A year ago, I bought a very oddball guitar (which is one of my hobbies) in a Squier Paranormal Custom Series Nashville Stratocaster. Basically, it's a Telecaster and a Stratocaster all in one. The pickup in the middle is a Strat, but the other two are Teles, The outline of the guitar is a Strat, but the bridge and tone contols are a Tele.
Bought for a low end price of around $300, the previous owner had already upgraded the bridge saddles, and now I was starting to upgrade the pickups. I had already swapped the Strat pickup for a single coil Quantum (from a busted Ibanez my brother stripped and gave the parts to me for possible re-use). Now I was replacing the stock bridge pickup with a higher quality Fender 62 pickup to give it a softer, more natural tone.
I had to re-wire things a couple of times, after discovering it was out of phase. Only burned myself once!
In the process of all that, I decided to replace the stock neck pickup with the middle pickup I had just removed. By the time I was finished, the guitar had a higher quality Telecaster pickup in the bridge, an equally well-balanced Ibanez pickup in the middle, and a brighter stock Strat pickup replacing the muddier stock Tele pickup in the neck.
I got rid of the now useless chrome cover that was on the former neck pickup, and after jamming the slightly larger Strat pickup in its place, I then switched the color of the middle pickup from white to black - making all three match (even though they are even more different than before!) The previous tones were a little to bright and harsh for my taste and the modifications now balance the tones and soften things up to give the guitar a fuller sound.
Let the games begin!
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