all of the sudden i love strats

For guitars of the straight waisted variety (or reverse offset).
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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by JVG » Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:06 pm

I’m also in the Strat fan club. There’s nothing shameful about loving Strats - they are classic instruments for good reason.

For my mind, the most underrated thing about a strat is the middle pickup on its own (provided you have a decent set). The middle is a magical place, which most people just zip past on their way to the neck or bridge.

Cheers!
J.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Telliot » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:04 pm

JVG wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:06 pm
For my mind, the most underrated thing about a strat is the middle pickup on its own (provided you have a decent set). The middle is a magical place, which most people just zip past on their way to the neck or bridge.
Totally agree!
The cool thing about fretless is you can hit a note...and then renegotiate.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Bradley-Jazz » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:08 pm

Another happy Strat owner here, a 57 CIJ with various mods, including Highway 1 push-pull wiring so that I can get series sounds and neck and bridge together. However, I find I tend to stick to the “original” five sounds. Well, neck pickup, or either in between position, mainly.

Mine came with USA Texas Special pickups, which were too hot for me initially, so I wound them right down close to the scratch plate, where they sound great and the middle one doesn’t get in the way.
All the cheeses....

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Embenny » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:59 pm

JVG wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:06 pm
I’m also in the Strat fan club. There’s nothing shameful about loving Strats - they are classic instruments for good reason.

For my mind, the most underrated thing about a strat is the middle pickup on its own (provided you have a decent set). The middle is a magical place, which most people just zip past on their way to the neck or bridge.

Cheers!
J.
It literally blew my mind when I discovered Doug Martsch had been exclusively playing the middle position of his Strat Plus on every Built to Spill album. And not only had he been doing that...the pickup in that middle position was the fabled gold Lace Sensor! In the 90's, Lace Sensors rapidly went from being the hottest thing on the market to one of those passé fads like brass bridges and headless guitars. I feel like they've found their niche over the years, where people stopped pretending they sounded "exactly like a vintage single coil without the noise" (the early hype) but also stopped pretending they sounded terrible (the fallout from that hype).

Point is, I discovered that fact at a time where I 1) owned a strat as my one and only electric guitar, 2) had developed an allergy to the middle pickup, believing what I was reading on the (nascent) internet about how it was only there to make positions 2 and 4 possible, and 3) had been told that those Lace Sensors were shitty outdated pickups that nobody should be using anymore.

And yet, I adored the tone he was getting. One of my first lessons in listening with my ears and not my eyes, and that internet forums were populated by bluesdads rather than people playing the kind of music I actually enjoy.
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Fiddy » Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:03 pm

Dude, i just bought an LPB Strat like 2 weeks ago!! :w00t:

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Tehz_ » Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:36 pm

My next guitar will probably be a strat. I’ve owned four of them, currently only have one (early 90’s Japanese Squier), I’m sure I’ll own several more. Honestly might be my favorite guitar model overall, sue me, I don’t care.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Futuron » Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:51 pm

Today you can get a Strat in every possible pickup configuration off the shelf. Every colour. Every price point. Every neck shape & radius. Many bridge & control options. Straight off the shelf, you don't need to build it yourself. Not too many guitars are like that. The body looks nice sleek & smooth, and although it isn't optimally ergonomic, it's a massive improvement on everything that came before. There's good reason why it's the most copied guitar design. I believe that there's a Strat for every guitarist, including those that hate them.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by somanytoys » Tue Apr 07, 2020 11:33 am

mbene085 wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:59 pm

It literally blew my mind when I discovered Doug Martsch had been exclusively playing the middle position of his Strat Plus on every Built to Spill album. And not only had he been doing that...the pickup in that middle position was the fabled gold Lace Sensor! In the 90's, Lace Sensors rapidly went from being the hottest thing on the market to one of those passé fads like brass bridges and headless guitars. I feel like they've found their niche over the years, where people stopped pretending they sounded "exactly like a vintage single coil without the noise" (the early hype) but also stopped pretending they sounded terrible (the fallout from that hype).

Point is, I discovered that fact at a time where I 1) owned a strat as my one and only electric guitar, 2) had developed an allergy to the middle pickup, believing what I was reading on the (nascent) internet about how it was only there to make positions 2 and 4 possible, and 3) had been told that those Lace Sensors were shitty outdated pickups that nobody should be using anymore.

