Will dropped off two cool guitars — a new Fender Standard Series Stratocaster with a new set of pickups to try, and a Charvel Pro Mod superstrat with really high action.
Here you can see the stock wiring harness on these new Made in Indonesia standard series Stratocasters — nice full size potentiometers and an open style five way switch. The pots all tested well and worked perfectly, no need to replace these if you’re thinking of buying one.
The stock pickups sounded pretty good to me — they’re generic OEM single coils with ceramic magnets. On a multimeter they all tested a hair over 5.1k ohms. It sounds like a strat.
The Charvel had some issues, but ended up being an extremely cool guitar. The main issue was geometry — there wasn’t enough neck angle to really make the Floyd Rose bridge work. I pitched the neck back with a thin shim at the heel, and I removed one of the factory shims from under the locking nut.
I have owned a few of these recent Mexican made Charvel guitars and basses (there is a five string bass in the Gear For Sale section of the site right now) and while the feature set and necks are absolutely phenomenal they’ve all had their little quirks. In addition to the suboptimal Floyd Rose setup from the factory, this guitar had some high frets and a lot of evidence of glue seeping out of the fret slots onto the fingerboard — easy enough to clean up, but not really something you want to see. I really love these recent Charvels, but keep in mind that they may need a tech visit before they really play their best.
