NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE ...
Like most of us, Neville Marten is a sucker for upgrades to his equipment. But he would never put new pickups on a Custom Shop Strat, would he?
Well, I didn’t think I was going to. However, some of you may have read my review of Fender’s Vintera II Strat and Nocaster in last issue’s Guitarist. In it I mentioned that I own two Stratocasters and they sound very different from one another. But hearing a desk recording of a recent Marty Wilde gig, my red Strat, which I know is anything but plinky… sounded plinky! Actually, it turned out not to be the Strat rather the recording, but of course the seed was sown and I don’t need to tell you the rest, do I? Even though I’m going to.
I wouldn’t amend the red Strat in any way that meant I couldn’t return it exactly to how it was when the Custom Shop built it for me. People often ask if mine’s a Gary Moore Limited Edition one. No, it’s not, but by complete fluke the CS were building mine at exactly the same time as they were creating those! My ’56 two ‐tone Relic, however, is a John Cruz Master Design (not Master Built) and, while it’s a stonker of a guitar, is not precious in the same way. So I decided to see if I could give it a bit more oomph.
I spoke to my friend Tim Mills down at Bare Knuckle Pickups to take advantage of his bottomless pit of knowledge about windings, magnets, polepieces and so on. “Tim, I want my Strat to sound like it’s got P-90s in it, but still look like a stock Fender with single coils.” He thought for a minute and said, “What about the Rabea Massaad Triptych set? They’re like a souped-up SRV sound but with a bit more besides.”
Now, I’d actually watched Rabe
