Home -> Magazines -> Issues -> Articles in this issue -> View
Fender Guitars | |
GuitarcheckArticle from International Musician & Recording World, October 1985 |
Three of the new breed vetted by Dave Burrluck
Somehow the Fender name carries on through the Eighties despite all the troubles and changes of direction the company has had. 1985 sees a new owner — Bill Schultz — a new UK distributor — Ivor Arbiter — and of course a complete new range of guitars designed in the States and made in Japan. All Fender guitars will now be made in the East under the American Vintage Series name, along with the successor to the Elite range — the Performers — which the UK hasn't seen yet.
There are four basic series — the Standard, Contemporary, HM and basses — confused by the fact that we have a Squier range as well with these same categories. There is only one vintage guitar now available, a bound '62 Telecaster in the Fender range. Confused? I think that's the idea — the other thing, of course, is the tremolo arm. I'll rephrase that, the three tremolo arms — System I, II and III. The top unit is the III which has some unique features including a cam actuated side to side tune free locking nut and a tremolo lock. The II has the same locking nut but no fine tuners while the I is the standard unit with normal vice locking nut. etc. The Squier, range, of course, has just the good old fashioned standard Strat trem. Well, apart from some new colours that's about all the visible changes — this review concerns three instruments from the Fender range (unfortunately they sent us different guitars but the same tremolo system) so hopefully later we'll be checking out the basses and Squiers.
RRP: £400
Essentially, this Standard Strat is still the Strat that we know and love, yet as me would expect there have been a fair few minor modifications.
The familiar Maple neck has a few changes, probably most noticeably the camber of the fingerboard is now a very flat 12 inch radius and instead of the typical Fender 21 fret neck, we now have 22 frets. Interestingly, the 22nd fret sits on the bottom edge of the Rosewood fingerboard which actually suspends over the bottom of the neck.
The neck itself is made from slab cut Maple with the familiar Walnut stripe covering the truss rod channel. The truss rod is adjustable at the head as opposed to the body end by a recessed allen-keyed nut. The shaping of the neck is extremely good with a flat curve profile which should prove comfortable to the main percentage of players.
The fretting on the Standard Strat is of an extremely high standard, employing 2.5mm width frets with quite a low and curved profile. Each has been given a high polish, making string bending very easy. The 5mm pearl-like position dots are employed on the face with smaller white plastic dots on the side of the board. The outfitted on this sample is of the typical Fender design which is extremely well cut and provides a low first fret action. Fender have stayed with the four bolt attachment of the neck to the body via a chrome plate. We also have a micro-tilt neck pitch adjustment. The serial number is stamped into the neck plate in the traditional Fender manner.
The headstock design on this Strat is similar to the pre-'65 design and we have yet another logo for the historians of the Fender guitar to note. A single Fender silver on black logo with a small circled 'R' and a thin black line Stratocaster logo under which is the controversial 'made in Japan'.
The body on this Strat, of course, doesn't need any introduction at all, with the familiar shape and contouring. The only visible minor change here is that the tremolo back cover plate is actually recessed into the body. The depth of contouring doesn't feel as sharp as on the earlier Strats but is less bulky than on the '70s models.
We have a row of Schaller M6-type machine heads with 'Fender Japan' stamped on the back. Each has a tension adjustment in the typical Schaller manner.
It is the tremolo system that is the newest addition to this Strat design. As mentioned in the introduction, we now have three types of tremolo systems fitted to the Fender instruments.
The trem fitted to the three guitars reviewed here is the System I which works on the floating spring block mechanism as the original Strat design did. However, we have two knife edge fulcrum points which act as pivots for the assembly and also provide the height adjustment for the unit. Each of the six individual saddles has a roller and is adjustable for intonation via a long screw and is locked into place with an allen-key bolt.
The trem bridge has a fairly standard fine tuning arrangement with a knurled knob for each string mounted at right angles to the bridge.
