Fender American Standard Stratocaster

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This is the second guitar which I bought in the late 80’s. A Fender American Standard Stratocaster. I exchanged my Aria guitar with a Floyd Rose Tremolo with this hard working machine. And I still think I made a very good deal.

First impression

It’s a Stratocaster. Not more nor less. A light guitar with a lot of quality. For me the shape of Stratocaster is perfect. In more than 20 years my body has changed dramatically (I gained to much weight), but this guitar is still perfectly playable for me. It comes in an American Standard guitar case, which fits perfectly for this guitar. After more than 20 years the hinges of the case are broken now, but this can be repaired. The tuners are standard ones, but the guitar stays normally perfectly in tune. I must admit that I don’t use the tremolo. I have fixed the springs.

Playability

Fender American Standard Stratocaster Seymour Duncan Humbucker

This guitars plays perfectly. It’s has a slim neck profile, which allows you to run fast over the fretboard. I am using 10 size Ernie Ball Strings and if you change regulary your strings and also use polish to maintain your guitar than it works really well. Intonation is also no problem for me at all.

Changes

Pickups

I changed the bridge single coil with with a humbucker from Seymour Duncan: SHPG1B Pearly Gates . Why did I do that? Well it’s quite easy. At that time I only had single coil guitars and I needed a different, fatter sound. I decided to go with the Seymour Duncan SHPG1B Pearly Gates because I wanted to have a bluesy Texas driven Sound, like ZZ Top got. Did it work? Yes definitly. I don’t mind the decision at all. I got that sound and it is still workin’ until today and i don’t miss the single coil at all. The Pearly Gates sounds like expected. A typical Billy Gibbons bluesy sound. You don’t get full heavy metal, but you get the blues tone. So five stars for that SHPG1B Pearly Gates Humbucker from my side (the blues and blues rock side)

Pickguard

I have changed the Pickguard for two reasons. I needed a new one, because I changed the bridge pickup to a “real” humbucker. And second I also wanted to have a new look. I was looking through the web and I found something on a website called www.derbandshop.de and there I orderd a Jimi Hendrix Pickguard. It is a plastic thing and probably I would now change it. It looks okay the quality is also fairly o.k. but to be honest I would now switch to something else. But this is just an optical and personal thing. The Pickguard works fine.

Locking Tuners

I replaced the standard tuners with the Fender Locking Tuners. The conversion went smoothly and took only a few minutes. The previous tuners were already tuning stable. With the locking tuners, however, another level has been reached.

Fender American Standard Stratocaster

Sound of the Fender American Standard Stratocaster

The sound of the guitar is simply great. With the Seymour Duncan SHPG1B Pearly Gates I cover the hard rock variant. When I switch to single coils, the Strat shows its well-known strength. Especially with the neck pickup you get wonderful blues tones out of the amp. A dream comes true

Summary

Plus

  • Playability
  • Sound
  • Flexibility
  • The “Original”

Minus

  • Nothing
Data protection
I, Stefan Barth (Place of residence: Germany), process personal data to operate this website only to the extent technically necessary. All details in my privacy policy.
Data protection
I, Stefan Barth (Place of residence: Germany), process personal data to operate this website only to the extent technically necessary. All details in my privacy policy.