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DP wrote:
>
> to be a true "surf machine" a strat should be pre-65...
> after that, they are all messed up...
Actually, the idea that a strat has to be old to have any sound quality
to it is a bit of an urban legend. In fact, many of the older strats
suffered tonally from the varying quality of their hand-wound pickups.
It is true that the aging of the magnets in a pickup can alter their
tone, and thus older strats will have a mellower tone than new ones -
but as most surf bands of the 60s were playing new guitars, aged magnets
don't really enter into the equation.
Like the Harley Davidson, the Fender suffered in quality during the 70's
due to being prchased by a large corporation whose primary interest was
their bottom line. Design changes, intended to make the guitars cheaper
to produce made the guitar clunkier and of lower quality.
The only strats you really have to watch out for, and which are of
dubious quality, are the 70's era models wih the triple-bolt "tilt"
neck. The designer of the three-bolt system only intended for it's use
on accoustic models, and it's addition to the Fender strat made the neck
on these models unstable, (due to the higher string tension) and prone
to going out of key very quickly. During this era the bodies also got
thicker, and heavier due to a CBS being lax about what type of wood was
being ordered.
CBS sold the Fender company in 1984, and the bad design changes they
made have been dumped from the line by it's new owners. Your modern
strats, like the American Standard, are built to the original design
specs, and are every bit as good as those much sought-after classics. In
some cases, these new guitars actually ourperform the old 60's models,
thanks to machine-wound pickups with less variation in quality from unit
to unit.
...and having said all that, Fender now owes me a sales comission. >:)
-c*
