Swirled Strat

I recently played this. It's a Standard HSS Mexican Strat, given a swirled finish. We all know too well how the Strat is renowned for its single coil tone but the humbucker in this one was below the mark. It sorely lacks bottom end. You'd argue that Strats were not meant to manifest whatever thumping lower frequencies heard in other guitars; they were carefully crafted to move away from that sonic territory. That might be a valid perspective but once a humbucker is inserted into any guitar, the reasonable objective is to fuse the guitar's inherent resonance with the said pickup for that specific chemistry. If it fails then it fails, we shouldn't try too hard to remediate our hearing. 

This particular Strat, ladies & gentlemen, is a splendid single coil player. The issue, tone-wise, is the humbucker which hardly has adequate bottom end for metal-type punchiness. We could all replace that default unit with some other make that specializes in this tone type & I reckon it's a wise move. If you are interested in this Fender, it's available at Swee Lee (List: $899).