What is your favorite model/year Stratocaster?

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I always hated teles too. But I bought a MIK HSS Tele with Humbuckers and it changed my mind. Fender Jags and Mustangs and MusicMasters are cool too. Its all in the setup too. I go over each guitar and set it up to my taiste.
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I like my '66 strat. It's the best playing and sounding I've ever played. New ones feel cheezy compared to the'66.
 
1) 1991 MIM SSS - this is actually the best strat there is. I got it in 93-94. I don't know what it is about the pickups in this guitar, but they're not as shrill as typical strat pickups. They almost sound like P-90's, and that's a good thing. It hums and buzzes like crazy though. It's never my go-to guitar, but it's good for a rhythm track opposite the SG. I don't use it for leads unless I'm doing something surfy.

2) 2000 Squire cheapo Strat - This thing is a useless piece of shit in it's stock configuration. I bought it for 50 bucks many years ago because I needed a guitar at the time and my Mexican was broken. It sounds so bad that it inspired me to buckle down and fix the Mexican and I haven't touched the Squire since.

Whenever I go to a guitar store, I always grab a USA strat or tele just to see if my mind can be changed. Nope. Still hate them. They feel so cheap and tinny. Gibsons wallop all over Fenders. I do like Jaguars and Mustangs and other oddball Fenders though.

1991 MIM SSS best strat there is? I would have to disagree.
 
They do have that going for them ..... close to indestructible and if anything does get messed up you can just unbolt it and bolt a new one on.


Without a doubt Lt. ..... over the many years that I have seen many a guitar take a major fall ..... it has been the strats that have always survived.

I was in a music store once and the Manager was trying to fix the arrangement this wall of PA cabs that went from floor to ceiling.
It only took a little movement of what turned out to be the keystone of the whole stack to send every cabinet crashing down onto a display of no less that 20 strats in stands. :eek:

There were no fatalities!
 
I always hated teles too. But I bought a MIK HSS Tele with Humbuckers and it changed my mind. Fender Jags and Mustangs and MusicMasters are cool too. Its all in the setup too. I go over each guitar and set it up to my taiste.
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beautiful ax man, but I'm gonna have to say that that's not really a Tele. I mean, I know it says Fender on the headstock and it's shaped like a Tele but it has a set neck and carved maple top and humbuckers. That guitar is gonna be a lot more like a paul than a tele.
Definitely not what anyone thinks of when they say tele.

Purty though and I'd probably like that ax a lot more than a regular tele.
 
I'll never understand you guys and your love of the Strat...

they're great til you realize you'll never get a monster tone out of it...and the strings are too close together...and the volume knob is in the way...and they're noisy...and don't sit well on a strap...and...

...they do look nice tho
 
Disagree all you want. You'd be wrong, but you're within your rights to do so.

Haha, i've played it. It's not my favorite. I don't understand how you could label something (which heavily relies on opinion) 'best strat there is.'
 
Haha, i've played it. It's not my favorite. I don't understand how you could label something (which heavily relies on opinion) 'best strat there is.'

It's simple, really. Let me explain it to you. If I'm wrong because of my opinion, then you're opinion is wrong too, and my original opinion was actually correct in that my 91 MIM strat is the best strat ever. See how that works? If we're going on opinions, I can't be wrong.
 
beautiful ax man, but I'm gonna have to say that that's not really a Tele. I mean, I know it says Fender on the headstock and it's shaped like a Tele but it has a set neck and carved maple top and humbuckers. That guitar is gonna be a lot more like a paul than a tele.
Definitely not what anyone thinks of when they say tele.

Purty though and I'd probably like that ax a lot more than a regular tele.

The pickups and layout are what got me. I do hope to pick up a traditional tele when one comes up on auction. Strictly American made that is. Its funny how I have all these young kids with their BC Riches and Ibenez, etc.. shredder guitars come in and the first thing they grab is the Tele. After a minute of playing they want it.
 
oh god greg, everytime you're in a god damn topic it's a laugh riot lol

a strat playing powerchords through a maxed out marshall sounds cool, yeah i guess, but humbuckers sound 10x better. i love my strat and all, and clearly the '89 strat+ is the best strat that was ever created by fender :) , but i don't use it nearly as much as my parker. that being said, clearly i prefer humbuckers over single coils majority the time (except for funk, because that neck pickup sounds much better than a neck hum for that style). but saying it feels small and tinny? what the hell does that even mean? how can a guitar feel tinny? like, the sound? my strat is pretty damn heavy; about as heavy as my brothers les paul. the necks are obviously different, with the LP having the flat neck (which i can't stand whatsoever) and the strat having the rounded neck, which is much more comfortable to play.

i like humbuckers, but i'm not a fan of gibsons...i'm into strat-shaped humbucker guitars moreso than LP's and SG's.

oh and also dude, you bought a 2000s squier strat, of course it's going to sound and play like shit. it's a god damn squier. it's a god damn squier from when squiers sucked 100x more than they do now because fender realized they had to up their cheap game to even compete with epiphone.
 
oh god greg, everytime you're in a god damn topic it's a laugh riot lol

a strat playing powerchords through a maxed out marshall sounds cool, yeah i guess, but humbuckers sound 10x better. i love my strat and all, and clearly the '89 strat+ is the best strat that was ever created by fender :) , but i don't use it nearly as much as my parker. that being said, clearly i prefer humbuckers over single coils majority the time (except for funk, because that neck pickup sounds much better than a neck hum for that style). but saying it feels small and tinny? what the hell does that even mean? how can a guitar feel tinny? like, the sound? my strat is pretty damn heavy; about as heavy as my brothers les paul. the necks are obviously different, with the LP having the flat neck (which i can't stand whatsoever) and the strat having the rounded neck, which is much more comfortable to play.

i like humbuckers, but i'm not a fan of gibsons...i'm into strat-shaped humbucker guitars moreso than LP's and SG's.

oh and also dude, you bought a 2000s squier strat, of course it's going to sound and play like shit. it's a god damn squier. it's a god damn squier from when squiers sucked 100x more than they do now because fender realized they had to up their cheap game to even compete with epiphone.

