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Fender American Deluxe HSS Stratocaster |
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The Fender American Deluxe HSS (Humbucker, Single Coil, Single Coil) Stratocaster is one of the American Deluxe Series guitars and was first introduces in Jan of 2004. The American Series are known for a more accurate Strat body as Fender found that the actual shape of the body had changed over the years. They re-made the body to the same specs as that found in the 1950’s models. The neck was also reworked to include rolled edges and a smoother fretboard. The body was also made of a higher grade of Alder (in this case) using fewer pieces of wood glued together. Another feature about these guitars is they where designed for the guitarist who wants a greater number of sounds using the S-1 Switching system in combination with a Humbucker and two single coil pickups. As mentioned the body is made of Alder and is available in a variety of colors and pickguard thicknesses and colors. Each is has a polyurethane finish. Depending on the color of the body will determine which type of pickguard you’ll have. So you have a choice of: 3-Tone Sunburst - 3-Ply Mint Green The pickguard is Mint Green on the 3-Color sunburst color but it looks much closer to white or a very light green. On the very early strats the white pickguard would fade to a mint color over time. The Bridge is a Fender deluxe 2-point synchronized tremolo. This tremolo has a pop out arm instead of the older screw in type. The necks on the American Deluxe models have a great feel to them. They feel like they’ve already been broken in. This is one of the details Fender found important to provide on these guitars. The 25.5 inch scale length neck has 22 medium jumbo frets and is made of maple. It’s available with either a rosewood or maple top or fretboard with a skunk strip down the back side of the neck where the truss rod was installed. The profile of the neck is the more modern ‘C’-shape and feels great. You’ll also find Abalone dot inlays or position markers on the fretboard. One of the more interesting features about this guitar is its Locking tuners. They are Fender/Schaller deluxe staggered locking type. This along with the LSR roller nut allows you to use the whammy without going out of tune. The electronics used is an important feature of this guitar. First of all the S-1™ switching system allows for a number of different pickup combinations ranging from using a single pickup to running two to two pickups in series or parallel. If you don’t include using the tone controls you get 10 very different sounds with this feature. The 10 sounds are created by using the 5-way pickup selector and a special push/pull knob which is located on the master volume. Depending upon if it’s up or down you’ll use a different combination of pickups (series/parallel). The tone control is a no-load type which doesn't reduce the level of the guitar as much when you remove the high end of the sound. There are two tone controls where the first tone knob is for the neck pickup while the second tone control is used for Middle/Bridge pickups and Neck/Middle/Bridge pickup combinations. As for the basic 10 pickup combinations: S-1 Switch Up: Position 1. Full Bridge Humbucker with Coils in Series (Lead Tone
Control) S-1 Switch Down: As for the pickups - ‘HSS’ stands for Humbucker-Single-Single. On this guitar the Humbucker is a DH-1 and is positioned in the Bridge position. The DH1 is also called the Seymour Duncan Pearly Gate Humbucker. The pickup was made to work with the different string spacing on the American Deluxe model guitars. The two single coils used are the Hot Noiseless Single coil at the Neck and a Noiseless Single Coil in the middle position. The Hot Noiseless pickups have Samarium Cobalt magnets which are more powerful than ceramic but marginally less powerful than alnico magnets. The electronics are the S-1 Switching system. Fender’s single coil noiseless pickup is based using one of the vintage 63’ pickups and where designed by Bill Lawrence for Jeff Beck. The pickups sound warm yet punchy in the neck position and have an excellent hot tone in the neck position. Its design incorporates the similar ‘hum’ canceling effects inherent in humbuckers or dual coil pickups. In fact the noiseless pickups are actually two single coils one placed on top of the other and is separated by a soft iron plate. The plate also isolates the bottom coil from the string vibrations so it still sounds like a single coil pickup while at the same time it has hum canceling. Samarium Cobalt is a rare earth metal magnet that can operate at high temperatures and doesn't rust. They are very brittle and can shatter if hit too hard. These magnets are marginally less powerful than neodymium but don’t demagnetize and easy. The material itself is somewhat more expensive than that of other magnets. For its size it’s a very powerful magnet so that why they are used. Features
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