The tremolo arm is pushed into position; there is an adjustment to change the amount of resistance on the movement of the arm, however, no info was supplied and visibly I can't see a way of achieving this. The arm itself won't be to everyone's liking, I feel. It seemed initially about an inch too long and the actual shaping of the arm takes a little bit of getting used to.
At the nut end of the neck, we have the headstock locking system, which incorporates a three vice system. The individual vices or clamps are tightened by an allen-key bolt and certainly the locking system seems to work very effectively. There are obviously no string guides on the headstock itself, so that if one wasn't a fan of locking nuts you would have to install a couple.
Two strap buttons are fitted in the standard positions and they are of the typical Fender design. A nice addition here is a felt washer between the strap pin and the body.
The pickups and electronics are all fairly standard Fender stuff. Three single coil units with staggered, but non adjustable pole pieces protruding from the white covers. As I said, no spec was provided with the guitar, so I have no idea exactly what type of pickups have been fitted here. The control configuration features a five-way slide toggle switch with a single volume and two tone controls for the neck and middle pickup. We have the front mounting dish jack socket cover as is standard for the Stratocaster. The pickups and electronics are, of course, mounted on the familiar shape Strat scratch plate. For the record, this is a white/black/white three ply laminate which is held in place by 11 cross head screws.
There, are, of course, no surprises in the sound and the obvious thing to say is does it sound as good or better than the older models? Always a difficult one and I think the individual should decide. It certainly sounds like a Strat should. Overall the sound has quite a bright characteristic, probably due to the new strings more than anything else, and the bridge pickup seems to lack a bit of character, whereas the neck and middle pickups have a lot more depth. The intermediate positions two and four on the switch provide those beautiful, characteristic, funky Fender sounds which are so popular at the moment. The volume and tone pots all work well, the volume having a nice smooth taper making violining very easy.
The set up and intonation on the guitar was fine; the action had been set nicely low.
The flat camber of the fretboard takes a little bit of getting used to and I'm sure won't be to everyone's taste, especially diehard Fender fans. However, as far as ease of playing is concerned, the flat radius is an improvement, certainly no choking occurs on the higher frets when the top strings are bent towards the lower strings. I can only hope that all of these Fenders leave the distributors with the same high quality set up.
The tremolo system performs well, but suffers from a couple of inherent design problems, as do many others. Firstly we have the fine tuning problem that when a tuner is being used, there's a tendency to sharpen the note being tuned by pressing down on the trem plate. Secondly, when the tremolo arm is pushed right down, the bass-E goes very slack indeed and is attracted to the pole pieces of the pickups causing a nasty clunk which is actually extremely annoying at high volume playing.
A remedy to this would be to possibly screw the bass end of the three pickups down into the scratchplate a little more. The action of the arm, however, and the tremolo unit, is very smooth, courtesy of three springs. Tuning seems fairly stable, although we do have the usual problem that when using the fine tuners in a live situation it's all too easy to move more than just the string you're trying to retune, and again we have the problem of strings that haven't really been stretched properly. This is the cause of most of the tuning problems.
There is a slight earthing click when the guitar is touched, which could possibly indicate that there is insufficient screening in the electronics or that there is, in fact, a fault in the line to ground. Mind you, it's a fair deal quieter than a lot of early Strats, but then one would expect that this would be the case today.
There is no doubt that this Strat is an extremely fine instrument and at a retail price that is good. The tremolo arm seems to be good, but like any unit takes a little while to get used to and to be adjusted properly. I can't really fault the sound of the instrument, although I wasn't particularly happy with the back pickup. Certainly playability on this instrument was of a very high standard and the neck, after persevering for a while with it, certainly seems to be an improvement playing-wise and is extremely fast.
RRP: £385
Well at last Fender have brought out the Strat that so many other people have been making and producing for quite a few years. The ultimate Hard Rock machine really — single humbucker, single volume control and everything in sight black!
