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Fender American Stratocaster |
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This is one of Fender’s American Series guitars and is American made as the name suggests. It was introduced in June of 2000 to replace the American Standard Strat. One of the more notable changes to this guitar is the use of staggered tuners. By staggered I mean the tuners are arranged on the headstock so that the first four (smaller gauged strings) are shorter in height so that the angle at which they meet the nut is greater. This helps in two ways it first increases the string tension on the nut for more tone while also improving on the tuning stability. The body is made of Alder is based on the American Deluxe Series body which is thicker towards the back and has rounder sides. It’s been routed out to allow for a Humbucker –Single Coil - Humbucker to be used. This lightens up the body because of the lesser amount of mass. If you wanted you could change out the single coils that come stock with Humbuckers and create a Double FAT Strat (FAT means one Humbucker – Double FAT means two Humbuckers). The bridge is an American 2-point synchronized tremolo with stainless steel string saddles. It’s available in the 3-Color Sunburst, Olympic White, Black, Chrome Red, Shoreline Gold, Butterscotch Blonde, and Charcoal Frost Metallic polyurethane finishes. The color and ply of the pick guard varies with the body color with 3-ply parchment on all the above colors except for Butterscotch Blonde which has a single-ply Black pickguard. They also replace the TBX tone circuit with the Delta Tone system which has a no-load tone control. The TBX tone controls had a notch at the ‘5’ position on the knob. The Delta Tone is the 2nd Tone knob and works on the bridge and middle pickups. It’s basically a potentiometer with a switch at the ‘10’ position on the knob. When the tone is set at 10 it clicks and the tone control is essentially removed from the circuit. This gives the pickup a wide open full treble sound. The vintage strats for instance do have a tone control for the bridge pickup and the Delta Tone system is meant to replicate that as well as allow you to roll some of the high-end off. The 25.5 inch scale length maple neck has 22 medium jumbo frets with a radius of 9.5 inches. This along with the ‘C’-shape neck profile makes this guitar great for all around playing of both lead and chords. The neck is finished with satin polyurethane and comes with either a maple or rosewood fretboard. The hand rolled fretboard is very smooth feels broken in. What hand rolled means is at the point where the fretboard attaches to the neck surface is rolled over using special hand tools. This gives the neck a worn in and smooth feel. The 22 medium jumbo frets are also highly polished for a smoother feel. One extra feature is the Micro-Tilt neck which allows you to tilt the neck forward or back by turning a small bolt located on the neck/body plate. The truss rod is a Bi-Flex type with the original shaped headstock. Like the body the neck headstock and body/neck joint was taken from the original 50’s style neck and includes the Spaghetti Fender logo. As mentioned the tuners are Fender/Schaller deluxe tuners that are staggered in height and die-cast and sealed. The pickups are three American Strat Single-Coils that have similar staggered height pole pieces to that found on the 50’s pickups. One change is they’ve lowered the ‘G’ string polepiece down a little. This was done because the strings in the 1950’s had a wound ‘G’ string but most strings today have a plain non-wound one. This gives a more balanced sound with no string being louder. The middle pickup has been reverse wound for hum canceling in the 2nd and 4th pickup selector positions. The electronics consist of the Delta Tone control for the bridge and middle pickups with a normal tone control for the neck. The 5-way pickup selector is in the standard configuration: Pos 1: bridge Features
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