I was surprised to see so many conflicting dates. The serial number leads me to believe it was made in 1987. The neck is stamped "April 1987". But the pickguard has a tag inside that says May, 1988. And I bought the guitar brand new in the summer of 1990. I guess it was "New Old Stock".