Essentially many features, however, are the same as with the Standard. The neck feels identical, except for this time we have the whole of the neck apart from the fingerboard lacquered with a high gloss black. Once again we have the 22 frets and the flat camber to the neck. This one isn't quite as well set up, possibly as the Standard — the action is a little bit higher and the frets don't seem to be quite so highly polished as on the Standard. The position dots on the face and the side are the same, dust to tie in with the colour scheme, the nut on this sample is black plastic as opposed to white, but is equally as well cut as on the Standard Strat. The body, of course, is identical, with the same contours. This time, however, we have no scratchplate and access to the single volume control is via a back plate. The hardware fitted onto this sample is identical to that fitted onto the Standard. The same Series One tremolo with the only difference being the black chrome finish on everything except the arm, and the fine tuning knobs which are still chrome as well as the individual rollers on the saddles.
When the guitar arrived for review, the top E string was broken so it gave me a chance to test out how easy it is to put a new string on the tremolo. The string is inserted through the tremolo block in typical Strat fashion. Instead of the individual holes in the tremolo back cover we have an open groove and threading a string through the bridge is no great problem at all. This feature is, of course, found on many Japanese Strat copies and it is quite ironic that now Fender themselves have copied the Japanese.
One annoying feature of the new Series One trem bridge is that the adjustment is actually achieved by changing the height of the two posts, which is obviously far from fine. For example, the D string on this guitar buzzed a little bit around the 7th fret, and instead of having to change the whole relief on the neck, being able to heighten the string saddle would have alleviated this problem in a matter of seconds.
As far as the pickup and circuitry is concerned, we couldn't really have a much more simple system than this. A single open coiled humbucker is used in the bridge position, the back row of pole pieces are adjustable, the row nearest the neck aren't. This is mounted in a typical humbucking fashion and is controlled by the single volume control, which has a rather smart Fender knob with a black, ribbed, rubber insert. Strangely, there is no push/pull switch incorporated into the volume pot to split the humbucker, and on closer inspection I found the humbucker just to be a two conductor, which means that to install a coil tap or series parallel switch function, the pickup itself would have to be re-wired. Quite why Fender haven't included a four conductor pickup on this guitar is a little beyond me really, as it should be quite obvious that guitarists would want to do some modifications.
The bleakness of the guitar is further enhanced by the fact that the jack socket is on the side of the guitar, mounted on a rubber surround — a position I have always felt is far better for a jack than on the face of any guitar.
In action, this contemporary Strat really lives up to its name. It's obviously a 'no nonsense', Rock n' Roll guitar, especially aimed towards the Eddie Van Halen school of playing I would imagine. The pickup itself, is quite a high output humbucker — the difference in output from the Standard to the Contemporary Strat is very noticeable. It's a bright pick up too, not suffering from the humbucking muddiosis syndrome! Turned down, of course, a little bit of clarity is lost, but that's probably not a bad thing bearing in mind the brightness of the pickup. The taper on the volume control is good and the position right by the humbucker pickup enables violining effects to be used to the maximum. The wonderful thing of course, about having so few controls on any guitar means that the player has to do just what he is supposed to — that is, play the guitar and not worry about which switch or knob does what!
Despite the fact that we have the same trem system on this Strat, it seemed to work better than the one on the Standard; there aren't so many clicks when the tremolo is moved and the strings do not attract to the magnetism of the pickup. Strangely, the action of the pickup is vastly different too. We are talking very small points here, but picking up the two guitars and comparing the tremolos, the differences are quite obvious. Certainly, however, there is no problem going from normal pitch to no pitch at all (as it were) with this system.
It certainly is a fine guitar to play despite the fact that the action isn't as good as on the Standard. With amp levels cranked up high, you can almost hear the kind of sound you're going to get before you get it.
The high edge on the pickup really does make quite a difference in a live situation and really allows those sparkling lead runs to ring out clearly. The sustain of the guitar itself is good, but it is certainly benefitted when an overdrive or distortion pedal is used. Despite the fact that both the Standard and Contemporary feel fairly similar, they are really like chalk and cheese — the sound of the guitars is vastly different and this affects your whole approach to playing the instrument and that is, of course, the way they have been designed.
