In an attempt to gain some genuine insight (as well as to stir up a discussion that no side can win), I am interested in how people use and get good sounds out of a Stratocaster...
I love a strat, for me they embody the epitome of guitar design, sleek and still look space age after all this time. All my favourite players played strats and coaxed amazing tones out of them.
BUT, I have had (genuinely no lie) more than 40 strats of various makes in the 35 years that I have been playing, 10 Fender USA, 7 Mex, 6 Squier and 11 MIJ Fender and a splattering of other makes (Gordon Smith, Greco, Aria etc). I lust after strats all the time but cannot make them work for me musically. I can make a telecaster work in almost every situation I am in, but not a strat (hence my building my own tele in a strat hardtail body). I always find the neck pickup too muddy, the bridge pickup too thin and shrill, so I stay on the middle pickup for the most part but keep catching it with my plectrum. I have tried out every make I could find on after market pickups and wiring looms to no avail.
The only strats I can get to work for me to some degree are single humbucker strats in the vein of EVH, when I play rock orientated stuff, but even that isn't really my style for the most part, they don't have the snap that I like.
I have had dozens of amps (a lot of different era Fenders to be fair, with some Roland, Peavey and Marshall) and effects units, preamps into PA, software amp modelling etc but always the same issues however I try to tweak it.
I feel like the strat is like the Emperor's New Clothes... so many players seem to love them and use them but they just don't work for me. I know that I am the common denominator here and it is something about my style and how I approach it, but really... what am I missing?