Two Guitars Enter, One Guitar Leaves

Alas, I can only have one white fender stratocaster, so I'm selling the standard strat on ebay.

How Terrible is This?

The Lifetime Television Stratocaster

A Tale of Two Cities

Specifically Corona CA, and Ensenada, Mexico. These two are from Ensenada Mexico (so in a way it's the tale of one city), but you need to read about how much sharing goes on between the two, and I've said it before, you can sit with a half dozen strats from american to MIM standards, highway one, etc. Not much difference. So imagine my disappointment when the 70s reissue I just got was simply blown away by MIM standard I had been playing and tweaking over 5 years. But I figured to be fair, I need to give this one the treatment. I'll show you what I did and point out some cool features of the 70s reissue. First is the vintage bridge with these funky saddles that don't have grooves. This is part of the fun of getting one of these reissues, dealing with the old technology, and I think it's cool they did this.



The big oddity about the 70s strat, and probably the reason you would get one, is the throwback CBS neck, with 3-bolts, bullet truss rod, and the micro-tilt adjustable shim. When i set it up with newer, heavier strings, everything came into play, and to be fair I did indeed give the micro-tilt a couple twists and it made all the difference, after I had done about all that I could with the saddles, tremolo and truss rod. Super cool feature! I read a lot of forums that bash it and say it was a huge problem in the 70s, but I've read other posts that fender corrected the problems that made the micro-tilt so bad. How bad was it? Apparently necks were constantly getting knocked out of place. So I got the neck to where it's just about as dreamy good as my other strat. Cool vintage string trees and tuners, too. Tremolo and tuners stay in tune great with generous use of the whammy.



Open the hood, and it's just as i suspected. No shielding (it was noisy as hell), masking tape.



So I took care of that, and this is the last time I shield a guitar with aluminum. I'll pay the extra money to never have to solder it again. And the wiring all looked quite similar to the standard. Real easy to see where to solder the ground wire. Note the body cavities are smaller. This is also an ash body instead of alder, which supposedly sounds brighter (and the guitar definitely does).



It did have surgical tubing, and you can see what it looks like after 5 years, so I replaced that.



And then I just can't stand leaving things alone esthetically, so I swapped the pickguard with my old one, which is looking really dirty these days, and then put on the relic knobs and PU covers.



The final adjustments were made, playing the two side-by-side and getting the PUs the right height.

My final assessment is thus

The 70s Reissue has a brighter sound and a more twangy vintage sound. Surprisingly nice on some of the bar chords, you really hear the high strings ring. It plays great. It's a little noisier with hum than the standard strat, but not nearly what it was before it was shielded. It looks badass. The middle PU sounds good. The tone and volume knobs are superior on this guitar. The volume actually let's you cut back for a more clean sound that hasn't dropped out or too thin, the way a volume knob should be. The first tone knob has a dramatic wah like quality. The knobs are tighter. For that matter, the tuners are a lot tighter, and the oldschool posts allow you to wrap the string more (I think it's Schaller "F-logo" tuners). The face of the neck has more of a curve to it and a gloss coat as opposed to satin.

The MIM standard has slightly louder, heavier sounding PUs, but not quite as much definition. The middle PU is really almost there for the hum cancelling, used in conjunction with the neck and bridge PU. This is a very quiet strat, and the shielding helped considerably. I like how the satin finish on the neck is starting to naturally relic with that ash-gray tone coming out. The difference in white that originally thought was darkening, i'm pretty certain now is just the difference between arctic white and olympic white. The arctic white is more like ice cream white. When I added the mint green pickguard, it almost had an Yngwie appearance, but not so banana yellow.

Both of these are from 2005.

For the money, the standard strat is pretty nice. After playing them both for hours, I can make a distinction between the two, but the difference is slight. The difference in price is not that slight. One day i'll have to sell one, but it's going to take time to figure out which one I gravitate towards. You have cooler, brighter, noisier, sturdier components vs. warmer, less hum. That hum might be the big determining factor.

Star Wars Project

We've been improvising with Star Wars in front of us, conducting our performance. It's a work in progress. Here are some of the highlights, available via Stereomaster

Latest Addition: 70s Reissue Stratocaster

On my initial taste test against the Fender Standard MIM, I'm not impressed. The neck is fabulous, but the electronics so far have me disappointed. It doesn't appear to have been set up, so i'm going to do all the adjustments to this that i made to the standard, and then give it a fair trial. On a positive note, the thing is in MINT condition, and I got it with that killer case for 500 bones. So you figure $700 value at LEAST. If i'm not thrilled with it after a month, I'll just sell it and maybe even make a tiny profit.

