Yngwie Malmsteen reveals the one spec of certain Stratocasters he's not a fan of

Yngwie Malmsteen may have a signature Fender Stratocaster and be synonymous with his 'Duck' guitar. However, in a new interview with Guitarist, he reveals that he's not a huge fan of Strat pickups.

“When I was seven or eight years old, I bought a ‘Strat’, but it wasn’t a Fender; it was a bogus copy. But it was exact, you know?” he says.

“And the first thing I noticed was that I hated the pickups. So I went to the music store and they sold me something called a Fat Strat pickup, which was still a single coil, and it sounded way better.”

Despite moving on to Fender Strats proper, Malmsteen admits he still isn't a fan of some of their pickups: “That was the one and only thing I found with Strats that I don’t like: the pickups. I think they’re awful. But that’s just me.

“Because you’ll hear Hendrix and you hear all these other guys, and they sound great with them. I mean, my playing style is… different because it’s not only the blues, it’s more linear and I just play a very different style than most guitar players do. Other than that, man, fuck, the Strat is amazing.”

Malmsteen is partial to CBS-era Strats, however. “What people don’t understand about Strats is that Leo Fender sold the company to CBS in 1965, but it stayed at the same factory for another decade,” he said in a recent interview with Guitar World.

“So any Strat built up until 1975 will actually be really good. It started going downhill around the late '70s. People think '70s Fenders are bad, but that’s not actually correct.”

Given his preference, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Malmsteen has his own signature Strat pickups with Seymour Duncan that promise to “deliver The Fury”.

For more new interviews celebrating 70 years of the Fender Strat, pick up issue 511 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.