Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

[eclecticsynergy]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

My '63, no contest. Certainly the best I ever had, maybe the best I ever held. Not super collectible (refinished and refretted before '82 when I got her) yet so lively and sweet I can't help but smile just thinking about it. Never owned a 50s vintage Strat, but over the years two of my bandmates have had original '62s and I like the '63 better than those. There's just something very special about her character, a real personality. I've got a '69 that plays really nicely but the tone isn't nearly as rich or complex. It's got a bit more chime but a lot less wood-and-wire magic. For me, Lady Bleu is close to perfection.

I went pro in '75 and have a pretty good-sized herd of guitars. Among the electrics there are many that I love & would miss, but only three that I'd never, ever consider parting with. This Strat is one of them.

 

[Boogie Bill]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

.... It's inspiring!

(from MKIII Renegade)

THIS!!!

The BEST Strat...the best GUITAR....is the one that inspires you to play more, learn more...and make great music!

Bill

 

[daan]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Ok so I'm weird... When I first started, my parents rented me a guitar, a white hardtail start with a maple neck and black pickguard. Total 70's 3-bolt "low period" Strat, nobody but me would want one like it. I remember them paying $50-60 a month or so to rent it for my lessons, "until you get your own", and at the end of the term, they could have bought it for $300. "wWe aren't paying THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a guitar!" So I ended up with a Hondo, for about half as much. I've always wanted another one like it but the last time I saw one, it was $2000... Yikes. I've gotten to play a later 60's Strat and
it was nice, but hardtail starts seem few and far between, and $$$$$$$$.

 

[Silence Kid]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

So I'm not as much of a sommelier for Strats as some, to know which year I ought to prefer etc.

But here's the one that did it for me: American 'Select' Stratocaster... LSR roller nut, 'Deluxe' neck joint, abalone, two-point bridge w/ pop-in arm, mahogany body, staggered tuners, (mis)-matched headstock, S1 switch.

Not really a vintage sound/feel, but an amalgamation of some of Fender's more 'clever' ideas. A Strat Plus or Deluxe is a similar guitar, but I felt more ok with pulling the pickups in the Select (Tex Mex/Diamondback) than I would with pulling Lace/noiseless pickups to replace with Duncans, which is what I did. Excellent fretwork, per most US Fenders I have experience with. They're a bit under the radar, but for less than used American Standard money I feel like I got a bit more bang...

 

[TimmyPage]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

BUT! We want the vintage tone created by the quirks. Huge truss rods, cast saddles, noiseless and active pickups, locking trems and nuts, flamed caps are all great improvements technically but do change the tone.

Totally fair! The Toronto music scene has a very distinctly 'modern' sound, so I share stages with a lot of guys with PRS and Suhr guitars (and PRS Guitars with Suhr humbuckers but that's a whole different story) into Mesa and Victory amps. I lean much more towards the smooth and modern than the vintage. When I think of 'strat', my mind is leading me more to a sound like this:

..than ripping Hendrixian fuzz or Vaugnesque 'weight'.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

I have to wonder how much of that vintage guitar "magic" is placebo effect. Only thing i can think of that any good luthier wouldn't be able to copy are the wood aging and corrosion. And I think it's possible to replicate that corrosion as well. Wood aging needs time, but i don't think anyone would be able to differentiate 20 year old wood from 50 year old, since we're talking about electronic instruments.

It's also hard to believe engineers back then were so ingenious, that there's been no improvent tone-wise in last 50 years. Of course we love that classic tone, but honestly, I don't think it's the best you could have.

Plenty of fundamental things that you cannot replicate:
Wood grown in plantation is never quite the same as it growing in regular forest. There is always variation with any wood, meaning you'll find some guitars will have that same overall tone of a vintage instrument, but the average will shift a bit.
And the pickups.....the wire from back in the day is WAY more varied in dimension than today's accurate tolerances. I have 2 sets of boutique pickups with 1 of them being made with vintage wire - the difference is astounding.
Magnets too are much more 'pure' in their composition now. Gauss levels for vintage magnetic material is different to today's magnets.

And as to your last sentence - this is a straight contradiction as well as being highly personal. If your ideal is vintage tone, there is no such thing as 'better' to you.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

So I'm not as much of a sommelier for Strats as some, to know which year I ought to prefer etc.

But here's the one that did it for me: American 'Select' Stratocaster... LSR roller nut, 'Deluxe' neck joint, abalone, two-point bridge w/ pop-in arm, mahogany body, staggered tuners, (mis)-matched headstock, S1 switch.

