Biggest complaints about consistent Fender Stratocaster features pt. 2, a multipurpose post.

[Leee]

That’s always been my understanding.
The pickup is for sensing the magnetic field and not for channeling vibrations.

What kills a pickup faster than anything?
Any damage to that fragile wire in the windings.

It’s the lacquer or wax and rubber isolation or foam suspension that prevents constant vibration from causing a fatigue failure in the windings.

 

[efstop]

P90s typically sit on foam or some other compressed material so the height adjustment works.
In which case according to our ridiculous premise would be way worse than on somewhat rigid plastic.

Dog ear P-90s are fastened to the wood by the same screws holding the cover. They aren't adjustable.
Soap bar P-90s are installed either by screws into the wood or by machine screws into a metal plate. Both methods use springs, not foam, at least on Gibsons.

 

[ARandall]

Guys, I think the desire to be contrary has overridden the focus of the point I've been making......pickup mounting methods do not eliminate the tonal effect of the wood chassis in a guitar.
Thats all I'm going to say on this subject

 

[Bobby Mahogany]

Does foam matter?

 

[Juan Tumani]

Does foam matter?

Foam is matter. I don't know if that helps at all.

 

[Bobby Mahogany]

Foam is matter. I don't know if that helps at all.

Matter matters.

But is it solid or liquid?

Gotta start at the basis and go from there.


Your mileage might vary.

 

[hbucker]

I will never disagree with the idea that wood affects tone.

My disagreement is when people imply: this wood = bad tone. This wood = good tone.

And the tonal/feel differences tend to be subtleties that the player can notice, but the audience never will.

But if a certain feel inspires a player to play better, then the audience can notice that. So be it.

Just my opinion.

 

[anthe]

Okay, so given the current state of this thread it's very obvious just how back and forth the Strat's pickup mounting system is. This leaves me on the fence about whether to follow up with anymore questions because as it seems, the pickup mounting system is a lot of people's last priority on a Strat. However, I'll ask anyway.
Is it any less convenient to mount them to the wood under the pickguard, and just have the hole for the pickup, but not the screwholes? I would imagine so though I'm not sure whether the benefits outweigh the inconvenience.

 

[CB91710]

Okay, so given the current state of this thread it's very obvious just how back and forth the Strat's pickup mounting system is. This leaves me on the fence about whether to follow up with anymore questions because as it seems, the pickup mounting system is a lot of people's last priority on a Strat. However, I'll ask anyway.
Is it any less convenient to mount them to the wood under the pickguard, and just have the hole for the pickup, but not the screwholes? I would imagine so though I'm not sure whether the benefits outweigh the inconvenience.

Similar issue to the telecaster.
Getting the pickup aligned with the pickguard opening.
Maybe easier to have two pickguards, conventional and one without holes. Put the conventional guard in place and drill pilot holes for the pickup mounting screws, then mount the pickups and put the guard over the top.

But now you have the worst of both worlds... the controls are mounted to the guard, and the pickups are mounted to the body.
This forces you to tuck the wiring into the control cavity as the guard is being lowered into place... with the pickups mounted to the guard, your only connection from the pickguard to the body is to the output jack and the body/tremolo ground.
And you still can't work on the electronics with the strings installed unless you capo the 1st fret and unbolt the neck.

So hard-mounting the pickups doesn't solve any of the traditional issues with the Strat from a building/maintaining standpoint, and introduces another tedious step in assembly.

 

[deeaa]

I'm gonna just simply list why I don't like Fenders any more, and especially strats. Teles are much better but still have issues.

1. The shape is all wrong. It's okay on a Tele but I prefer the strap button to be around the area where the neck ends. This way the guitar positions more to your left and you don't have to cramp your left hand in front of you.

2. The flat headstock. It makes strings wobbly and springy at the low frets, and also makes the sound jangle and live entirely differently than if there's a proper angle. Also often you need string trees etc. which are a ridiculous 'fix' to a bad design IMO.

3. The very awkward switching. Usually too loose, positioning hard quicly, and hard to reach. Much better on a Tele, especially if you put the switch first.

4. No humbuckers. More of a personal thing, I just need a bucker at bridge.

5. 3 pickups when 2 would suffice and leave the middle free. Tele is better.

6. No neck/body angle. Strings are uncomfortably close to the body

7. Pickguard is very large and difficult to remove for changes. Without a swimming pool route difficult to squeeze everything in.

