[starsailor]

Hi guys bit of a Numpty question, could any kind member explain HSS configuration for me and does it give a guitar a fatter sound, I've just bought an extremely cheap second - hand Strat Copy with 3 pick-ups and HSS configuration to mess around with and it has this, is it a better sound than a standard strat.

Thanks for your time and your knowledge

[allthumbs]

The humbucker in the bridge position is what does it. Humbuckers have a warmer fatter distortion than single coils.

[P-90]

Whether or not it's a better sound is a matter of taste.

On any multiple-pickup guitar, the bridge pickup will, all else being equal, sound quiet and skewed towards high frequencies compared to the others. Designers have traditionally gotten around that by adding more windings to bridge pickups, tilting them gently towards lower frequencies, and increasing the overall output.

Replacing the bridge pickup with a hotter design is a little more drastic approach to the matter. The fact that there's no tone control for the bridge pickup on a strat is some extra incentive for doing this, as it's always going to be set for full blast shrillness, and a lot of players will find a humbucker's more laid back tone to be easier to work with given that limitation.

The tradeoff for this is that, with 3 single-coil pickups, you could use switch setting #2 or #4 and get hum cancellation. When you replace the bridge pickup with a humbucker, the bridge pickup will no longer hum, but it loses the ability to cancel the middle pickup's hum, so switch position #5 gets quieter and #4 gets noisier.

[starsailor]

Thanks for the Advice allthumbs and P90, it will be my first electric, I'll have to check it out when I collect it on Monday and see what the sound quality's like, it has been set up and has new strings, the necks straight, and it's in good condition, another one for my collection of moderately priced guitars.