Has anyone tried different pickguard materials - like single ply vs. 3-ply (the 50's era strats has 1-ply pickguards)?
Also, anyone tried a rosewood or spruce pickguard?
That's a interesting thing to note about the pickgaurd's roll in the sound.... makes a lot of sense to me. I have an old Charvel from the '80's with a swiming pool basswood body - and it's amazing how different that guitar's sound is from my Ibanez RGs with basswood and mahagany bodies (where they have pickup rings instead of a pickguard). There is a tremendous 'strat-ness' that you can hear with the Charvel - the sound is much closer to my Warmoth Swamp Ash strat than any other basswood/maple-neck guitar I have, although I would have thought originally that it would have been the other way around.