8. Controls are too close together and the volume button way too close to strings on a strat. Tele is better.

9. Mostly completely useless tremolo bridges. Just a hardtail or a proper floyd would work better. Again Tele is better

10. Bridges are uncomfortable to rest your hand on many versions

11. Just plain ugly, Fenders are to me kind of like granpa's ornate long johns.

12. Too small radius fretboards typically

13. Body woods make no real difference on strats, and usually they're really heavily covered in putty and such, and thick lacquers.

14. Some models have the truss rod adjustment on the body side which is just crazy.

15. Necks are bolt-on leaving the heel awkward and create a new problem point.

 

[Darkscience]

My 2 cents!
1. Having the pickups on the pick guard vs the wood is not as nice construction wise but does not bother me one bit. There is as much variation in Stratocaster sounds as there are LPs. Some Quack, some Honk, some are bright some are dark etc, therefore point is mute IMO. If you never looked under the hood you would never know or care.
2. Yes anything that shaves it down is an improvement I guess. Again though the square heel is not a big deal at all for me, I don't find LP or Strats much different in access, I take what the instrument can give, if I need super access than neither of these are the best choices.
3. I love the wood choices, I love the maple necks with Rosewood or Maple caps. The body I care less about, I care more about how much it weighs than anything else for the body, unless its a see through finish than ASH. Tonally do not care, they all sound different, even within the same model/year/pickups. You gota play em till you find the one you like.
4. No never thought about grover minis. My second favorite tuners are the classic fender tuners because you stick the string tip inside the post avoiding the need to cut the end off, best design to date imo is locking tuners.

 

[RU Experienced]

My only issue with the Strat's pickguard-mounted electronics is that you need to take the strings off to work on the electronics. It also annoys me that, due to the jack being in a separate compartment, the pickguard is always tied to the body.

Fender's subsequent introduction of pickguard-adjacent control plates with the Jazz Bass was the most in the right direction and IMO the Jaguar is where they really nailed it: Big open body cavities like a Strat but all of the controls are on their own plate that can be easily worked on.

I've been able to work on electronics WITHOUT removing strings. Loosen them, then use a couple of wedges (I use small blocks of wood) to raise the strings enough to lift the pickguard. A capo at the nut helps keep enough tension on the strings at the headstock.

 

[cmjohnson]

Wood choice definitely has some effect on the overall characteristics of a guitar. In the case of a solidbody electric, the effect is relatively minor and tends to disappear completely when you use a lot of overdrive.

I've built some guitars that were very similar, really the same overall design, differing only in the details, but in one case, I built one with specific wood choices, chosen for a clearlly defined reason. I wanted to build a guitar that was as free of wolf tones (dead notes on the fingerboard and overly resonant notes that would ring much longer than others) and I picked every piece of wood based on its tapped tonal properties. I wanted a high, clear tap tone that rang out well, like a gong, and not pieces that go THUD when tapped. (All suspended at the resonant node point when tapped.)

I picked my highest pitched piece of mahogany and maple top set, and the neck wood is pernambuco which always has a high resonance. I even picked the maple cap with this criteria, from my stock of various candidates.

What I got out of it was a guitar that is noticeably a bit light on output in the bass range, but it sustains well, and has, as I had hoped, very even note to note and string to string response with no wolf tones, or dead or hot spots on the fingerboard. Its tone when plugged in isn't very much different from another guitar I built with the same pickup set in it, except that there IS a clear difference in the bass response, yes, even as you hear it thru the amp.

I sought to make a guitar where all notes play about the same. None are dead, none ring out much longer than any other. And I would say this was successful.

But there are other woods that can result in a very dead sounding guitar with no sustain. I've played more than one guitar made of walnut that was very dead, and I'm no fan of poplar, either. I consider them to be undesirable wood choices from a tonal perspective.

If you have any questions about how much that big strat pickguard alters the electric tone of the guitar, compared to direct mounting, just get some longer screws and spacers and direct mount the pickups to the wood. Or do the same thing for a Gibson style ring suspended humbucker. It's not a difficult experiment to carry out in any case.

I believe that slightly more body vibration manages to make it to the pickkup through the pickup ring, the springs, and the screws with a Gibson style humbucker mounting ring than happens with a Strat style pickup installation. Particularly if the strat body is bathtub routed, where the pickguard doesn't even have any center island to be in contact with it and thus provide for a little bit more vibration transfer.

I certainly believe that body vibrations picked up by the pickup will affect the overall tone. If those vibrations are moving the pickup relative to the strings, then a signal is being generated. So with direct coupled pickups the pickup is mixing two signals: The one from the strings and the one from the body. It's going to alter the frequency response output to some degree.

