Some say the Fender Stratocaster is a ‘perfect’ design, but there's a whole industry of aftermarket parts to better it – this company is trying to neutralize its biggest ‘Achilles heel’

It’s 71 years since the Stratocaster was unveiled to a less than rapt audience. Over those past decades, however, it’s become the best-selling guitar of all time.

Well, we suspect that’s true. Many have lauded it as the ‘perfect’ design – ‘Leo got it right first time!’ – and countless non-Fender craftspeople have made their own-version ‘Stratocasters’ with just minor changes, or not.

Yet, certainly from the early '70s, a whole slew of designers thought they could improve this perfect design, and today there are probably more aftermarket parts – hardware and pickups – to ‘upgrade’ the Stratocaster than any other electric guitar.

So what exactly was, and is, ‘wrong’ with the Stratocaster? There’s not one single part, from string tree to strap button, that hasn’t been ‘improved’ by someone. And then there’s the Strat’s ‘Achilles heel’: its single-coil pickups, which, as we all know, pick up hum that can ruin a gig or recording if you’re unlucky.

One very common fix is the reverse-wound, reverse‑polarity (RWRP) middle pickup, which can at least provide hum-cancelling in the combined pickup positions.

Back in the day, this weakness didn’t bother Fender, which only got around to a humbucker in the early '70s, and that design hardly nailed ‘the Fender sound’. But bucking the hum has fueled its own industry of Clever Trevors and created hum-cancelling single-coil-sized pickups using two coils, stacked on top of each other or side by side, not to mention active humbucking designs from the likes of EMG and latterly Fishman.

There are other noise-cancelling tricks, not least using copper foil in the body cavities and around the pickup coils, dummy coils, and circuits, like the Ilitch backplate hum-cancelling system. But few, if any, have replaced the classic Strat’s unique timbre. Hum – or rather living with it – is part of that deal.

In fact, while Fender has employed plenty of hum-kicking pickups since those '70s Wide Range humbuckers – Lace Sensors, various ‘Noiseless’ pickups, and so on – the company currently only uses its hum-cancelling Noiseless Vintage Strat pickups on the American Ultra II models, and just the Noiseless ones on the Mexican-made Player II Modified range.

The recently released American Ultra Luxe Vintage models, for example, have plenty of modernist upgrades, but the pickups are old-school Pure Vintage ’61 Strat single coils.

Hum-Free… Or Not

Tonerider pickups are designed here in the UK and manufactured in China. Designer Andrew Cunningham has been “playing around with dummy coils and noise-cancelling coils for the best part of 20 years, but other people got there first!” he says. “So I started making non-hum-cancelling pickups and they started selling. I kept asking people about the noise and they weren’t too bothered.

“Plenty of rock guitarists simply went straight to humbuckers, but now I think there’s a central zone where not everyone wants to play humbuckers, and it just seems that if you can get that glassy tone, the bell-like tone and the dynamics, why not [use hum-cancelling]? It’s just going to make your studio or live engineer’s job easier. I guess some people might miss the hum, but that’s like the crackle of vinyl – everyone to their own.”

Tonerider’s first noise-cancelling Apex Classic single coil set has been in development for a few years, says Andrew: “[We’re] just trying to get the perfect balance of punch and ‘air’ into the tone, without the annoying midrange honk that a lot of stacked single coils have.” They actually appeared on Eastman’s FullerTone models, in a slightly earlier incarnation, before the company had offered them as aftermarket sets.

Reviewing those Eastman guitars back in issue 526, we found that the pickups really suited the DC ’62 model, where two of the Apex-style units are used in the middle and neck positions along with a soapbar-sized humbucker at the bridge.

On the single-cut SC ’52 there’s a T-style Apex in the bridge position that Andrew admitted he preferred to “our normal Tele replacement bridge pickup. Sometimes you make an improvement to solve one specific issue – for example, noise – and with the Apex Tele bridge pickup, it makes it really playable.

“There’s a tiny bit of compression maybe, or it holds your hand a little bit. It makes the guitar easier to play – you just keep playing! Then there’s the party trick of having some gain and then just stopping the strings and it’s silent.”

Using new-design pickups such as these on new-design guitars like the FullerTones makes perfect sense: there’s no actual reference and you’re not comparing the sound of a new 2025 DC ’62 with one made in 1962. But offering the Apex technology as aftermarket pickups for pretty much any Stratocaster is a different matter: we’re comparing these new humbuckers to 70 years of that single-coil sound, hum included.

