To Baseplate or not to Baseplate.

[TPReggie]

Greetings all - first time BK pickup convert here. Was going to put Seymour Duncans in my strat but then found these - awesome.

I have a recommendation from Tim for my strats but forgot to ask one question in particular and i dont want to bother him again with it so i figured i would ask you intellectual, well versed Bareknuckle experts instead

Now that i have buttered you up i will provide the details.

Strat 1 is a Mexican Standard strat with a Maple Neck - Tim has recommended a Sinner in the Bridge Position for this one. I will probably only replace the one in this as the pickups on this in neck and mid positions actually give a lovely Strat sound which i want to keep for cleans and slight crunch.

Strat 2 is an American Standard with a Rosewood fingerboard - Tim has recommended a set of Trilogies for this one.

My style is pretty heavy, Fightstar, Greenday type sound but nothing hi gain enough to be classed as heavy metal/shred.

The First question is in the title - what do you guys think, is the baseplate necessary.
The second question is this - it is advisable to change my tone and volume pots for this? I dont want to lose out on any extra dynamics i can get from pickup change as a result of the stock pots on these guitars not being right for them.

Many thanks for your advice guys :D

[Antag]

Hello & welcome to the forum.

Firstly, I don't own any "proper" strats, only HSS ones so I have no experience of BKP strat bridge models, therefore take my opinions with a pinch of salt :)

The baseplate certainly makes a difference.  I have a Slowhand neck with baseplate & without.  I much prefer the Slowhand with a baseplate - more power & low end punch.

However, I also have an unplated Trilogy neck & really like it, so in your case I probably wouldn't bother - or at most, I'd baseplate just the Trilogy bridge.

Never tried/heard the Sinner but I'm not sure you need any extra power or punch from it - it's something of a beast already :)

In other words, I'm not convinced a base plate is necessary for either the Trilogy or Sinner :twisted:

Regarding the pots, assuming the existing pots are 250k or 500k, you don't NEED to change them.  I'd be tempted to leave them stock on Strat1 (so as not to change the stock mid/neck sound which you like), but if they are 250k on strat2, to upgrade to 500k.  Like I said earlier though, I'm mainly a humbucker user, so all my guitars have 500k :)

[AndyR]

Do folk upgrade to 500K for Trilogies? Interesting, I wouldn't have thought of that, I just assumed they were still "strat singles", so still 250K, but it sounds like you've done it Antag...

Having said that, I only go as hot as Irish Tours... :lol:

On the baseplates, I haven't heard them "in the flesh" on strat coils, but I do know what a difference they make to tele bridge pickups. It's like more "meat" - the pickup kinda sounds the same, but like Antag says it seems a bit more powerful and has more low end punch to it.

On a tele bridge, I like that. On a strat I'm personally not so sure. When I got my ITs, I decided not to get a base-plate (bridge was the only place I considered it), and I'm really glad I didn't, my IT bridge already has a nice punch to it - it's the first strat bridge I felt comfortable using on its own. For me, I think that more punch on that pickup would have been too much.

Did you tell Tim what kind of music and everything?? From watching other people's posts and his recommendations, I suspect that he would have mentioned/recommended baseplates if he thought you needed them. You could still ask, I'm sure he won't mind :D


And another welcome from me! :D

[gwEm]

Am keen on strat bridges with baseplates.

I run 500k with my sinner/trilogy set - its perfect

[gingataff]

Am keen on strat bridges with baseplates.

I run 500k with my sinner/trilogy set - its perfect

And you can always back down the tone if it's too bright or run an extra resistor to ground to change the load (HTH did a post aout this a while back that might be worth checking out)

[Zaned]

For an SSS strat, I would go for 250K. BKP single coils are still 'normal' single coils, however hot they may get.
On my HSS strat (NB-IT-IT) I have 500K pots.

-Zaned

[TPReggie]

Hey guys, many thanks for all the replies. Much appreciated. When i asked Tim i did mention the music type and even sent him an MP3 i recorded on my Humbucker equipped Ibanez as an example. He did not suggest the baseplate so i will see how it goes without for now.

I am modding 2 strats, one a Mexican Standard and the other an American Standard. The Mexican will be done first - hopefully any lessons learned can be put into practice when doing the American strat. The U.S. strat is very very bassy as stock anyway - very odd. Almost distorts sometimes when the low e rings out on clean settings.

The most interesting thing i am waiting to see is how much hum i get from the sinner in my strat. The stuff i play is pretty high gain so i am hoping it wont be to bad. Not managed to find anything online regarding the hum or lack thereof so far.

[Zaned]

Getting off-topic, but if the single coil noise is a serious issue, consider the Suhr backplate solution: http://www.suhrguitars.com/pickups.aspx#bpssc. Ain't exactly cheap though  8)

-Zaned