Not really a vintage sound/feel, but an amalgamation of some of Fender's more 'clever' ideas. A Strat Plus or Deluxe is a similar guitar, but I felt more ok with pulling the pickups in the Select (Tex Mex/Diamondback) than I would with pulling Lace/noiseless pickups to replace with Duncans, which is what I did. Excellent fretwork, per most US Fenders I have experience with. They're a bit under the radar, but for less than used American Standard money I feel like I got a bit more bang...

View attachment 79163

This was a really good model. It included lots of upgrades that improved the function, IMO.

 

[Jacew]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Plenty of fundamental things that you cannot replicate:
Wood grown in plantation is never quite the same as it growing in regular forest. There is always variation with any wood, meaning you'll find some guitars will have that same overall tone of a vintage instrument, but the average will shift a bit.
And the pickups.....the wire from back in the day is WAY more varied in dimension than today's accurate tolerances. I have 2 sets of boutique pickups with 1 of them being made with vintage wire - the difference is astounding.
Magnets too are much more 'pure' in their composition now. Gauss levels for vintage magnetic material is different to today's magnets.

And as to your last sentence - this is a straight contradiction as well as being highly personal. If your ideal is vintage tone, there is no such thing as 'better' to you.

Obviously you cannot replicate something that's not consistent in the first place. I didn't meant about literally replicating a certain guitar, but a line/type of guitars.

Every bit of wood indeed is unique. You can get slowly growth wood even today, it may not even cost that much if you now where to buy. Of course that is viable only for very small runs or custom guitars. There's no such thing as regular forest, and plantation growth wood is wholly it's own thing.

That's interesting thing about wires. I didn't knew there would be that much variation you could actually hear it. That boutique pickup was made with vintage wire: So was that taken from vintage pickup or can you get that somewhere? Basically, if just by the cheap wire (and magnets) from far east, wouldn't that be practically "vintage spec"? Gauss levels are basically just a specification of certain magnet. They degauss over time, but is there so little market you can't just buy a less pure magnets? (These are just honest questions, because I don't know).

The last sentence seems contradictory exactly because it's like you say. It's personal and it was personal statement. I really like (love) vintage tone, but I'm not after that with my own guitar. Why to do something players far better than me have already done thousands of times?

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Totally fair! The Toronto music scene has a very distinctly 'modern' sound, so I share stages with a lot of guys with PRS and Suhr guitars (and PRS Guitars with Suhr humbuckers but that's a whole different story) into Mesa and Victory amps. I lean much more towards the smooth and modern than the vintage. When I think of 'strat', my mind is leading me more to a sound like this:

..than ripping Hendrixian fuzz or Vaugnesque 'weight'.

I definitely understand! In fact I've got GAS for a Suhr as well... and to your point I think the other companies do modern Fender better than Fender. One of the things that makes Fenders and particularly Strats so cool to me is how incredibly flexible and versatile they can be.

 

[Little Pigbacon]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

I haven't played enough Strats to know. But I like my Modern Player with Texas Specials a lot.

 

[MetalManiac]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

^ I liken that to the world of hi tech bicycles for example. You get 90% of the tone on your strat like a very good modern bicycle , but the extra 10% of performance on upgrades will cost you 90% more. We toan tweakers just cannot rest w/o extracting the last umpteenth possible tenth of percentages of upgrades to our instruments, ands thats also what drives industry and technology, and I got no problem wit dat.
(well, bEsides the fact that I am a poor man and shouldn't really be doing it).

 

[AlexR]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Obviously you cannot replicate something that's not consistent in the first place. I didn't meant about literally replicating a certain guitar, but a line/type of guitars.

Every bit of wood indeed is unique. You can get slowly growth wood even today, it may not even cost that much if you now where to buy. Of course that is viable only for very small runs or custom guitars. There's no such thing as regular forest, and plantation growth wood is wholly it's own thing.

That's interesting thing about wires. I didn't knew there would be that much variation you could actually hear it. That boutique pickup was made with vintage wire: So was that taken from vintage pickup or can you get that somewhere? Basically, if just by the cheap wire (and magnets) from far east, wouldn't that be practically "vintage spec"? Gauss levels are basically just a specification of certain magnet. They degauss over time, but is there so little market you can't just buy a less pure magnets? (These are just honest questions, because I don't know).

The last sentence seems contradictory exactly because it's like you say. It's personal and it was personal statement. I really like (love) vintage tone, but I'm not after that with my own guitar. Why to do something players far better than me have already done thousands of times?

