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Hey all you Fender Strat owners out there! I have an observation I want to share with you to see how many may have experienced a similar occurrance on the neck of their Strat(s).
Last weekend I installed new pickups in my 2001 American Standard Strat. After closing her up and beginning to restring the guitar I notice a dull, yellowish substance on all the fret-wires just below the crown of the wire. Upon closer inspection with my handy jeweler's visor I use for intricate soldering work, I see what appears to be quite a bit of excessive glue on each side of every fret-wire on the neck. I run my thumbnail over it a few times and some of it flakes off in 1/8" - 1/2" chunks. It doesn't all come off so easy, so I use some 0000 super-fine steel wool on 'em and get 90% of the dried glue off the fret-wires after working on 'em for about an hour. I ended up doing what I believe to be a lot of fret-wire dressing that should've been done before it hit the market.
What's up with that? Anybody have the same issue? That's pretty lousy quality control at the Strat-factory if you ask me. After all, these guitars retail for over a $grand, and what would it take to wipe off any excess glue off the neck with a non-intrusive cleaner after applying the wires to the neck?
Could this affect the tone of the guitar in a small way, but nevertheless affect it? I would think it could since the guitar string is pressed against the wire when playing a note or chord, and if you have glue as a buffer logic would dictate a slightly less than true tone could be the result.
Or maybe I'm just getting nit-picky?
Any thoughts, people? I mean, everybody who's played a lot of guitars at this forum, whether Fender or Gibson, or whatever make of higher-end guitars has stated that you usually have to weed through a few to get to a good one. Could this be part of the reason of why that's neccessary?
-Bob
Last weekend I installed new pickups in my 2001 American Standard Strat. After closing her up and beginning to restring the guitar I notice a dull, yellowish substance on all the fret-wires just below the crown of the wire. Upon closer inspection with my handy jeweler's visor I use for intricate soldering work, I see what appears to be quite a bit of excessive glue on each side of every fret-wire on the neck. I run my thumbnail over it a few times and some of it flakes off in 1/8" - 1/2" chunks. It doesn't all come off so easy, so I use some 0000 super-fine steel wool on 'em and get 90% of the dried glue off the fret-wires after working on 'em for about an hour. I ended up doing what I believe to be a lot of fret-wire dressing that should've been done before it hit the market.
What's up with that? Anybody have the same issue? That's pretty lousy quality control at the Strat-factory if you ask me. After all, these guitars retail for over a $grand, and what would it take to wipe off any excess glue off the neck with a non-intrusive cleaner after applying the wires to the neck?
Could this affect the tone of the guitar in a small way, but nevertheless affect it? I would think it could since the guitar string is pressed against the wire when playing a note or chord, and if you have glue as a buffer logic would dictate a slightly less than true tone could be the result.
Or maybe I'm just getting nit-picky?
Any thoughts, people? I mean, everybody who's played a lot of guitars at this forum, whether Fender or Gibson, or whatever make of higher-end guitars has stated that you usually have to weed through a few to get to a good one. Could this be part of the reason of why that's neccessary?
-Bob
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