Prewired HSS Strat Pickguard

Being a professional sax player and only a learning guitarist (6 or 7rs in) I’m somewhat new to the in’s and out’s of the guitar world. Loving more and more the overall stratocaster vibe, I wanted to get the MIM strat I have cranking instead of buying a pro one, and was recommended Fralin pickups (and in particular the Blues Specials) by a killer guitarist I have played with a lot in Mexico (Bernardo Ron). They do not disappoint! Having the good fortune to have access to top horns I can only so that playing my strat is now akin to playing a Selmer Mark 6 or Cannonball Adderly era Super 20 King, it’s an instrument as it should be with all the beauty that that implies, and if it doesn’t sound good it’s all on you.
Thanks guys, great great work!

I ordered high-output strat in neck, steel pole 43 in middle, modern PAF in bridge. The high-output strat in the neck position sounds amazing with some overdrive through my hand-wired AC15, I mean better than any guitar I have ever played. The modern PAF sounds awesome with distortion, ie RAT type pedals. All also sound excellent clean.

The only reason I would say 4 stars is the pickguard, which has a noticeable gap around the covered humbucker, more than what I would consider normal. Will need to replace it at some point.

I sincerely could not be happier with my Fralin purchase. I happened upon a set of Pure PAFs at a great local shop and threw them in a gifted and inexpensive guitar and was so impressed that I turned to Fralin for my Strat upgrade project. Beautiful solid pick-guard pre-wired with Blues in the neck, Real 54’s in the middle, and a pure PAF split-able humbucker in the bridge. Ability to select each pot and customize them was made silly-easy with the experts at Fralin doing all the wiring for me. I’ve been playing my Strat (to the detriment of my other guitars) almost exclusively for the past 2 months now and DAILY I am impressed with these pups, always finding new and beautiful tone in the positions and tone/volume knobs. Fralin pickups are worth every penny!!!

Best! Turned my strat into the machine it was meant to be

Stellar

Pros: Too many to list here. I’m sure I haven’t even discovered all the pros yet. Cons: Now I want Fralins in all my guitars. (IoW: I can’t think of any cons.) Stop reading reviews and start your order. 🙂

Great communication and customer service.

Worth it! Turned an average strat into a legend. Worth every penny

Great Quality and Easy Install
I have been so impressed with my prewired pickguard. Also very happy with the professional communication when they wanted to run something by me to make sure that I was getting exactly what I wanted. Install was super easy and my guitar sounds wonderful! Would definitely recommend.

Quality, Tone and Customer Service!!!
There’s no question of the tone and quality of Fralin’s work. That is proven time and again with each product I buy. Coupled with professionalism and respect and patience and communication is a recipe for the ultimate customer experience!!! Thank you all at Fralin!!! I’ll be back four more soon!!!

The pickups sound great and have the tone we were looking for but the push-pull pot is really difficult to actuate and your fingers slip off the dial subsequently – otherwise all good

Can’t install, unfortunately, it does not fit my Fender Pro HSS. The bridge pickup is way too big. For the route

Love it! Sounds amazing. Love it. Might get another one in the future.

HSS Pickguard!

I already knew that I love LF pickups, I have bought them a few times before. This is the first time getting a complete pickguard and it was totally worth it. The sound is amazing, the quality is amazing and I would definitely buy another one when the time arises!

Exactly What I Wanted

I purchased a prewired H/S/S pickguard with 2 vintage hots and a big single 42. I have never liked HSS setups on guitars because I don’t think that most humbuckers go well in them. They are nearly always too compressed or hot for my style of playing. I also didn’t want a normal SSS because I never use the single coil bridge, even with a baseplate. Too noisy. So I got a big single to try and capture the uncompressed sound and feel of a single coil but the silence of a humbucker. It sounds perfect. I just told the Fralin company what my guitar was made out of and let them choose the wind. I had a set of player strat pickups in it and these blow those out of the water. I used to have to “tame” my strat with the tone and volume knobs to get rid of that ice-pick sound. Now, I usually don’t roll the tone down because there simply is no ice-pick. At all. Gone. It just sounds like a glassy, chimey, airy strat. I really couldn’t be happier. I also ordered during the covid-19 crisis and they still had very impressive turn around times. Highly recommended.

Exactly What I Wanted

I purchased a prewired H/S/S pickguard with 2 vintage hots and a big single 42. I have never liked HSS setups on guitars because I don’t think that most humbuckers go well in them. They are nearly always too compressed or hot for my style of playing. I also didn’t want a normal SSS because I never use the single-coil bridge, even with a baseplate. Too noisy. So I got a big single to try and capture the uncompressed sound and feel of a single coil but the silence of a humbucker. It sounds perfect. I just told the Fralin company what my guitar was made out of and let them choose the wind. I had a set of player strat pickups in it and these blow those out of the water. I used to have to “tame” my strat with the tone and volume knobs to get rid of that ice-pick sound. Now, I usually don’t roll the tone down because there simply is no ice-pick. At all. Gone. It just sounds like a glassy, chimey, airy strat. I really couldn’t be happier. I also ordered during the covid-19 crisis and they still had very impressive turn around times. Highly recommended.

Astonishing!

2017 American Professional Strat. The Tim Shaw single coils in it were pretty legit, but I wanted a Strat with a humbucker, so I decided to convert mine with a new loaded pickguard. I shopped it for a while and actually played a Duncan loaded Strat, but when a friend let me play his ‘87 Strat with Fralin Blues Special single coils in the neck and middle, I knew that was the sound I wanted. Once I installed the pickguard (easy install if you’re even kind of good with a soldering iron), I was instantly stunned about what those pickups did. Articulate notes and undertones come out in a good way! Add some gain and the single coils range from a warm and fat clean to a lightning sizzle with a turn of the volume knob. I chose the 8.2K Pure PAF, thinking that a little lower output humbucker would play better with the output of the single coils. I love what that pickup does. If I am gained up, there are moments that the Strat will get a Les Paul-like growl. If a player wanted to go with a higher output humbucker, I do not think you could be dissatisfied with the outcome. I’m very pleased with my purchase. This modification to my $1400.00 Strat makes it feel and sound like a guitar that came out of the custom shop at twice the price. I even called and spoke to a representative at Fralin with a few questions about the choice of capacitors and that guy was awesome. (Sorry I don’t recall his name.) The experience was great all together. I’ll definitely do business with Fralin again!

Simply the best pickups I have used, really love them…they sound great with some overdrive, nice crunch if you need to and clean up really nice. I have single coil blues specials on the neck/middle with modern PAF on the bridge for the Strat. Also did a blender on tone 2 with push/pull on tone 1. With the Tele I have blues specials on on both bridge and neck. I get compliments all the time on the overall tone for both guitars. If you are on the fence, get off the fence and go for it you will not be disappointed.

The Hiwatt of pre-wired pickguards
Amazing work. The only problem I had was the height adjustment screws for the humbucking pickup were too long and the pickguard would not lay flat. Some trouble removing the screws from the pickup, but once that was done and shorter screws were installed it was all good.

Hello there,
I have a set of Vintage Hots and a Standard Humbucker on my Stratocaster. Absolutely great pickups!! My luthier is an official dealer of yours and we have used all the recommended specs but I think that the humbucker sounds kinda muddy.. Do you happen to have any ideas about what can we do in order to fix that? Thank you very much, greetings from Greece!!!

Extremely great pickups and prewired pickguard.