Hughie Thomasson's (Outlaws, Skynard) Strat

[Deaf Eddie]

I recently had a few questions posed to me about Hughie Thomasson's Strat. He's not a player I have personally listen to much, but after putting the ear to a few examples that were sent to me, I must admit he's a smokin' picker. He gets some cool and very unusual tones out of his Strat, and the question was, basically, "HOW?!?"

After some research and a little gray-matter exercise, I have my best guess. I'm posting it here in the hopes that SOMEONE will have better info and correct me - or confirm my ASSumptions.

1. In interviews he sez his Strat has a Tele bridge, but I think perhaps he's not a gear-head, or is just a bit inarticulate. It's actually a STOCK hardtail Strat, with the stock string-through bridge, SIMILAR to a Tele.

2. The mid pup is controlled by an on/off rotary switch in the middle control spot, with the lower tone pot wired as a master tone (a grand conjecture on my part, based on some more of the text from the above-mentioned interview and watching a video).

3. He PROBABLY has a 3-way pup selector (not a 5-way) wired like a Tele, running just the bridge and neck pups (this is the grandest conjecture on my part).

#2 and #3 would account for both the Tele-ish bridge/neck combo tone that he uses a lot of the time, and the "superquack" all-three-parallel tone that he pulls out on occasion.

I am aware that he also uses a "StratoBlaster," but I don't think this accounts for the unusual tone of the pup combos he often uses.

OK, now, fans - who out there REALLY knows what's going on with his axe?