Re: Why are Strats so freaking awesome?!
Hi
i have recently come back to playing Strats after a very long time of avoiding them. I bought my first Strat in the seventies at age 17. played it through a full Marshall stack and sounded like a very loud bag of $hit rather than like my heroes of the day. In the years that followed i owned a bunch of seventies strats and just couldn't sound like a Strat player. Mechanically they were all over the place and needed endless tweaking. I gravitated to Gibson and similar style guitars and suddenly sounded like a 'proper' player and it certainly felt like i had a properly-built musical instrument in my hands for the first time.
Years later i have realised that the Strats i owned came from the worst era of their manufacture and so i was behind the eightball to begin with. I have also developed enough technique to 'extract' the sounds from a Strat, and learnt that Fenders need to be 'worked at' to bring that sound out. However i also feel that the construction of the Stratocaster barely makes it into what i would class as a properly built musical instrument (ever seen an instrument in an orchestra with a bolt-on neck?)
HOWEVER.....now happily settled with a LP and a Hamer Studio Custom, i recently got a Tokai Silverstar Strat, copy of the 70's models, and it is far superior to the genuine ones i owned back in the day, particularly since i installed a Callham bridge and Bareknuckle pickups (3 x single coil). Even more recently i got back a Strat from a friend, it's a '69 that i sold to him back in about 1984, now sporting a very good Warmouth neck. Playing these 2 guitars has made me rediscover the beauty of the Strat...the sound. Both guitars have tight neck pockets, which seemed to be a rare thing on US ones in the 70's and caused me much frustration back then.
I am now in a position that i can play a Strat for it's SOUND, if i need rawk, i can play the humbucker equipped chunks of mahogany, and turn to the Strats when i want THAT sound. I still feel that Fender instruments are really a category of their own, and not on a par with well-made instruments, but no other type will get *those* classic sounds like a Strat or a Tele or similar bolt-on model. I also feel that there are better-made Strats from other manufacturers. Despite all i know and dislike about them, when they're right and stable, they feel so great to play and, with work, can sound incredible.
btw, i am a dedicated 3 single coil kinda guy when it comes to Strats, no humbuckers for me. I have rock guitars and finally i can celebrate the differences!