The Contemporary Strat looks smashing in its all black get-up, but is about as subtle as a sledge hammer!
A two pickup version of the guitar is offered with the tremolo system for approximately another £45 and also Systems Two and Three tremolos are fitted to this Contemporary Strat.
If you play no nonsense, out and Rock 'n' Roll, then this guitar is probably right up your street.
RRP: £450
The apparent unpopularity of the Telecaster these days is reflected in only three models being offered in the present Japanese-made Fender and Fender Squier Series. However, this Contemporary Series Telecaster is a fine beasty indeed! As to be expected, the features are very similar to those of the Contemporary Strat — the obvious visual differences are the different body shape and the different headstock shape. The neck seems to follow the profile of the other two Strats perfectly, and is once again fitted with that 22nd fret. Once again it's bolted to the body with four screws plus a facility for the micro-tilt adjustment.
As with the Contemporary Strat, we have a black lacquer on the neck, black chrome or lacquer on the machines, locking nut and tremolo system, but the lacquer on the body is nice dark pink metallic.
As is typical with the Telecaster body shape, we have no contouring at all, so after the comfort of the Strat it takes a little bit of getting used to the rather angular feel of the Telecaster.
Once again, we have a Rosewood fingerboard featuring the same type of fretting and position markers as the previous Contemporary and to tie in with the colour scheme we have, once again, a black nut. The hardware on this Telecaster is identical to that on the Contemporary Strat, though the pickup and control system is a mite more versatile. This time we have two black, open coiled humbuckers with the same pole arrangements plus volume, tone, three position selector switch and series parallel selection via a single mini toggle switch situated below the tone control. Whether or not the pickups are the same as those fitted on the Strat, I do not know. Mind you, the back pickup does sound fairly similar in the full coil mode; the single tone control is, in fact a TBX control which you may remember from the Elite Telecaster introduced a couple of years back. On that sample they had a TBX and an MBX which were active tone controls. This guitar isn't active, yet we still apparently have the same controls — must be something a little bit amiss here, as from the centre detente to the full up position, there's hardly any increase in treble at all, you really have to listen closely to detect it, and frankly I wasn't sure. From the centre detente to off we get a very small reduction in the high frequencies and a nasty click at the bottom of this control's travel.
However, the single double coil switch, which works on both pickups, gives the guitar a little bit more tonality and as is obvious the guitar is a lot more versatile than the Contemporary Strat.
Overall, the Contemporary Telecaster plays very well indeed. The set up on this sample was good and the intonation all okay.
The pickups seems to have a character that is more suited to high volume playing as opposed to low level things — they seem somehow to be a little bit lacking in that Fender character which we have come to know and love.
Finally the tremolo on this sample was set up well with no apparent problems at all.
In their own right these three instruments reviewed here are very good and the prices being asked seem about fair, although possibly just verging on the high side. However, as Fender guitars, one has to ask the question — do they live up to their history?
The Standard Stratocaster is as good a Strat as you'll find anywhere, maybe not the best sounding, but certainly a good Strat guitar. The new tremolo fitted is certainly an improvement in design, although how players react to it remains to be seen.
For: Tremolo, neck and fingerboard, modern styling
Against: Price, not typical Fender sound percentage of players.
FENDER GUITARS — RRP: See Copy
Gear in this article:
Guitar > Fender > Standard Strat
Guitar > Fender > Contemporary Strat
Guitar > Fender > Contemporary Tele
Gear Tags:
Review by Dave Burrluck
mu:zines is the result of thousands of hours of effort, and will require many thousands more going forward to reach our goals of getting all this content online.
If you value this resource, you can support this project - it really helps!
New issues that have been donated or scanned for us this month.
All donations and support are gratefully appreciated - thank you.
Do you have any of these magazine issues?
If so, and you can donate, lend or scan them to help complete our archive, please get in touch via the Contribute page - thanks!