Starcaster Frankenstein?

While the 70's ear Starcaster was a semi-hollow body Fender that resembled the Gibson 335, since you say this guitar has a HSS pickup configuration, I am guessing that you mean the new Starcaster, which is a budget instrument sold through Best Buy, Target and other big retailers. If so, this guitar is essentially a Stratocaster. That means that there are hundred of parts available to customize it. For others considering this kind of guitar, I recomment they check out some of the excellent entry level guitars offered through Rondo Music. Those Korean-made instruments are an excellent value and offer better build quality for about the same price.

For your Starcaster, I would suggest looking at the Guitar Fetish web site (do a search on GFS pickups). They have some great pickups at about half the price of Duncan or Dimarzio plus bridges, tuners and pickguards at good prices.

With the mods you have already done, the Starcaster should sound less like a Fender (with single coil pickups) and more like a serious rocker. 14.7k is a pretty hot bridge pickup and the 10k humbucking neck pickup is warm too. The little '59 is designer to sound like a Gibson PAF, rather than a single coil.

You might want to check the value of your volume and tone control pots. Single coil pickups traditionally are matched with 250k ohm pots to bleed off a little of the high end. Humbuckers usually are mated to 500k pots to preserve more of the highs. If you decide to change the pots, you might also want to try a nice polyester film capacitor on the tone control, to replace the ceramic one used by the factory. This is one mod that is cheap (less than a buck) but makes a big difference.

I don't know what value pots the factory would use in this guitar, but it should be marked on them somewhere. If not, meter across the 2 outside contacts of the pots to find the value. The middle contact is the wiper.

The middle pickup, in this configuration, is not used very much by itself. It mainly provides the snarky/quacky tones in switch positions 2 and 4, when it is combined with the neck to bridge pickups. So, the factory installed pickup maybe just fine for that use. You may have to adjust the height of the middle pup, while listening to position 2 or 4 to get the right blend. The new pups are much hotter than the old ones, so the middle pup will probably need to be moved closer to the strings.

If if does not blend very well (it probably uses a ceramic magnet), you might try their cool vintage blade pickup or one of the Neovin middle pickups, to better blend with humbuckers (both of these are humbuckers made to look like a single coil unit). Maybe something between 8-10k.

Hi Drew Duncan

I noticed that from the middle pup, each string has a corresponding bar from the Pup that has a different level than the other string's corresponding bar.

Sorry for the delay in response, I was working

Thanks DREW...

I question comes to mind while all this is happening.  The height of the poles of magnets are elevated to compensate for 1. the radius of the fretboard and 2. the thickness of the strings.
Will the height somehow get in the way when the guitar strings are strummed esp if the mid PUP has its poles of magnet elevated. 

I am sorry but my background is classical guitar.  Sometimes the guitar note or set of note is played fortissimo.

But do you get what I mean?  Sorry for sounding naive.

thats another reason why I will change the mid pup to prob a hot rail type or a flat pup.

Drew

If you show me how to post pics on this forum, I'll show you whats been done.

Tuners could be the problem, or it could be the tremolo bridge. I have to stick with hard-tail guitars because my picking hand always bumps the bridge on a whammy-bar guitar and messes up the tuning.

GFS, Stewmac and others have some good quality locking tuners for not a lot of cash. The Gotoh ones are pretty good I hear.

You could try blocking the bridge, like Clapton, by putting a little block of wood in behind the trem block, so it doesn't move. Friction and spring force will hold it in place. Play it like that for a while to see if it stays in tune better. If not, it is easy to remove. If it does help keep the guitar in tune, you might look into a Trem-Lock - a little gizmo that replaces one of the trem springs and lets you lock the position of the bridge.

I am not saying that you need to replace the bridge. It might be fine. In fact, if you replace it with another model that fits in the same hole, it will work in the same way and have the same issues. The 2-bolt bridge, like the one on your guitar is generally better than the 6 screw vintage-style trem bridge on many strat-style guitars. Lots of people play them with no problem. I have trouble with them because I use a lot of palm muting and rest my picking hand on the bridge.

So, I am not trying to say to replace the bridge, but you may want to see if it contributes to the tuning problem by blocking it for an hour or so, to see if that helps. If so, there may be a bridge problem, if not, it is probably the tuners.