I know what you're thinking. "This looks just like your other strat." I promise I don't have a thing for white strats with maple necks, but . . sigh. This thing was just too much like hendrix's woodstock strat to pass up.

Hagstrom Super Swede!

It has arrived! I cannot recommend this guitar enough if you're thinking of going the Les Paul route. Very solid, well-built, booming tone, absolutely gorgeous, weighs a ton and the best part is it costs about half of an entry-level Les Paul. If you're thinking of getting a studio Les, stop what you're doing and buy this. It's better. The big differences are the longer scale neck, comparable to a stratocaster, and i'm really glad i went this route (the Swede has the same scale). On strats i find the nut-end of the neck a little difficult to deal with, but not so with the Hagstrom. The neck sits at an angle to the body like the Les Paul and has that super low action, where you think of playing the guitar and it just chimes.

It also has a coil tap, which at first i could care less about, but after i heard it, I was blown away. I'm not a fan of one guitar sounding like two, but clicking on the single-coil state in mid position sounds country as hell, even more twangy that the strat in any position, and not a cheap twang. Sustain, for those who care (i don't really) is endless. Each string is thread through a solid brass block at the bridge the size of pool chalks.



On the downside, and this is minor. The knobs on the tuning pegs are chrome painted plastic, ewwwww. It's the one thing i've noticed that screams MADE IN CHINA as the sticker on the back indicates. I've looked at Hagstroms before, and that sticker is daunting for sure. Trust me, this does not sound or feel like junk, and it can be had for $400-$500. Don't pay $700 as advertised. You can find it new for less.

I also want to add something to the blog i couldn't find out online: Does this guitar fit in a stratocaster case? NO it does not. Due to tilt of the neck (strats are straight), it might fit in a Les Paul case, but i can't verify that. The neck is longer which might not work. I'm just going to buy the default Hagstrom case.



Serial # = M09100810

Stray Strat Strut. Shielding a Stratocaster

I found this shielding method to work with varying results on stratocasters. First I want to recommend if you have the option of using copper foil tape instead of aluminum foil tape, do so. Soldering aluminum is a real chore. It can be done, but it almost requires voodoo and some harry potter magic to finally make a weld take. Copper is a blessing and and your soldering will take in one shot, instead of looking like balls of mercury rolling over the surface. The other problem with soldering on the backside of a pickguard is if you spend too much time soldering a spot, it will discolor the gloss on the face of the pickguard. That being said, fender uses aluminum.

As you switch through your pickup selectors on a strat, especially on poorly shielded ones (you shall see), it goes BZZZZ (-_-) BZZZZZ (-_-) BZZZZZZ!!! Single coils buzz (hum), but with better shielding it's a lot less. I got to screw around with the guitar for a couple days now, and i will attest this HAS reduced the amount of hum the thing makes.

First, let's see what Fender does with a basic MIM pickguard.



Only over the volume and tone pots. nowhere else. Solution- foil tape over all of it and connect the foil with electrical solder. Didn't take a photo of the final pickguard, but you can imagine. Next. .



Fender used masking tape to bind the wires. It's a good measure to replace that with electrical tape. Next. . .



Shield the entire body cavity, again connecting all the foil with solder and allowing the foil to overlap the body so it connects to the pickguard. ALUMINUM IS A BITCH TO SOLDER so you're better off using copper foil, which is what's recommended. I ordered some. I couldn't find copper foil tape at Home Depot Next. . .



On the volume pot is a collection of ground leads. The one i'm interested in has a ground wire going back to the spring claw on the other side of the body. Solder a piece of wire that (in this photo it's the lowest weld on that volume pot), and then. . .



Run that new ground wire out of the body cavity to connect with the pickguard when it's put back in place. The whole thing becomes a big grounded metal box.

Additionally, here's another thing i thought made sense. . .



I had to buy these on e-bay (again, home depot doesn't give a crap about you and your guitar). Surgical rubber tubing to replace the metal mounting springs on your pickups. Theres a lot of strat voodoo going around that the springs interfere with the sound and the rubber won't, because its little vibrating metal springs. I also noticed the mount seemed sturdier.

And now for one more bonus. You can age the plastic parts by boiling them in coffee/tea. I dumped some old coffee and a bag of earl grey tea in a pot and boiled it on the stove. The parts simmered for roughly 5 minutes for light browning.



The strat is kickin'. I recommend getting a cheap standard and shielding it. Additionally, i'd like to know if more care is put into the shielding on an American Standard Stratocaster. This is an easy upgrade to make.

Fuggit

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