Prepped Baseplate

Short version:Very easy to install. I added this plate to an inexpensive aftermarket Strat bridge pickup that was just too strident and it helped a lot with that. The pickup now sounds warmer and “bigger” than before, and works better with the other pickups in the guitar. More than worth it!

Longer version: I have a Strat with a goofy combination of pickups in it, which are just perfect for the clean sounds I use this guitar for. It is wired with a Super switch, so the 3 position is bridge/neck (not middle pickup). I use the 2,3, and 4 positions almost exclusively. I almost never use the bridge pickup on a Strat by itself, because they either sound to pointy or too over-hyped or too boxy. Again, this is mostly with clean sounds. Probably not a typical use case.

I tried a bunch of bridge pickups (Though I had not yet tried Fralins!), mostly Custom Shop, and was never happy. Adjusting the heights did not help. I ended up with a GFS Truvin [something something], because it worked best with these combination sounds I use. It had the same things I don’t like about Strat bridge pickups on its own (Squank, blat, tooorng!), but less than the other pickups I had tried.

[It’s really hard to describe how things sound or feel to play. Pretty subjective. How to say “I like p90 skronk, but HATE Strat Squank” without sounding like a lunatic?]

Adding the plate was quite easy (though be careful when you cut pushback wire–use something sharp and be assertive, or you can end up with a floofy mess).

With the plate in place, the pickup was a quite a bit smoother. I definitely had to angle the bass side away from the strings a bit more, but once I found the sweet spot for height, it was much sweeter. Just overall sounded more balanced, better dynamics (less barky attack relative to the rest of the note) and generally more musical. I also found it worked better in the combination positions.

On its own, I found that with the tone control turned down about 1/4 (YMWV), there are clean sounds I could actually use, which were not there before the plate.

And once you start into the angry sounds, it’s much, much better.

Also, the service/support here has been excellent. I made a suggestion I thought might help make the site better for users, and they were back to me in a day about it.

I am really looking forward to spending more than $26 next time (!) but this was $26 bucks well spent

Bang on! These things are so gooood. Perfect for giving a vintage Stratocaster bridge pickup some sauce. My only “complaint” is that I’m gonna have to order more!

This little baseplate turned my least favorite strat pickup into my go-to for midrange punch on this guitar. For the price and ease of installation I highly recommend this to the curious. It’s not a complete transformation of your pickup or anything, but for me it was enough to make my bridge pickup (which I never used) extremely useable. The effect is more or less a low end resonance bump on your pickup that gives it that extra spank – similar to what you get with a tele, though not as pronounced as a tele for a number of reasons. But you’re not buying it for a tele, you’re buying it for a strat, and it will make your strat sound WAY better!

All of the Fralin pickups I have are 5 star. This review is for a baseplate I purchased for one of my American Standard Strats. Unfortunately it won’t work on the Fender stock bridge pickup. The stock 2011 pickups have plastic bobbins with raised screw mount holes. This will not allow the baseplate to lay flat against the magnets.

Totally changed the sound of the bridge pickup. Sharper and very precise sound, much cleaner than without!

I have a 1963 Strat that I have had since 1968. The pickups have always sounded a little thin and didn’t take gain very well. It is virtually all original so I didn’t want to modify it significantly. Since the baseplates are held on with wax and only one small solder, I thought I would try one. I actually put one on all 3 pickups and it made a significant improvement in tone and output of all 3 pickups. It did change the bridge tone giving it a bit of a tele honk which is fine with me. It’s not a massive transformation but it helped these low output pickups a fair amount. If you have lower output pickups, the baseplate will give them a boost.

Pleasantly surprised with how much of a difference this made!

I actually was already a big fan of the bridge pickup sound in my Strat for a while, until a buddy of mine let me try out his Tele and I realized the low end I was missing out on in comparison (the ignorance was bliss). This plate rounds out the low end nicely without losing too much of the pickup’s natural bite. I also went ahead and wired the middle pickup tone pot to control the bridge pickup as well, which is another nice little mod to compliment this plate.

Installation was super easy, anyone with a solder iron and internet connection can figure it out.

Easy, easy to install, made a big difference. No-brainer.

Easy install (with mediocre soldering skills) and great result. The plate clearly thickened the mids and bass of my Strat bridge pickup. It’s much more Tele-like now. An easy and effective mod! Order was shipped quickly.

I always loved my MIJ ’54 Strat, with the exception that it was way too noisy (60-cycle hum) and the bridge pickup sounded too thin. (The only use I found for it was with a ton of fuzz that got me some nice Jimi tones.) My solution was to install this baseplate along with a switchable dummy coil to cancel the hum. These two mods gave me my perfect Strat. The bridge pickup now sounds a lot beefier, similar to the bridge pickup on a tele. With the dummy coil on, I can layer on a lot of gain and it gets me into humbucker type sounds, but still with a Strat flavor.

For me, this is a way better option than adding a humbucker to a Strat, as it retains most of the classic Strat character.

Check out my installation video with sound samples here: https://youtu.be/lUQiatfh1OM?si=bSjpoSlkB2XWMNy9&t=1463