Fender Fat '50s Strat Pickup Set

These pickups sing to me. I put them in a Mexican Strat that I love, these completed this instrument for me, cept for maybe a bone nut in the future, but the tone is great. Smooth, round, full tones from all the five positions, the out of phase positions sound so much more alive. The Neck position is my favorite, it really sounds great. If you need to upgrade your pick ups, give these a listen on youtube or where ever, but don't pass them up. Big Kudos to Guitar Center Carle Place, NY Devin the tech there did a great job installing them.

They make my American Deluxe Strat sound much better that the original SCN noiseless pickups that it came with.

I replaced the stock pickups on my MIM strat. To be honest, I felt the stock pickups sounded decent, but I thought I'd give these a shot. They sound much different than the stock pickups, much fatter (hence the name). The bridge pickup is much harsher and single coil sounding than the stock ones. After adjusting the tone on my amp and a few changes to my pedals, I have my guitar sounding wonderful with these pickups.

I replaced the stock pickups in my 1998 Fender American Standard Strat with these pickups. I was hoping to get more punch or a fuller sound with chords. The improvement was not as good as I had hoped. On a clean amp setting the difference was minimal enough to make me shake my head. Where this pickup shows improvement over stock is when overdriven or distorted. I play through Fender Mustang Amps. Also, the brackets on which the pickups sit (the black plastic on which the coils sit) had holes that were not drilled properly (too small). The screws provided were not made for tapping and were not pointed. So, I had to manually use a drill bit to increase the size of the hole (did not use a drill as there isn't a lot of room to work with). Does someone at Fender inspect these hand-wound pickups? Was it worth $200 for the set? I wouldn't do it again. This may be something of an upgrade for a guitar with lesser-quality pickups, but I found them to be a mediocre upgrade at best.

This is the 2nd set of Fat 50's that I have owned over the years, recently I put a set in a Parts-o-caster project strat and previously in a Fender MIM standard Strat. In both cases it made the guitars sound much nicer. The tone is great, to me they sound how a Strat should sound but only with a little more of everything for good measure. I do not want ice picky tones but I do want the strat shimmer and cluck with a hint of roundness and warmth but these deliver.

Really nice pickups! Had the Hot Rails and Jeff Beck swapped out with these pups...a lot more tone with out all that mid-range box sound drop out that you'd get from going from the middle single coil to the Hot Rails. I tried to turn my Strat into a Les Paul...no, big mistake,let a Strat be a Strat.