I'm glad you clarified, as I can see we in essence are talking the same thing (just going about it a different way)

As to the wire - there are the odd few spools of 50's type wire that turn up in people's sheds from time to time. A couple of different winders have got hold of this and I have 2 sets of humbuckers using this old stuff. With 1 of the winders I already had his regular PAF clone set with currently available wire. The regular versions already get a great rep for being quite accurate....but there is an extra depth to the vintage wire ones......its like you get all the bass and treble content too without any of the harsh sounding mids in there as well. He really only does 1 wind so I can only assume that the two sets have the same type of patterns.

As to magnets, the spec for 1 type is only ever a range of %. So anything within a band of limits. But in the 50's the purity of metals was very low. So there could be all sorts of other things in there.....I'm not sure precisely what the old mag specs are. In discussions with a vintage pickup repairer who also winds his own pickups and gets custom magnet castings, he has mentioned on many occasions that the typical gauss level for vintage magnets is different to what comes from foundaries of modern day. In fact he and other clone winders have had to do analysis of vintage mags to get the right composition - otherwise even the best winds just fall short.
In addition to this I have seen this myself. I have several vintage 50's p90's. I had the original mags sent away for recharging and used modern mags. There was a definite difference between the new mags in the pickups and the recharged vintage ones once they returned - despite similar magnet types throughout.

And its been found over countless trials that simply making a stronger magnet weaker doesn't make it the same as a weaker magnet fully charged. If you look at the way the eq shifts as the alnico grade changes, it is by no means the same as simply more strength leads to a linear eq change.

 

[BWK]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

My favorite was a '79 25th Anniversary that I bought when I was 14. I worked all summer to buy it from my brother's band mate. I learned to play on that Strat. I am not a purist. I love the oversized CBS headstocks and the C shaped necks. But that is what got me into it. I played it in all the bands I was in and by the early nineties I had replaced the pickups with a Hotrails in the bridge, Classic Stack in the neck and some Dimarzio stack in the middle (not sure what it was). I was playing it in the worship band at church until my house burned down (with all my gear in it) 5 years ago. What I wouldn't give to have my Strat back.

I have a silver American Deluxe Strat with the maple neck and black pickguard. I got it right after the fire. It has the vintage type headstock and the neck feels different. It is arguably a much better instrument, but I miss my Strat.

 

[Drunken Bowling]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

The Jeff Beck Strat is my favorite.

 

[Diminished Triad]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

The Jeff Beck Strat is my favorite.

I'd like to get the Jeff Beck Signature guitar from the Custom Shop next....

 

[Mincer]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Those Beck models were weird for me..the necks were strange. The early Clapton models were almost V shaped- very uncomfortable to me. I doubt I'd ever pay Custom Shop prices for a signature model, though (unless I was designing it).

 

[B2D]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Strats tend to vary quite a bit in personality and tone from model to model. I personally haven't found one that was IT for me but there's been a few nice ones I've found alone the way.

I tend to like recent-model American Deluxe stuff. The John Mayer Strat is/was great. I like the Jimmie Vaughn Tex-Mex model too.

In general I like rounded heels, ash bodies, steel saddles, larger frets, flatter fretboard radii, necks on the slim side, and locking tuners. I like hardtail guitars but having a tremolo seems to "make" the strat sound in some ways, even if it's clamped down. I do like the look of 70's headstocks but a 50's or 60's reissue in a good color is always nice.

 

[Boogie Bill]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

The whole "old wood" thing is going to get even weirder within the next couple of years, even with solid-body electrics. Now that Martin and several other acoustic manufacturers are doing torrified tops, will this tech trickle down to electrics? Martin can torrifiy their tops to a specific era...Thirties, Forties, Fifties. Can that be done with a slab of alder to further enhance the tone of a Custom Shop relic? Some of these relics capture the feel...now can they grab the tone?

And what happens to the vintage guitar market when they do?

Bill

 

[Jacew]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Those Beck models were weird for me..the necks were strange. The early Clapton models were almost V shaped- very uncomfortable to me. I doubt I'd ever pay Custom Shop prices for a signature model, though (unless I was designing it).

I've been watching used market here for those necks. Best feeling neck I've played was acoustic Washburn with v-shape, and I've been wanting try one on strat for quite some time.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Favorite Stratocaster of all time?

Yeah- the 'point' sticks into my palm. His Martin was that way, too. I like Strandbergs as well, but they have 2 points on the back of the neck.