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A Stratocaster with a Whammy bar...Jul 03 '01 (Updated Apr 25 '07) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Everybody should have one. Will probably end up being "one of your sounds" more so than being "your main sound", but it's a sound you need.
Seems to be a shortage of Stratocaster fans around here. I thought I'd write up a little bit about what every guitarist needs to know about the Strat. This guitar has been around a long time. In the late 40s, Leo Fender started making electric solid body guitars and basses, and they've been around ever since. The most famous of these instruments is the stratocaster. The body shape of the stratocaster has stayed relatively the same over the years. The headstock and neck shape have not. First, let me say that if you have a stratocaster made prior to 1970, you've probably got something worth some money. If you have one made prior to 1965, you've definitely got something worth some money. I'll be writing this from a player's perspective, though. There have been volumes written about the collectible aspect of the guitar. I'll leave that for a different article. The Stratocaster body is basically one or two flat pieces of wood. It has been routed out to allow the pickups to fit within the body. There is virtually always a pickguard (except for one or two mutant years of production.) The two flat pieces of wood are carved into a guitar shape with two "horns" cut in. It's probably the most famous shape for a guitar, the most imitated, and one of the more beautiful shapes. Then, there are two parts of the body that are contoured to fit the player's anatomy. There is a slight contour on the top middle portion of the body nearest to the player. That's so you won't have a sharp edge poking you in the ribs. There is also a contour right where the player's forearm would rest on the body. These are nice features, but frankly, only Fender does it and I don't know many folks who find other brands to feel uncomfortable. If anything, it just shows a level of artistry and craftsmanship. They tend not to have much effect on playability. Fender Strats have single coil pickups (generally.) These pickups are usually pretty noisy. They have what is called a "60 cycle hum" which they pick up from the electricity source here in the states. Gibson produces a pickup called a "humbucker". It is basically two single coil pickups, wired out of phase, so the hum cancels itself out. Generally, Fender is the only well-known manufacturer out there making professional quality instruments with single coil pickups. A common question when I used to teach was, "is this better? Is this worse?" The answer is, it depends. If you want a twangy, thin sound, this is the way to go. Now, my use of the words "twangy" and "thin" is not pejorative. Sometimes you WANT a twangy or thin sound. If you do, you need a Strat or Telecaster. Now, on to the neck: these necks are bolted on, versus glued in (or better yet, made from a single piece of wood that goes through the body.) This results in less sustain. Notes fade out faster. Again, this gives a Strat a distincitive sound. The neck on a Strat is thinner than you find with a lot of brands. I've always liked the feel. Nowadays, you have to look carefully at your Stratocaster before you buy. There are the American made Strats, and the Mexican made Strats. There are also the "Squier" strats out there. The fastest way to tell where your guitar was made is to check the serial number. If it starts with an "M", it was made in Mexico. The Strats made overseas are generally made with inferior materials. One may also argue that the workmanship is not as nice. The Stratocasters also have a traditional tremolo system that is just downright bad. Most players with the traditional trem system "block it off". That is, they remove the tremolo arm, and take a wedge-shaped piece of wood and stuff it into the Tremolo cavity in the back to keep the Tremolo from moving. Clapton's "Blackie" was an example of a guitar that used this technology. People ask, "why not just buy a hard-tail?" That is a variety of Strat without the tremolo system. You can do that, but it won't sound the same. The sound a guitar produces is a combination of a ton of factors. They all matter, and they all affect the sound. Having the routed out spring cavity in the back affects the sound. Having the springs, themselves, affects the sound. It's all important. I've heard a lot of people say that you can't play metal on a Strat. That may be true, if you want to sound just like somebody playing a PRS or Jackson. However, a guitar is a guitar. You can play metal on a Strat and it will have a distinct sound. Keep in mind that Hendrix played a Strat with single coil pickups. Now, with the pickups, you'll hear people mention that some pickups were "hand wound" or "machine wound". Basically, each pickup is supposed to have X number of copper wire loops wrapped around it. In the olden days, the hand wound pickups "sounded better" according to some players. Well… upon