And Tonerider is going for the sell, declaring that the Apex Classic set comprises “vintage-voiced hum-cancelling pickups for all Stratocasters. The ultimate glassy, bell-like Strat tone, now with studio-level hum reduction. Suitable for all blues, funk, country, and more.”

They are certainly nicely packaged and cleanly made, and, although they’re a stacked design, their overall depth is 18.5mm with the cover removed (a standard-built vintage-style Fender pickup is closer to 15mm). They use standard-sized covers, too, and come supplied with Tonerider’s pearl white nylon types.

You can clearly see the neat construction with the top coil approximately 10mm deep; the lower coil (separated by a hard plastic spacer) is around half that depth, and there’s a steel baseplate that carries the position-specific legend.

The staggered height Alnico V magnetic poles are cleanly edge bevelled, with an overall 5mm diameter. The top three poles (which all sit slightly above the face of the cover) look the same height; the D string is the tallest then the A and low E slope down.

Installing a whole set, the white or yellow (of the middle pickup) leads go to the pickup switch inputs, and the green and black wires to ground. If you’re mixing the Toneriders with other-brand single coils and encounter a phase problem, you simply swap the white or yellow wires with the black ones. Good to know.

The Apex pickups are also designed to work with standard Stratocaster pot values, so you don’t need to install anything different and, of course, since the pickups are passive there’s no battery to house.

A Suitable Ride

I thought I’d give the Apex pickups a run on what I refer to as my ‘modern’ Stratocaster. There’s not a Fender part on the guitar, however, and it’s a pretty graphic illustration of the ‘improvements’ that many have offered for this hallowed design.

The neck is from DiMarzio back in the early '80s, I believe, when the company was offering necks and bodies as well as pickups. Rumor had it that the wood parts were sub-contracted out to the likes of Grover Jackson and Stuart Spector.

Whatever, the neck has been on various guitars since the early/mid-80s. It’s paired with a swamp ash body from Warmoth (another pioneer of aftermarket bodies and necks), and in its current guise was assembled by Sid Poole whose scribbled name is clearly visible in the spring cavity.

Original to the build are the Sperzel rear-locking tuners, one of the first designs of the type that really caught on. This improved vibe continues with Trev Wilkinson’s VSVG vibrato, one of my favorite vintage-voiced but improved designs, although I run the guitar as a hardtail with four springs and plenty of tension.

Later mods in the hands of the team at Charlie Chandler’s Guitar Experience are stainless-steel frets and a Plek setup, and thrown in for good measure is the Buzz Feiten Tuning System.

In short, the new Toneriders are in pretty good ‘upgraded’ company and replace a set of darker-sounding aftermarket stacked single coils from a pretty big name.

Plugged in, like a regular humbucker there’s no hum – although it’s not that unnerving silence of a set of EMGs – and with it a confidence of knowing that you won’t run into problems on a gig. With gain, too, not to mention old-school fuzztones, there’s no struggle to control or mute the guitar, let alone pick up the local takeaway or taxi service.

Now, the thousand dollar question is, does my improved modern Stratocaster sound like a vintage piece from the 1950s? Well, it certainly sounds like a Stratocaster – and a very good one at that.

And in comparison to various single-coil Strats (with some pretty pricey pickups onboard in some cases), the Apex Classics get dangerously close. They seemed to benefit from being a little closer to the strings, too, in terms of height adjustment, and doing that narrowed the gap a little.

If you play loud with some crunchy or heavier gains, the Apex Classics might be right up your street. Backing off the bridge-pickup tone control really gets into a more Patent Applied For-like zone, and the neck pickup sings very nicely – it’s full and quite fat but with that percussive clarity.

I can’t help thinking some of us rockier types might enjoy a little more poke, particularly at the bridge – a spicy Hot Classic anyone? Well, Tonerider has us covered with the just-released Apex Plus, which the company says “deliver[s] midrange muscle while maintaining single-coil clarity”. Apex HSS sets are launching in mid-October, too.

Rather like the Stratocaster itself, if you don’t have any problems, you don’t need the modern upgraded route. But if you’ve struggled with hum, with or without higher gains, these Apex Classics are definitely worth a shot, not least at their very attractive price.

Spec

Product: Tonerider Apex Classic set
Price: £140
Origin: Designed in UK; made in China
Tech specs: Single-coil-sized stacked humbuckers, available with left,
right, or flat magnet stagger
Magnets: Alnico V
DCR: 7kohms (bridge); 6.3k (middle and neck)
Options: Magnet stagger, white, black, parchment or cream covers.
Individual pickups cost £50
Skill level: Easy to fit if you can solder!
Contact: Tonerider

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.