 

[LtDave32]

Okay, I'll play.

The Strat is a worthy instrument, played by all the greats, and anybody who claims it's a "screwdriver guitar" is full of crap. I'll point out that it takes more effort to mount a strat neck properly than it does to take the ten seconds to glue a tenon to a mortise. And the rest of the construction parallels any other solid-body construction. It has to be cut, routed , shaped, carved, sanded. etc etc etc. I build mine from scratch, the same way I build every guitar at DSG. And there are "kits" for everything, even semi-hollow bodies. So let's just chuck the Fender style being "screwdriver guitar" thing right out the window where it belongs, eh?

Sonically, I hear no difference in that joint. I've heard Strats sustain for long elapsed times, and I've heard glued necks sustain for substantially less. And I've heard the exact opposite. It's really down to the player, the guitar and the amp settings. "sustain for days" is something said by guys in defense of their heavy instrument.

Why someone needs to "defend" an instrument is beyond me. Much of that attack shit is a product of guitar forums. People are much more polite in person. Gee, I wonder why that is? Lol.

All that being said, There are design issues that bother me slightly.

One is the placement of the volume knob. This may not effect everyone, but I've heard enough similar to how it effects me for it to be a legit "thing".

When I play a Strat, eventually I'll be changing the volume unintentionally. I don't like that. But there it is. And I'm not alone.

Truss rod.. Nobody perfers a truss rod nut to be something they have to work at to get to. But again, there it is. And there are NO "bi-flex" style truss rods on the aftermarket for me to change that to a bullet at the top under the nut, such as modern Fenders are. There are clever workarounds, hollow "walnut plug" plastic inserts, there's even the trick of taking a standard two-way rod and turning it upside-down, then having the truss rod adjust in the opposite direction. Queer as hell, but it does work. IF you want that hollow plug to come in right under the nut and work with an allen wrench through the hollow plug, you have to turn the TR upside down in order to place the adjustment end in the right place for that to work as such. I've done this a few times.

Weight and wood..

The best, most resonant Strat I ever played was a 1961 alder model. It was my best friends, who sold it only a few years ago. Had it since the early 1980's.

IT was resonant as hell, clear, bright, a joy to play, and the whole instrument weighed in at just over 5 pounds.

Alder. In the PNW, they sell it in the stores for firewood. There is no shortage of alder. It works very, very much like a light swamp ash. It does not have much of a grain. That's both a detriment and a blessing. IT can be found with oak-like grain though..

And when you do find alder with that sort of grain, it's not the stone bitch to fill like swamp ash is. It doesn't absorb all that sanding sealer/ grain filler material like SA does, either.

It's almost always very light. Always resonant and sweet. Big fan of alder.

That concludes the issues both good and bad that I'd have with Strats and the like.

oh, ps.. The scooped headstock achieving a break angle at the nut, while only requiring 1" of neck wood was a stroke of pure genius. Kudos to the late Leo for thinking of that. It was nothing short of brilliant.

 

[ErictheRed]

I've always found the biggest contribution wood plays is whether or not an identical set of pickups works in a guitar or not.
So many times I've done pickup swaps between instruments of the 'same' construction - even directly swapping sets between 2 - and the tonal balance of the set changes. In fact you can often tell if a set really works by checking the notch positions. If there's a really great '2 pickups on' tone then you most likely have a good match.
In fact there are cases where there is a pronounced eq characteristic that comes out in each pickup set when fitted a certain guitar.

Not to wade into a big discussion that's killed friendships, etc, but often even swapping the same exact pickups into two different guitars isn't a fair test of the contribution that wood plays. First there's the way the pickups are set up in relation to the strings, and small changes in height affect things in big ways. Then there's all of the other electronics, are the pots and caps the same, and is everything wired the same? Even if they are "the same," you're often dealing with tolerances of +/- 10% or even 20%, so they aren't the same after all.

And then even if all of that is the same, the physical length of wire and how the wiring is routed affects capacitance as well, which is one of the biggest impacts on the tone coming from an electric guitar. You'd be surprised at how much difference in capacitance (and inductance) you can measure at the output of two electrically "identical" guitars with a LCR meter. None of the videos out there purporting to prove tone wood one way or the other actually measures all of this, that I've seen at least.

So I'm not saying that wood doesn't affect tone, but given all of the above if you're talking about minor changes in sound I think that it's far more likely to come from the accumulation of different strings (even if they are the same brand, they're different strings which also have tolerances on them regarding how thick the core is, etc), different pickup heights, difference in electronic values of components, and differences in parasitic capacitance and inductance.