further analysis, there is basically no rhyme or reason to the hand-wound pickups. Sometimes they had 20 winds too many. Sometimes 20 winds too few. If you got lucky and you wanted a beefier sound, maybe the person working that day wound your pickups a few too many times, and you got a little more mid-section. (Brian May from Queen has single coil hand-wound pickups… to get more mids, he added a few wraps… he could do that, he made his guitar by hand.) Then, if you were unlucky, you had a neck position pickup with too few wraps and it sounded thin where you wanted it to sound rich. Oh, now for the pickups… there are three of them. Fender used to make a 3 position selector, so you could chose a pickup. Then, they saw tons of guitar players with electrical tape on the pickguard to hold the selector switch between the 1 and 2 pickup, or between the 2 and 3 pickup. Basically, those are the only positions I've found useful on a Strat: both 1 and 2, or both 2 and 3. And another trick: if you reverse polarity on the 2nd pickup, having it in a position of 2 and 3, or 1 and 2 cancels out some hum. (You're basically creating a very large humbucking pickup.) Today's Strats have a "middle RW/RP" pickup. What that means is the middle pickup is "reverse wound" and "reverse polarity". Huh? Okay, to elaborate, a Fender single-coil pickup has copper wire wrapped around pole magnets. "Reverse wound" means the copper is wound in the opposite direction of the other two pickups. "Reverse polarity" means the magnetism on the poles is the opposite of the other two pickups. If you do those two things and combine it with another pickup that ISN'T RW/RP, what you get is a humbucking pickup. It is very rare these days to find a 3 single coil pickup configuration that isn't middle RW/RP. Well, these days, even the Squiers have 5 position switches. Hmmm… other notes: on old Fenders, they have this really cool tuning head, where you cut off your string and stick it into a little hole in the midst of a slot cut into the head. Then, you don't have any sharp string-ends to snag your clothes. Of course, Fender stopped doing this by the 70s. Fender also made a lot of strange guitars in the 80s and 90s. Some have humbucking pickups. Basically, don't do it. You want a Strat for that 1&2, or 2&3 pickup sound, and if you have one humbucker, it won't blend with your single coil middle. Fender also sold some guitars with Floyd Rose type tremolo systems. Functional, yes, but they aren't as collectible, since they don't look like a strat. My particular model of Strat had Lace Sensor pickups. It also has locking tuners and a roller nut. Why? Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you why you shouldn't use the whammy bar. If you use it for anything other than subtle vibrato, it'll put your guitar out of tune in a big way. In the old days, players would compensate by using it, then giving the strings a tiny little tug to get them back into tune. The roller nut / locking tuner thing was designed to combat this issue. It works reasonably well, but you can't wail on it like you can a Floyd Rose. I bought a Floyd Equipped Kramer the day I went into a music store, formed a "a" chord, dive-bombed it until the magnets grabbed the strings, then brought it back and it was in perfect tune. So, if you're part of a hair-metal tribute act, the standard Strat is probably not your guitar. Lastly, as I pointed out, the neck on a Strat is bolted on. Because of variations of this or that, the bolted-on position is not always properly aligned with the guitar body. To compensate, your guitar tech will stuff shims between the neck and body to tilt it this way and that. Don't be alarmed. The older the strat, the more likely that it's been shimmed. However, recently, Fender introduced a "micro tilt" feature, where you can adjust neck tilt with an allen wrench. It allows for more subtle variations than shimming. I think this is a nice feature. At the opposite end of the spectrum, during the CBS years, Fender went from it's "4 bolt neck" to a "3 bolt neck". That's the sort of decision only a bunch of corporate boneheads like the dorks at CBS could make. They saved about 6 cents per unit, and ended up with a guitar that was going to sustain even LESS, would be harder to shim, and just frankly, exuded, "Look at me, I'm trying to be the cheapest thing I can and still be a strat!" (These same dorks integrated the input jack onto the pickguard one year, in what is probably the silliest piece of cost-savings ever conceptualized. Memo to self: never let an industrial engineer determine what a guitar needs or doesn't need.) Overall, the Strat is a reasonably versatile guitar. It is affordable. (In fact, you can start out on a Squier… I see them for $100. Progress to a Mexican Strat for $250, and work your way up to that American Stratocaster, eventually.) It gives you a sound you should learn to work with. It's a professional quality instrument at a very reasonable price. It's not a guitar you'll regret owning.  |
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