I have a question regarding pickups if you don't mine of course. I have a fender fat strat and I was looking on the fender web page and it said it had a "bridge position humbucking pickup" which I've heard isn't common on guitars. I was wondering what exactly this setup does which is different than a normal one. I've asked around and heard its for distortion but from your web page it appears you know more than the person I asked.

>> A bridge humbucker is only really uncommon in the sense that Fender Stratocasters have just about always used all single coil pickups, including at the bridge position.

In the 80's there were a large number of companies like Charvel/Jackson producing "super strats" which were hotted-up designs using the strat body shape and string length, but with sophisticated whammy bars, paint jobs, and hotted-up electronics. These designs just about always used a humbucker pickup in the bridge position.

Most humbuckers have the appearance of two single coil pickups placed side by side (sometimes placed under a cover), so it is a wider pickup. The easiest way to see the difference is to look at a Gibson Les Paul pickup, which is rectangular, and a traditional Fender Strat, which has thinner pickups with the 6 magnets showing.

There are other internal design differences, but the main difference for the player is the sound; here are some key features of each.

Single coil:
Bright, chunky, lots of character, conveys the natural sound of the guitar well, can sound thin clean, and a little "weedy" when overdriven hard. Picks up a lot of interference (hum, flouro lights, etc). Popular single coil sounds can be heard from Hendrix, Mark Knopfler, Buddy Guy, post-Cream Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn. Good for blues, rock'n'roll, nice for country on a Telecaster.

Humbucker:
Full, smooth, thick sounds. Can sound a little plain when used clean, but gives a really fat and creamy overdrive sound. Almost no interference. Popular humbucker sounds from Robben Ford, B B King, Slash, Santana. Good for rock and heavy sounds, nice for jazz on a semi-acoustic.

I think it makes a lot of sense to put a humbucker on a strat in the bridge position. It allows you to get the best of both worlds. It does not sound quite the same as a Gibson Les Paul bridge humbucker, because they are completely different guitars (different construction, woods, etc), but it will give you lot of practical versatility, and many players find the standard strat single coil pickup to be too sharp and brittle to be really useful (often because they add a little extra treble on their amps to give some extra bite to the neck and middle pickups).

The standard 5 way switch can be wired so that you can still get the in-between sounds at positions 2 and 4, even if you use a humbucker at the bridge and/or neck. See the circuit diagram showing how it's done.

Some of the new Fender Strat models now include a humbucker in the bridge position. I haven't used any of these new pickups, but I have read good reports on the Lone Star which uses two slightly hotter single coil pickups with a customised Seymour Duncan bridge humbucker.