Cons: Required a few minor modifications (the closest thing to a "con" I see).
The Bottom Line: The Stratocaster is a truly classic and unique instrument with a distinctive sound. Other guitars excel for certain styles, but overall, this is my one perfect guitar.
toby_baldwin's Full Review: Fender Standard Stratocaster Maple with Gigbag
It was March 1999, and my wife was days away from having our first baby. She had all but quit her job in preparation, and money was extremely tight. So I knew she would freak when I came home and told her I'd put a new guitar on layaway. But I also knew that when she saw how I felt about the guitar, she'd want to help me find a way to pay it off.
(Laura...you're the best!)
The guitar, which did come off of layaway a few months later, was a black 1996 (with the Fender 50th Anniversary sticker on the back of the head) Fender American Standard Stratocaster. The reason it was still hanging around the store (King's Music in Rio Rancho, just north of Albuquerque, N.M.) was that someone had knocked a guitar from its wall rack in the store, and about half a dozen guitars had hit the deck. Mine sustained a few gouges on the back, and one of the tuning pegs was slightly bent. It still played perfect, and for $489.00 (complete with hardshell case), it was a steal.
The action of the guitar is perfect if you use .009 guage strings. If you used anything heavier it made the tremolo lean too far forward, and the action was too high (.010s felt like .012s). I finally got fed up with the bending of one string causing the double-stopped ones to go out of tune while playing the blues, and I blocked the tremolo with some nuts (as in nuts and bolts) last week. I've blocked other trems before; all you do is open the back, put on the whammy bar, and use the bar to move the tremolo into a level position. Then press in metal nuts or something else (I trimmed a block of wood for one of my guitars; for another I used a broken-off piece of a pencil!) that fits snugly into the gap on both sides of the tremolo. After that your double-stop detuning problem is gone. The potential down side is that you will no longer have the use of your whammy bar; that wasn't a big deal for me, since I never got around to using it anyway.
The other modification I made was to replace the bridge pickup. The stock pickup (this was before Fender invented noiseless single coils and made them standard on the Strat) buzzed like crazy and sounded nasty when overdriven. I put in a Seymour Duncan JB Junior. The sound was great, but the output was so high that it was ridiculously out of balance with the two single coils. Later my friend Sam gave me a Fender Vintage Noiseless pickup he'd taken out of a 2000 Strat, and I, in a fit of daring, soldered it in to try in place of the JB. To my surprise, I got the wiring right despite having no instructions, and the pickup is great for both distortion and clean.
A few words about tone. I think Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits gets some of the best guitar tone I've ever heard. Other greats include Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, and Jeff Beck. I am mostly a lead guitar player, and I especially enjoy playing melodic leads and fills in slow songs and blues leads in fast numbers. A Fender Strat is ideal for getting my kinds of sounds. If you're wanting to sound like Slash or Mark Tremonti from Creed or any metal player, try a Gibson or Paul Reid Smith, etc. The single-coil Fender sound is more for blues, classic rock, surf, rockabilly, country, and works great for church and alternative rock. It isn't made for metal, though some have used it that way.
I play my Strat through an early 1980s Fender Deluxe Reverb II tube amplifier. For effects and distortion I currently use a Digitech RP2000 (I have used a Line 6 POD also--its preset distortions were better than the Digitech, but I didn't like the effects, and the Digitech has great distortion tones if you do mess around until you find them). I have played on the worship team in my last three churches, all of which have used a modern, upbeat style of music, and the Strat is perfect for it. It stays in tune better than any guitar I've had (my last main axe was an Epiphone Sheraton II, and though I loved its fat sound, I couldn't get rid of a tuning problem with the "G"), it has a stylish but not garish look, and its compact size makes it easy to maneuver with--plus it doesn't wear out your shoulder like a Les Paul does. I also used the guitar for a thrown-together band to playin a blues competition here in San Angelo--my friends and I actually came in second, thanks in large part to Sam, who can sing and play the blues better than any other musician I've had the pleasure to jam with (think: Korean-looking SRV!).
I realize that each guitar is different, and I've only owned this one American Standard Strat. I started 12 years ago on a Matao strat copy, moved on to a Squier Japanese Strat (great guitar), then, respectively, an Ibanez (660, I think), a stripped-down Les Paul, an American Telecaster, a Hohner headless, another Squier strat (modified), a Hohner strat copy, the Epiphone Sheraton (like a Gibson ES-335), and finally my Strat. I've tried out countless other guitars, but nothing has ever felt as good in my hands nor sounded as perfect to my ears as my beloved Strat.
The neck has a polished maple back and rosewood top, and my hands glide across it easily. When I use .009s, it is an extremely fast-actioned instrument, and easy to use for leads. The frets are just the right size; not so small they cramp up my hands, but small enough to navigate quickly. With the blocked tremolo, the other strings stay in tune even if one breaks (which is extremely rare anyway). Replacing strings and tuning are infinitely easier than with any guitar that uses a Floyd Rose or similar tremolo system.
Provided you like the Fender sound, which I happen to love, this is perfect for every live and recording situation, and excels in just about every style of music (hard core possibly excepted). I prefer my Strat blocked (as mentioned before; Clapton does the same thing) and with a no-buzz pickup in the bridge. With those two minor modifications, I think the Stratocaster is as close to a perfect guitar as I will ever find. I highly recommend you check this classic out and see if it's for you.
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