Hey!! (+ any strat players please read)

Hey all, good to be back....you may have noticed I've made a couple of odd posts lately but I thought I'd let you know I'm having a cool time at uni and feeling great to be alive :cool: Last night I played guitar infront of an audience for the first time in over 3 years and hell have I missed it! It was just an open-stage nite, so I got myself the first drummer I could find, hammered out some zepp riffs and improvised loads......such fun! (although class with a hangover this morning wasn't so cool :D

Anyway, to the point, If anyone here plays a strat, I wanna know about your gear coz I'm seriously considering selling off some of my beginner-gear like my squire and practice amp and replacing them with a quality strat. As my budget isn't infinite I looked at some of the mexican models in the local guitar store, (which is a gift from God....it's got so much cool stuff! I have to force myself not to get my credit card out every time I walk in), and they play quite well on the surface, how reliable are they? Good value for money?

I find the maple fretboards suit me best on starts but have heard people say that they have a habit of making the strings stick.....any truth there? Plus I'm not sure about the tuning stability, my style has a lot of string bending and I'm a bit heavy handed on vibrato.....worth sticking with standard strat machine heads or does anyone use a different make with their strat?

If you want to know the kind of tone I'm looking for I'm into the sort of sounds Robben Ford and Eric Johnson get from strats.

Anyway, time to catch up on my sleep. Cya, Chacron.

I have 3 strats, one RW (in the UK), a USA made MN and a Texmex MN California strat. All three are fantastic and very different from each other. I would really recommend not thinking too much about where the axe was made and go for feel. There are some really naff USA and Mex / texmex strats out there so the trick is, get a good one. If you do it will last forever !
Id seriously advise checking them out, second hand you can get a really nice axe for about 500 bucks
Happy hunting dude
S

As a guy who used to play nothing but American Teles and strats, I got my hands on an old Japanese strat, one of the first ones. Its a beauty and I love it. I got it for 200 bucks and I feel fortunate to own it. As the previous poster said, don't worry about where it was made. Play it and if it feels good and gives you the sound you want then that is all that matters. I find that new guitars are kind of like new shoes. They take awhile to feel good. I played a few of the mexican strats in the stores and the necks on them felt good. Although bending the strings it did feel kind of rough. Not smooth at all

I have a mexi strat, an it plays beautifully. The only thing i would mention is the tuning does go out fairly easily. Its better than some other guitars i've tried, which can go out as soon as you touch them, but they're alll beginner-type strat copies similar to the squier, and like you, i'm a very bend/heavy vibrato orientated player. If i were you i'd get a mexi strat and get locking nuts for it, and a floyd rose if you're into that:D...thats what i plan on doing.

Try the Gibson Les Paul Double Cutaway Plus, i got mine for $1090, its better than any strat you'll ever play.

Thanks for the advice all, much appreciated. I'm still hunting around, and I might finally be getting rid of my beginner-gear that sits back home doing nothing.....I'm lucky enough to have a friend who's a beginner guitarist.

Originally posted by Incidents Happen
Try the Gibson Les Paul Double Cutaway Plus, i got mine for $1090, its better than any strat you'll ever play.

LOL....well congrats on your new guitar, enjoy it. I've played a couple of Gibson cutaways and they are really nice, but I already play a Les Paul which for all its cool doesn't have the same feel as a strat....whenever I pick one up different things tend to happen to my playing.

Originally posted by stratman42
If i were you i'd get a mexi strat and get locking nuts for it, and a floyd rose if you're into that...thats what i plan on doing.

Yeah, I'm into the Floyd Rose locking systems....I love Ibanez guitars too.....if I put one on a strat though I'll have a luthier do it for me....I saw an American strat going secondhand recently and the value was reduced because it's previous owner ****ed it up by doing a DIY Floyd-Rose job....it was a real joke.

Jazzmasters I've never tried at all....thats a new one to look at.

terryf1960 has it right. I had a Jap-Strat 1962 Re-issue that was probably the best -dounding Strat I've ever played. Especially after I pulled off that tremolo and filled the hole with a brass block.

Lord's got a point, if what you do is lots of string bending and vibrato, but not any tremelo arm stuff, the best solution to tuning (and a good tone ijection) would be to ditch the tremelo and stuff it full of wood or brass or whatever. The other thing is that you should look at getting something like those graphtech saddles, and a new nut. A small investment like that will do wonders to a guitar fitted with stock equipment that is generally not nearly as goood as specialist stuff.

Fender used to make a Floyd Rose strat (don't know if they still do but I'm sure you can find one used somewhere). It has the Floyd Rose locking tremelo, 2 single coils and a humbucker in the bridge position. I bought one at a second hand store in the early 90's for 2 hundred bucks, it was a japaneese model. I fell in love w/it and it was my main guitar for 3-4yrs. I finally had to retire it cause it was to worn out and the repairs it needed were more then the guitar was worth.(fret job, faulty electronics, bridge saddles stripped). Its still sitting in my closet, I pull it out and let the kids beat on it every now and then. There's a certian tone you get out of a Fender strat that just can't be reproduced by any other brand.

