Save my Strat

Ever since I dialed in my Telecaster, it has become my go-to guitar. I love the way it plays, I love the way it looks and, most importantly, I love the way it sounds. I love the dual humbuckers. I love their power, their depth and their texture. Dual-pickup guitars are also easy - two pickups, one three-way switch, no fuss. I wish all my guitars had this setup.

This is all well and good, but what about my Stratocaster? It means that it spends a lot of its time in its case. I love my Strat. It's the best playing guitar I own, including the Tele. It's just that whenever I take it out and plug it in, I don't like the way it sounds. I miss the Telecaster's twin humbucker power. So the Strat goes back in its case and I go back to the Tele.

I don't want this to happen. The Strat has been my main guitar up until the point when I finally got the setup right on the Tele. This is the same conundrum I face in the potential purchase of another guitar - I don't want to not play any of my guitars, and adding another one to the mix will mean another guitar in the rotation. But what if the guitar isn't even in the rotation? I have a similar problem with my Hondo - I like the way it sounds, even with the cheap pickups in the HSS pickguard, but I hate how easily it goes out of tune and I'm out of patience with non-locking tremolos.

So what's a guy to do? I need to save my Strat from being relegated to occasional player status. I have a few options.

I could take the pickguard off my Hondo and put it on the Strat. I thought about this before, but this is the most serious thought I've given it in a while. This is by far the cheapest option. It's essentially free. All I need to do is borrow a soldering iron or, even better, pick up one from Home Depot or similar store (they're cheap), remove both pickguards, and install the Hondo's on the Strat. This does lead to two problems - first, although I like the humbucker in the Hondo, I don't much care for the single coils, and second, the Hondo will go back to being a useless hunk of wood. The Fender's pickguard won't fit without some filing of the neck pocket and I don't have the tools to do that. Another cheap tool - this time a file - is all I'd need, but it's more work and it means the Hondo has almost no saving grace. It will have pickups I don't like and a tremolo I don't like.

I could go back to GuitarFetish.com and buy another cheap prewired pickguard. For the price, they're pretty good. As I said, I like the Hondo's humbucker, and the singles, while not the best, are definitely passable at this price range. Ideally I'd like to get a dual humbucker pickguard, but I'd have to take the guitar to Spotlight Music for installation because the Strat is routed for an HSS setup and I'd need to get the neck pickup rout widened. All of this means more money.

I could spend a little more and get the Carvin HSS pickguard I mentioned in another post. While pricier, it won't require a re-rout and the singles should be much higher quality than the stock Mexican ceramic pickups on the Strat. But it still means money.

So do I go the free route, or wait until I can do one of the other options? I'm getting impatient, so we'll see what happens.