My ’96 Deluxe Strat Plus came with the Red Bridge, Silver Middle, & Blue Neck Fender Lace Sensor pickups. Although very quiet, the Red FLS is more like an over wound Humbucker which is great for massive distortion while the Blue is more of a P90 sound. Also, the “quack” tones on pos 2 & 4 is not very apparent. After having played a friend’s Strat Plus with 3 Gold FLS I found the neck and mid had excellent Strat tone and response but the bridge was a little week. So, I moved my Silver FLS to the Bridge (7.1k Ohms, 3.38 Henries, 3000 Hz peak frequency, fat 70s single coil sound and increased output with punchier midrange) and added two Gold FLS (5.8k Ohms, 2.4 Henries, 3600 Hz peak frequency, classic 50's style single coil with bell-like sound) in the Neck/Mid positions that I got from MF. That solved the Humbucker/P90 issue and now the tone is very similar to the CS54 Single Coils both in specs and tone but without all the hum. Now the “quack” tone on 2 & 4 are classic Fender. Keep in mind these are not true noiseless but the overall hum is super-reduced without taking the life out of the pickups. Lace Sensors are the only true noise reducing single coil currently available. Holy Grail, Noiseless, SCN, Kinman, Virtual Vintage, Area 58 etc are all dual coil Humbucker designs and that is why they do not sound like true single coils. Also, per Jeff Lace, there is no difference between Fender Lace Sensors and Lace Sensors other than the embossed logo. As mentioned in another review, these will definitely sound best with the TBX (Treble-Bass-eXpander) tone control. The TBX came standard with the Strat Plus series. However, to get the most out of the TBX you MUST change the resistor and rewire it per the instructions detailed on the Blue Guitar website. The links are http://www.blueguitar.org/new/schem/_gtr/tbx-mods_and_details.pdf for the wiring details and http://www.blueguitar.org/new/schem/_gtr/tbx_poop.txt to explain why the mod is needed. This mod cost less than .99 from RS and replaces the 82k Ohm tone-sucking series resistor to 120k Ohm parallel resistor which allows the TBX to work flawlessly with passive pickups from 0 to 10 with no dropouts. It’s a very simple mod that make your Sensor loaded Strat sound how it should with little to no 60 cycle hum.

I own several 92 strat plus guitars equipped with gold lace sensor pups. They offer a bell like tone with shimmering fluid mids and whistleling treble. They have a weaker bass tone response then the blue or red sensors but deliver the strat quack in or out of phase. If you are looking for a fatter sound out of your single coil pup equipped strat check out the blue or red lace sensors. For great versatility I play my 91 deluxe plus strat equipped with red lace bridge, blue lace middle and silver lace neck pups.

These things will sound GREAT if you use a Fender TBX tone pot, as was equipped on the Strat plus, and horrible without one. With the right pot you can get a great Strat tone, or even roll it down to get something more warm and muddy. Without that pot: bland, sterile and always muddy. It explains a lot.

Bear in mind, these are NOT noiseless pickups. They are low-noise single coils, that with the right electronics setup will give you a good single-coil twang, great sustain due to low magnetic pull, and uniform volume levels during string bends. But there is still a little noise to live with.

Overall, these are great pickups and well worth the money. I'm considering replacing my 1997 stock Fender single coils. And I'll be sure to use TBX tone pots.

I put a red lace in my strat...AWESOME it sounds perfect clean, and perfect distorted. The best pickup I've ever used. If you want to hear what one sounds like check out my band. candiapplestheband

I put a silver(neck), blue(middle), & a red(bridge)into a standard strat MIM as a little experiment. I don't know anyone who likes stock factory strat pups. I always disliked the weak bottom end. The Lace pups are quiet, well defined, and they give you a compressed sound. However, the red version is hot and works very well with Boss metal zone. For most of the distortion leads I record, I use the middle and bridge combination with the both tone pots set at 5 or slightly less. This is then run through a Boss compressor-Boss volume pedal-Ibanez Tube Screamer-DOD Flanger-Boss DD6 delay-Marshall Chorus- (clean)Marshall 100 Stack with presence set slightly less than half. example of sound: "Layla". You won't have to push the amp very hard. I have recorded with this guitar without any other mods for the last 5 years. Hope this helps.