These Strats have three single coiled pickups, and a trem system. Its not a locking trem, so its going to go out of tune if you use it a lot. The pickups can produce a fair bit of hum, but usually its only when you take your fingers off the strings. -A word about the "hum" thing... back in the late 80's & into the 90's eliminating hum was all the rave, and Fender even came out with a specialized "single coil" pickup (Lace Sensor or something like that) that eliminated hum and was supposed to be THE greatest thing ever... throw your single coil pickups in the trash, the future is here! Everyone was going to rack effect units too, and old BOSS stomp boxes were going for a fortune on ebay. Well, few years later, everyone's back to stomp boxes, and single coils are once again the mainstay for Strats, so don't worry about it. Seems like it was more fashion than anything else.
Once you've tried out some Standard Strats, you can look at some others and see if you like them. Probably the single most important "non-standard" feature that might interest you is the HSS models that essentially have a "humbucking" pickup in the bridge position. This can give the guitar a fuller, "meatier" sound, and also a hotter signal that drives the amp a bit more, BUT, it also means you don't have a single coil in the bridge position. As a Strat player, I'd say that's pretty significant, because you'll see a lot of dedicated Strat players use the Standard, single-coil bridge position almost exclusively. Its just a very bright, distinctive tone that has that "Strat" sound. So keep that in mind.
Happy shopping!
