mojotron

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.

So, other than just holding the strings into the nut, what difference does an angled head make to the playability?