Fender Clapton Mid-Boost Kit

As found in the Fender Stratocaster "Clapton" model. A great part that opens up the middle range of your single coils to give you the classic clapton tone you've always wanted.

Part number - 0057577000

Supplied with all the appropriate Pots, Caps, Nuts and Knobs of your choice.

Standard Stratocaster Wiring Kit

A replacement wiring Kit for MEX/USA Strats, or a great upgrade for Imports. All parts as standard on Vintage Fender Specs.

1954 - 1977 Stratocaster Wiring Kit

The “Strat story” apparently starts in late 1951 according to the late Leo Fender, with the body, neck and pickup design already well underway by 1952, however this is contradicted by Freddie Tavares, who claims to have been hired to “put the Stratocaster on the drawing board”, presumably to design the guitar from the ground up from early 1953.

Bill Carson, of the Eddy Kirk Band somewhat solidifies Freddie Tavares Claims, stating that although the Strat was in the idea stages, nothing was really produced until 1953.

Oddly, the Strat was (apparently) intended to be Bills “custom” guitar – a on off, however the idea snowballed as Fender began to put Bills design ideas to other musicians, and the Strat seemed to tick certain boxes amongst the local guitar community.

Regardless of the exact conception date, the Fender Stratocaster officially debuted in 1954, with prototypes doing the rounds as early as 1953, mainly as an answer to the competition mounting from guitars being built by Bigsby, sporting Vibrato systems.

Electrically speaking, early Strats where designed to sound thicker then the Telecaster, and learning from customer feedback, it was deemed that the Strat would sport the Tone controls that were lacking on the initial run of Telecasters from 1950-1952.

However, one thing that was lacking (and would remain missing for over 20 years!) was the 5 way switch, the original strats sported a 3 way switch, exactly the same as found on the Tele.

As with the Telecaster, the lack of reverse wound pickups meant that 2 pickups at once produced an out of phase signal, which was undesired, and although humbucking technology was available at the time, Fender decided to stick to his guns and maintain a cleaner sound overall. It’s surprising that this ethos lasted so long, however some players found the “sweet spots” between the 3 positions, which would lead onto the development on the 5 way switch.

Rumour has it that Fender made the 5 way switch available as a spare very early on, other reports say that Strats were shipped with a 5 way switch loose in the box, (as we see today with most vintage re-issues) but there are very few records other than the official stance that, as standard, all Strats came fitted with a 3 way switch until 1977.

For the most part, the Strat remained unchanged electrically from 1954 to 1970, when the cap was changed from a 0.1uf to a 0.05uf – making the guitar brighter, and more suited to contemporary music at that point.

One odd point to bear in mind with the Strats electronics is the tone control, although the neck and middle pickups had individual controls, the bridge pickup (for the most part part) has never had any form of control. That has remained true on Strats to this very day.

1978 - 1986 Stratocaster Wiring Kit

As the 70s drew to a close, the Strat was suffered a distinct drop in popularity. Competition from Far eastern imports, a noticeable shift in popular musical styles and ever increasing costs of American production left the once popular guitar a little out in the cold.

With CBS now firmly in charge, a drastic shift was made towards a more contemporary sound, facilitated by the 5 way switch we all know today however “reverse wound” middle pickups would still not be used until late 1986.

The combination using the existing pickups produced two new settings (what we now know as 2 and 4) where a combination of neck or bridge pickups with the middle would produce a hotter, fatter, out of phase sound – deemed more suitable to the more distorted guitar sound that was topping the charts at the time.

In 1980, Fender also released a hotter bridge single coil – named the X-1. Originally designed for “The Strat” (a short lived “super strat” from the early 80s), it was also used in the Stratocaster. Whilst not exactly a wiring component, its worth noting that the X-1 was only marginally hotter then the pickups used previously (about 7.5k vs  6k) otherwise, construction was near identical.

Another point worth noting is that the tone cap was also changed in 1983 from 0.047 to 0.022, again, just to open up slightly more of the top end. Rather a strange situation that the Stratocaster started out as a dark, almost muddy guitar and would eventually become very bright and breezy.

For all intents and purposes, most Stratocasters we see today, with the exception of the top of the range, will be very similar to a 1983 Strat electrically.

1987 - 1993 TBX Stratocaster Wiring Kit

With Fender back on the straight and narrow under the control of Bill Schultz after the CBS era, Stratocasters went back to basics.

For the first few years of the rebuild, Fender survived on imported Vintage reissues (see the 1954-1977 wiring) from the newly acquired Far Eastern factories, however developments were made on the electrical side of things.

For all intents and purposes, the Strat remained the same, however in 1987 the middle pickup was finally reverse wound to give noise cancellation in positions 2 and 4.

At the same time, fender unveiled their TBX tone pot in a true strat, originally released for the Elite Stratocaster (another short lived “Super Strat” that appeared from 1983-1985 sporting a complex switching system and active circuitry)

The TBX pot is basically, a dual stacked pot that offers a 250k pots on top and a 1 meg on the bottom. Without getting into the guts of the thing, it offered the best of both worlds. Roll up to 5 and you’re in 250k territory, go part 5 and you’re into 1 meg.

Other then those two additions, Stratocasters didn’t really change all that much electrically after 1986, and despite a few short lived “spin offs” this is the guitar most of us are familiar with today as a top of the line Statocaster.

"Super Switch" Stratocaster Wiring Kit

The Super Switch Strat has remained a bit of a mystery since its initial appearance in the late 90s/early 2000s, on such guitars as “The Big Apple” and “Deluxe Humbucker” Strats.

The premise is actually quite simple.

Instead of the standard 5 way switch, which was actually a bit of a cheat (only having 3 inputs) the new version has 5 inputs for each position, further to that, instead of the switch sporting 2 “sides” operated by a single wiper (the original was, in essence two switches in one) the new switch has 4 sides, each with 5 inputs and 1 output, all worked by one central mechanism.

On the face of it, it looks an over engineer solution to a problem that didn’t really exist, but once we get into working with humbuckers, its possible to expand the switching capabilities.

If we reserve 2 “sides” for normal operation, then we’ve got 2 spare – where its possible, based on switch position to do pretty much anything.

The most common route in the early days was to simply coil tap Humbuckers in redundant positions, so instead of having Humbucker + Middle, it was possible to have a Bridge single coil (the tapped HB), either working on its own or with the middle pickup. Or, as was the case in “Double Humbucker Strats” – by fitting the super 5 way, it’s possible to tap the humbucker in the 2 new positions, giving a strong single coil sound.

As Technology progressed, Fender released the S1 switch, which opened up the possibilities even further, revealing the Super switches potential advantages when used in the classic 3 Single coil setup.

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