Fender Stratocaster Review

Fender Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar

The Fender Stratocaster is one of the few and proud electric guitars that have stood the test of time in the American marketplace among professional and amateur musicians alike. The only other vintage guitar that can boast such a long and illustrious pedigree is the Gibson Les Paul, but that is the subject of another review.

Since 1946, Fender has produced electric guitars, the first was the Broadcaster, the forerunner of today’s Telecaster, Dave Davies of "The Kinks" played a ‘48 Broadcaster on the smash hit "You Really Got Me", which still receives wide airplay. The Broadcaster’s name was soon changed to Telecaster because of a trademark conflict.

The Stratocaster was designed in the year of my birth, 1953, with the first units shipping in 1954. In the ensuing nearly five decades the guitar has been imitated more than any other. First, the country and western swing players and rockabilly singers, most notably the ill-fated young Charles Hardin "Buddy" Holly discovered the unique sounds available only from the "Strat". Buddy Holly’s sound has aged well. His hits have a contemporary sound that sounds like they were produced yesterday, even though they are 50 years old!

The advanced solid state electronics available today unquestionably allow a wider degree of tonal variation than was formerly possible using strictly electrical amplification and physical manipulation, but the Fender Stratocaster has the biting, snarling, nasal, out-of-phase tone and playability demanded to make the most of the guitarist’s ability and to stretch the bounds of the creativity of even the most demanding musician.

Perhaps the best proponent of the Stratocaster sound was rock guitar sensation Jimi Hendrix. Seattle-born Jimi Hendrix was truly a shooting star, beginning his public career as a side man for Little Richard, going solo as the warm-up band for "The Monkees", and making his smash as an "English import" with his renowned "Jimi Hendrix Experience". Less than three years from his dynamic entry on the entertainment scene, Jimi was dead of a drug overdose.

Including Noel Redding on Bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, the rhythm section of "the Experience" gave Jimi a stable musical platform on which to build his complex soaring rhythms, singing choruses, and biting and stinging, snarling leads, crying crescendoes, indescribable outer space, underwater sounds seldom repeated and never surpassed to this day -- all on a standard Fender Stratocaster.

Here are the specs on a typical "Strat":

• contoured hardwood body
• maple neck
• die-cast machine heads;
• rosewood or maple fingerboard
• 21 frets
• 3 single-coil pickups
• 5-way pickup switching
• 1 volume, 2 tone controls
• triple-ply white/black/white pickguard
• fulcrum tremolo.

My current "Strat" is a 2000 model and is very comfortable to play with its contoured body. The contour keeps the guitar from digging into your ribs as a conventionally shaped one usually does.

The three pickups and five-way switching provide an almost limitless palette of sounds to color your music. The sound that is most typically associated as "Fender" is that in which the switch is in the 2nd and 4th positions. In those positions it is providing an out-of-phase signal between the lead and either neck or center pickup, respectively. The opposing tones cancel each other out, providing a mid range of hollowly reverberating tones very characteristic of the Strat and heard on hundreds of the hottest cuts in modern music. The other familiar tone is the biting sound of the single-coil lead (bridge) pickup. When you hear that high, cutting, bright soaring treble, you are most likely hearing a "Strat", played full out.

The other unique feature I wish to describe is the tremolo, engineered by inventor Leo Fender and responsible for some of the dips and dives associated with hot guitarists like Jeff Beck, Johnny Winter, Eddie Van Halen, and Joe Perry, of Aerosmith.

The tremolo consists of a heavy block through which the ball ends of the strings pass before they go over the individually adjustable string saddles of the bridge. The bridge is attached to this block which is in a hollow of the body. The tremolo arm also screws into this block and is used to physically manipulate the string tension during play. Although some prefer to add an aftermarket tremolo to their guitar, I have always found the Fender to be satisfactory in every way, always returning the guitar to tune. Some earlier models in the 60s and 70s had quality control problems that caused them to go out of tune. They were mostly made during the CBS period of Fender ownership. Fortunately, those guitars are a thing of the past.

I would recommend the Stratocaster to anybody serious enough to want to play without having to blame their equipment! A Stratocaster will give you the room to grow into the best player you can be. All you have to do is put in the time.