And yet, I adored the tone he was getting. One of my first lessons in listening with my ears and not my eyes, and that internet forums were populated by bluesdads rather than people playing the kind of music I actually enjoy.
I’ve always liked Doug’s tones. I saw them at the HoB (I think it was) in N.O. years ago, he sounded good, but I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to the gear from where I was, it was kind of packed. It seemed like he changed guitars a few times, but I may be getting that shown confused with Swervedriver, they changed guitars for literally every single song, for the different tunings they used.

One of my old guitarists had some lace sensors put into a Warmouth strat copy, I think they were the blue lace sensors. I can’t remember if his guitar had 2 or 3 pickups, but he mostly played the bridge pickup, which may have been a hot rails, or something higher output.

This was back I think when they were still new, or at least still a hot thing (~ ‘90). I remember them sounding good, but they seemed to me to get more of kind of a Clapton sound (guessing Blackie?) than anything, at least the straight tone from the amp.

Later he sold it and bought a nice strat, but nothing super expensive. It played really, really well, but I don’t know if I played it through an amp or not.

I need to buy a decent strat, I don’t have one and only have single coils if I coil tap my hb’s in my guitars. But it’s not a quest I need to start right now.
-David

It's a boost booster, to boost your boost - it makes your tone much muchier.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by StevenO » Tue Apr 07, 2020 12:39 pm

I want another Strat now. I'd probably due something traditional in the neck and bridge and a gold lace in the middle... :?

Edit: just saw that other people mentioned a gold lace! Funny... I like Lace pickups. I used as my main guitar a Tele Plus with Lace pickups for years. They're a little too "perfect" but I dig that.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by carron » Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:41 pm

I have always loved strats. I have two, which I really play a lot.

An olympic white channel bound compound radius neck SSS American standard that has the best and smoothest neck ever. It came with custom shop fat 50’s pickups that have this ever so slightly grittier than true vintage tone that I just love. One of the few guitars that I have not wanted to mod or change pickups. I bought this one about 3 years ago when my guitars were stolen to replace a stolen strat that I really missed. I must have tried close to a hundred strats in stores around the LA region until this one felt and sounded the best. Really smooth 2 point tremolo. A perfect guitar.

And the strat that got stolen (along with a number of offsets), which I magically recovered after finding it in a pawn shop in Redondo Beach. A MIM candy apple red HSS. I had changed the neck and middle pickups to SD ssl1 and the bridge to a SD JB, as well as added a switch to split/series/parallel the humbucker, and to have the neck and bridge combination sound. I had blocked the tremolo of this one with a piece of old redwood. Very different sounds from my other strat and very complementary to each other. Both glassier and chunkier than the SSS depending on the pickup. It had been my second guitar, my first fender, which started my love affair with Leo’s designs. When I found it, it was like recovering my best friend.

Both are awesome. The only guitar that gets played as much the strats is my jazzmaster, but my white strat is my #1.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Trout » Tue Apr 07, 2020 10:07 pm

THIS FORUM IS GOING TO HELL!!!








nah, seriously.. I love a nice strat too :-*
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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by sessylU » Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:31 pm

The one that did it for me. Now has black knobs, that look good instead of awful.

Image
a total idiot jackass

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by beauzooka » Wed Apr 08, 2020 2:31 pm

Wake up people! If you play a Strat you will end up looking like this:

Image

Before you know it you'll be in a blues band. It's a slippery slope! :freako:

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by marqueemoon » Wed Apr 08, 2020 2:35 pm

beauzooka wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 2:31 pm
Wake up people! If you play a Strat you will end up looking like this:

Image

Before you know it you'll be in a blues band. It's a slippery slope! :freako:
Glad somebody finally said it.

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Re: all of the sudden i love strats

Post by Fiddy » Wed Apr 08, 2020 3:01 pm

marqueemoon wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 2:35 pm
beauzooka wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 2:31 pm
Wake up people! If you play a Strat you will end up looking like this:



Before you know it you'll be in a blues band. It's a slippery slope! :freako:
Glad somebody finally said it.




Duh, that's only if you're into relic Strats!.... 🤦‍♂️... 🤦🏽‍♂️

Edit: Not sure why my facepalm emoji gets a gender symbol next to it.. WTF?
Last edited by Fiddy on Wed Apr 08, 2020 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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