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It's true that the "modern" strats (American Standards and
custom shop jobs from Corona CA) are high quality machines.
But it is also true that during the seventies and eighties
(remember Lace Sensors?) most of the Fender line sucked big
time. Same with Fender Basses too.
But, I do believe that the strat is a venerable and fine
surf machine...in a surf band it would be neat to hear a
line up of Strat, Jag, and Jazzmaster...that would be a
shindig!
dp
--- cobalt <> wrote:
>
>
> 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*
>
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