roland ready strat 1996

Started by allobytw, April 02, 2014, 05:02:47 AM

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allobytw

Hi I wander if anyone knows what type of pickups they used in a roland ready USA 1996 STRAT reason I ask is I bought one off ebay and only used it a couple of times but although I liked midi built in strat I feel more comfortable playing my gibson  so I sold strat and have decided to use money to get a luthier to fit an internal gk3 in my gibson.Now the buyer of the strat has emailed me and said "The pole pieces on the single coils are not staggered as they should be? They are flat like cheap after market pickups or some Mexican guitars also a lot of the screws on the switches and pickguard are loose. Before I investigate further by examining under the pickguard can you confirm this is a USA Roland ready with USA electronics?? Obviously the guitar itself is a USA standard but has the gk pickguard been added to a USA guitar? Also the switch that selects guitar both or midi only does not cut the guitar signal. Thanks "I am not well informed on stratocasters the bloke I bought it off has said it is a genuine roland ready USA strat any info or hel would be great thanks .

Elantric

#1
Staggered height pole pieces are features of early vintage Strats. Today you are likely to find equal numbers of USA Strats with flat height pole pieces.  They are no indication of country of origin.
But I will add that if the guitars serial number starts with an "M" and is a decal on the face of the headstock - it's a Mexican Strat.




And I will add USA Roland Ready Strats exist but are rare. It was my belief that after 1992 All Roland Ready Strat production went to Mexico.


If the guitar was purchased used, it's very likely a neck swap occurred for a USA Neck - this is a common "mod" for many Roland Ready Strats.

USA Strat PUs employ 6 separate cylindrical magnets. (Each pole piece is the magnet).

Note the different construction used for Mexican Strat Pickups. (see pic below) These employ 2 bar magnets underneath the coil, rather like a small version of the Gibson P90 PU  construction.


http://www.fender.com/news/staggered-polepieces-why/
QuoteFirst, you might notice that the individual magnets or polepieces on your Strat® guitar's pickups stick out from the surface of the pickup in varying heights rather than a nice neat flush lineup. This variation in the height of each polepiece is called the stagger. You may see, for example, that the polepieces that sit beneath the D and G strings are raised higher than the others, and that the one that sits beneath the B string is noticeably lower than the others.

Second, not all Stratocaster pickups are staggered. Some models do and some don't. Fender's two Road Worn Stratocaster models and some Classic series models are staggered, for example, but a Highway One model has flush polepieces.
We also mentioned historical precedent. Staggered-polepiece pickups were standard on Stratocasters for 20 years before they were replaced by straight-across-flush-pole pickups in 1974. They didn't come back until the early 1980s. The Telecaster received staggered polepieces in the 1960s.






QuoteAlso the switch that selects guitar both or midi only does not cut the guitar signal.

That's true for all 13 pin users connecting to any Roland 13pin processor built after 2004
Have your Roland Ready Strat buyer join here to learn how to use his guitar, and make the non functional three way "Guitar/Mix/Synth" switch work

If he is using it with GR55 ,read this link
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3402.0

If he is using it with VG99 ,read this link
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=8019.msg57043#msg57043


In a month when the Boss GP-10 ships ,we will have yet another link on how to enable the non functioning GK3 Guitar/Mix/Synth switch with Boss GP-10.

allobytw

Thanks I have emailed buyer with this info .