Deluxe Strat HSS or SSS for classic rock/punk/experimental?

Hi y'all,

Just about to make a purchase on a second guitar. I play a lot of death metal in my band and have my ibanez locked to C standard. I end up renting a guitar when we decide to cover classic rock, punk..etc. Don't play much blues, mind you.

I am playing out of a 2 channel dual rectifier with 412 mesa trad cab. Just wondering, from your experience, if the Fender Strat Deluxe with the single in the bridge would be a good choice for the variety of music that I play, or would it make more sense to go with an HSS? I've played both types with the standard strats and like them both (haven't A/B them), but haven't plugged in a deluxe yet - they just feel so **** nice, comparatively. The shop only has an SSS, so I wonder if I should consider ordering in a HSS. I know what's 'good' is subjective, I just thought I'd seek some perspective. Cheers.

I use 2 different Strats for a variety of tones. One is a MIM strat with an SSS configuration, but I put a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge position and removed a tone pot for a toggle switch to tap the bridge pickup. That way, I can get single or humbucker tones from the bridge. In another HM strat, it was routed for a humbucker in the bridge, but I replaced it with a Seymour Duncal P-Rails, which gives me full humbucker, P90, or single coil tones in the bridge position. I guess it all comes down to just how diverse to you want to be?

I have 2 strats; one with a single coil and the other humbucker in the brigde, but I'm a lefty so I had to convert an SSS to HSS. I dropped a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates in the bridge and although I like the humbucker sounds, it hasn't forced me to abandon my #1 SSS with Kinman pickups. For me, I notice the difference with the output of the humbucker vs. the single coils in the HSS when switching between them. I rewired the neck and middle pickups to use the middle tone control and then the humbucker was wired to use the lower tone control knob. It was necessary to fatten up the sound.

With that said, you can't compare fender stock pickups to kinmans. Overall I think stats are pretty versatile, you just won't get Les Paul tones out of it. I think my HSS would give the SSS a run for it's money if I changed out the single coils on the HSS, but that's my experience with a SSS I converted. My humbucker choice may not be ideal to mix with stock pickups and the guy who did the conversion and set up likely didn't do a great job. I ended up fixing some things he could have done better.

For your application, you might be better served with the HSS. I'm more into blues, classic rock and rock. For blues and classic rock SSS is probably best. For Rock and heavier stuff, I'm happier with a humbucker in the bridge.

Definitely HSS. If not definitely swap out the bridge for a mini humbucker like a hot rails or dimarzio Billy Corgan type pickup. You'll be very underwhelmed by a true single coil in the bridge unless you like that jangly Malmsteen trebly yucky sound.