You might want to consider the Carvin "bolt" model. All Carvin electrics are made in the US. The base price is near the same of the Mex/Jap strats, and the quality is much higher. That and the flexability of any pickup configuration you can think of, its easy to see the value here. I currenty have one of these in my guitar stable, and I also have an American Strat(the see through blonde/w ash body). I prefer the Carvin solely because of the tonal versatility. It has 3 twin blade dual/sing switchable single coil sized humbuckers instead of only single coils.
Good luck on your quest...

I got a mex fat strat and i think its a really solid axe. Sure it doesnt beat the gibson :) but its also less then half the price! As far as the difference between the mex and epiphone gibson les pauls, the standard fender sounded much better, and yet i like gibson les pauls better so figure that out! I assume its the fact that mid to low level guitars have less consistency with them. As far as tunning, i play rock about 12 hours a week and tune once per week or weeks...but like i said, you may get one where its a different story. I also think that the maple neck is faster, cuz i have a rosewood and ive tried both, but its deffinity not a big deal to me at least.

try em out but i think its a safe bet

Thanks for the warmoth thing, I've killed plently of time looking through all the stuff. Looking through that page brought the different types of wood to attention....what woods do all you guys have your strats carved out of? I heard a mahogany-body strat with Seymore Duncan pickups played recently and the sound was just awesome!

My thought now is to fit S.D single coils to a Mex Strat....although Fender.com has nothing on the Mex models so I don't know what the bodies are made from...I'm guessing Alder as thats the standard strat-body wood.....anyone know for sure?

Still can't get hold of a Jazzmaster to try :mad:

actually they do have plenty of stuff on the mex models. The problem is that the real name of the mex models is STANDARD FENDER STRATOCASTER, not mexican stratocaster. The body of a STANDARD strat is made of popular, which is what they originally made strats from in the begining. The american is made of mahogonay or ash, but mostly ash, not sure about mahogonay though. Unfortinitly squire is made out of plastic i think :) and too me feels awful. You can feel a diference between the american and standard of course,as the american has better sustain, faster fretboard, better pickup sounds and vibrations resinate trough the body better. However the standard is good at all the above just not as good (and $1000 cheaper).

Yeh, sorry...i did actually mean get a proper guy to do it...i'd never consider trying a stunt like that myself. The fender floyd rose strat i've played is the ritchie sambora signature...it plays faster than a normal mexi (and yes, it is a mexi).

My gibson sounds a little weird through my Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb, but very good to my Solid state amp. Obviously the sound quality is better on the FDR, but i've had to change the settings i normally have it at since i replaced my Strat, since your getting a totally different sound.

What really inspired me to get a strat was indeed the sound through an amp - My friends Marshall Valvestate. (I also have one.) I plugged his Mex Strat into it, yanked the gain up a bit and was instantly in love with the sound.

That and I thought it was easier to play than my own LP.....lol there's a thought for anyone who remembers my post about strats being a harder to use. I now feel likes its almost the other way round, I put it down to having a cutaway at the back and a very the LP having that raised bridge....the strings on the start were at a different angle to my body, making it easier to do fast picking and the pinch/natural harmonics sounded better.

Dug out an old issue of Guitarist last night to look at the Jag/jazzmaster reviews. They agreed about the pickups on the Jag - squeely and hard to control. Gave me the idea of installing on/off switches for the pickups on a strat...maybe by pulling the tone dials like Page did on his favourite LP.

Thought I'd let everyone who contributed to this post know I eventually chose the Mex strat with the maple fretboard. At the moments its got three single coil Fender pickups, the S.Ds I want can come later...spent enough cash for now....got the strat at a slightly lower price of £389....dont ask me that in dollars...i think its about $550, maybe less....

But anyway, its the best guitar i've ever owned :D it has a fantastic range of tone....I wore my fingers to shreds last night playing it and comparing it to my les paul....which also has a great range, but on the clean sound I find the strat a much more versatile and satisfying guitar....and on distortion its quite a challenge to play the solos I'm used to doing on the Epi and getting a good tone...the sustain is slightly shorter on the strat, which I had expected, so I'm now working harder to get that tone, its definitely worth the work. Pinch harmonics sound much better and alternate/tremelo picking feels a darn site more comfortable too.

The one thing I'm not happy with is the tremolo setup....I either have to let my playing adjust or alter the way the springs are set up.....what does everyone else do with theirs? What I'm looking for is a good, controlled melodic bending action and the facilities to do wacky effects with the tremolo, like Hendrix, Blackmore, Vai...etc.