Fender Vg Stratocaster Review

Overall 3.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

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Notz
Saint Joseph, MO

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Fender's VG (very gone) Strat has left the building

a guitarist for 38 years

Pros

Nice color...

Cons

Sub-Par Strat Quality

OCT

2007

Saw the demo vid, played one at the music store, liked it well enough to buy, but after a week I returned it. For me, it’s just a novelty guitar for sitting around @ home playing. There is a tiny bit of absolute silence when switching between active settings; cannot tolerate this. A slight electric pop sound also occurs. The active strat sound sux (imo). Sounds like the tone knob turned down, or rather like a slightly compressed (fake) sound. Switching back & forth between non-active strat & active strat while sustaining any cord reveals this. Since one of the active guitar modes are required to use the multi-tuning/12 string mode knob, it’s downhill from there if you want a real strat sound too

The Tele sound is much more accurate than the humbucking, which only slightly leans towards a humbucker. Roland should’ve taken notes on how PRS effectively does Fender/Gibson sounds w/o a battery. Also, the non-active strat sound from the pickups aren’t as “strat sounding” as other regular strats I’ve played.

The neck is ok, but feels inferior to other American strats, & with less sustain too. My feeling is that Fender’s most expensive factory strat should not be inferior (neck, bridge, nut, tuners,pickups) in any way to their less expensive strats. It appears they shaved off some quality to help compensate for the Roland cost, & it shows. It’s not a bad neck, mind you, just not as good as say the American Standard or Deluxe models.

They advertise battery life to be 8-10 hours, but from the store they lasted only 3-4, as with Duracell rechargables too. So no, I’m not about to wear out the input jack unplugging it every time I put it down (just imagine over the years how many times you’d be doing this than w/o the battery), let alone the hassle. And the fiber optic strength blue light battery indicator is just plain hokey.

Nope, yesterday I brought home an American Deluxe Ash Strat, & it far exceeds the VG in every “non-active” way; Many differences too (Locking tuners, better neck, better sustain, push in tremolo bar,better pickups, & strap locks), so for me the VG Strat stands for Very Gone Strat, which it has done…