 

[ErictheRed]

Regarding Strats in particular, am I the only one who likes how the output jack is mounted? I absolutely HATE how close the e-strings are to edge of the fretboard, however. I never "fall off" the fretboard edge when using vibrato on the high e-string on a Gibson or Suhr, but I definitely do on Fenders. Also as has been mentioned, many of the neck heels are bulky and in the way, but not all. Lastly I'm usually annoyed at having a 21 fret guitar, not that I need 22 frets, but why NOT have 22 frets? There's no downside since you aren't changing the placement of the neck pickup or anything (like you have to on a 24 fret guitar).

 

[Peter M]

Biggest complaints about consistent Fender Stratocaster

Zero complaints about the classic Fender Strat. Ergonomically superior to all the guitars of its time and still holds its own today.

Dig the contours, cutaways, recessed jack, headstock design, etc.

That being said...I'm just not a Strat guy. I thought I was in the mid 90s, gigged with them for a stretch... but found myself craving my Les Paul. Soon after I fixed my identity crisis.

​

 

[ARandall]

Not to wade into a big discussion that's killed friendships, etc, but often even swapping the same exact pickups into two different guitars isn't a fair test of the contribution that wood plays. First there's the way the pickups are set up in relation to the strings, and small changes in height affect things in big ways. Then there's all of the other electronics, are the pots and caps the same, and is everything wired the same? Even if they are "the same," you're often dealing with tolerances of +/- 10% or even 20%, so they aren't the same after all.

And then even if all of that is the same, the physical length of wire and how the wiring is routed affects capacitance as well, which is one of the biggest impacts on the tone coming from an electric guitar. You'd be surprised at how much difference in capacitance (and inductance) you can measure at the output of two electrically "identical" guitars with a LCR meter. None of the videos out there purporting to prove tone wood one way or the other actually measures all of this, that I've seen at least.

So I'm not saying that wood doesn't affect tone, but given all of the above if you're talking about minor changes in sound I think that it's far more likely to come from the accumulation of different strings (even if they are the same brand, they're different strings which also have tolerances on them regarding how thick the core is, etc), different pickup heights, difference in electronic values of components, and differences in parasitic capacitance and inductance.

Its funny. If you'd tried to argue say individual string sets are majorly tonally different, or pots with a couple of K between them are major (or even minor) tonal contributors you'd get pillared from here to the post......as in 'not even Eric Johnson would ever claim to be able to hear this'. Yet somehow when it comes to being part of a tonewood discussion suddenly they're a real and important thing and enough to be concerned about.
Of course we all know about these sort of arguments - its all about trying to make narrative obstacles rather than really engaging in discourse. I mean you haven't even once asked whether or not the examples I have quoted have the same type of components or wire lengths or height adjustments etc.
Of course I know why you've gone for assumption rather than confirmation - because as soon as I confirm that I was very scientific in my comparisons then all of these insignificant 'on paper' objections then become irrelevant.

Anyhow, I've had enough of this type of nitpicking here and will not be drawn into further trolling of this thread.

 

[anthe]

Its funny. If you'd tried to argue say individual string sets are majorly tonally different, or pots with a couple of K between them are major (or even minor) tonal contributors you'd get pillared from here to the post......as in 'not even Eric Johnson would ever claim to be able to hear this'. Yet somehow when it comes to being part of a tonewood discussion suddenly they're a real and important thing and enough to be concerned about.
Of course we all know about these sort of arguments - its all about trying to make narrative obstacles rather than really engaging in discourse. I mean you haven't even once asked whether or not the examples I have quoted have the same type of components or wire lengths or height adjustments etc.
Of course I know why you've gone for assumption rather than confirmation - because as soon as I confirm that I was very scientific in my comparisons then all of these insignificant 'on paper' objections then become irrelevant.

Anyhow, I've had enough of this type of nitpicking here and will not be drawn into further trolling of this thread.

Yeah, I'm certain I should NOT have started this thread the way I did, I don't want this to turn into a tone war and should have probably thought of that before I posted.

 

[ErictheRed]

I didn't think that there was any trolling going on. And to be clear, I'm not saying that one little thing such as minor variations between string sets from the same manufacturer are enough to explain away what people are ascribing as differences in tonewood, I'm suggesting that the cumulative effect of all of those things that I mentioned, all added up, probably amounts to more of a difference in tone than whatever the wood differences are.

I can respect that this isn't really the conversation that any of us wanted to have, but I don't see how there has been any trolling.