Lol. I don't know about all Squires sounding like shit, but mine sure does. My Squire P-Bass sounds fine though. Anyway, I like humbuckers too. 90% of my guitar recordings are done with an SG. I love Gibsons and Epiphones. I'm not into strat bodied humbucker guitars. Way too cheesy. I was just saying, for my kind of music (power-punk, I guess you could call it) powerchords roaring through a single-coil is a nice 2nd rhythm track. SG on one side, strat on the other. That's my usual formula. The strat on the bridge pickup works great for that. It worked for countless punk bands before me - Ramones in particular. I like the sound. If I was a guitarist in a band though, the strat would never leave the house. It would be an SG or an LP all the time.
 
I love my '09 Strat. The neck is perfect for my hands. The tone is very sweet. I don't see any problem in how the strap holds the guitar, in fact I think it's perfect. I actually picked out the wrong one, I wanted an HSS but got the SSS. Surprisingly it sounds much better than I ever expected. I did build a partscaster tele with ebony neck and humbuckers. I liked it, but there were some problems (long story) so sold it. I bought an Epi Sg jr. because I always wanted an sg. I really don't like it. The nose diving neck of course is one problem, but the biggest issue for me is the neck. It is just too thin and my hands begin to ache after 10 min. or so of playing. So I'm really disappointed with the sg and les pauls are heavy so don't think my back could take it.
 
Lol. I don't know about all Squires sounding like shit, but mine sure does. My Squire P-Bass sounds fine though. Anyway, I like humbuckers too. 90% of my guitar recordings are done with an SG. I love Gibsons and Epiphones. I'm not into strat bodied humbucker guitars. Way too cheesy. I was just saying, for my kind of music (power-punk, I guess you could call it) powerchords roaring through a single-coil is a nice 2nd rhythm track. SG on one side, strat on the other. That's my usual formula. The strat on the bridge pickup works great for that. It worked for countless punk bands before me - Ramones in particular. I like the sound. If I was a guitarist in a band though, the strat would never leave the house. It would be an SG or an LP all the time.

i hear you...i was never really into punk so idk the answer to this, but do they palm mute a lot? i'd think that hums would sound better with palm muting...but if not, you're right on the mark for using single coils, cuz i mean, high pitched twangy single coils through a maxed out marshall stack is obnoxious as shit, and i'm pretty sure that's the sound that loud ass punk goes for lol

the new squiers don't sound as shitty, but the older ones were garbage. i've got a '96 squier strat that sounded like absolute dick, but then i wired it up all crazy with some new pickups, put hums in it, and sometimes i still use it....(it had a duncan JB in it, then i got my parker which had a JB in it too, and well now i always use the parker because atleast that things wired up right...the squier buzzes and hums bc apparently i don't know what i'm doing with wires lol) and i had a squier p-bass as my first bass, and yeah it sounded like dick. it was the affinity series, an '00...when i got my schecter, fender jazz, and G&L, i took a screwdriver and popped the frets off the squier to use it as a fretless lol...and haven't touched it in like 6 years.

so i take it you're not big on a fat strat then? even if it's like, super great quality and plays good? the guitarist in my band plays a strat...single coils...nice like '02 american strat, but through his Vox amp, it sounds so god damn twangy i can't stand it..it doesn't suit our type of rock at all, so i've been trying to get him to get a humbucker guitar for months lol

as for your recording style, that's a cool combo, i agree...i recently did a song where i did the same, did the parker in the right channel and my strat on the bridge in the left..used some OD pedals with it though, but the mixture of the two guitars actually came out pretty sweet and metal sounding lol
 
i hear you...i was never really into punk so idk the answer to this, but do they palm mute a lot? i'd think that hums would sound better with palm muting...but if not, you're right on the mark for using single coils, cuz i mean, high pitched twangy single coils through a maxed out marshall stack is obnoxious as shit, and i'm pretty sure that's the sound that loud ass punk goes for lol
Look in my sig and go to my reverbnation page for an example of what I'm talking about. Play the song "Wal-Mart at Midnight" and/or "I Can't Sleep". Those songs are my mexistrat through a JCM800. I didn't use the SG on those. I don't think the guitars sound high-pitched or twangy on those songs, but maybe I'm just used to it. As for standard palm mutes, a single coil obviously won't give you a huge meaty chugga-chugga. It's more of an articulate chicka-chicka, but it still sounds good. You can get it pretty meaty if you want by just altering your hand position.

so i take it you're not big on a fat strat then? even if it's like, super great quality and plays good? the guitarist in my band plays a strat...single coils...nice like '02 american strat, but through his Vox amp, it sounds so god damn twangy i can't stand it..it doesn't suit our type of rock at all, so i've been trying to get him to get a humbucker guitar for months lol
Yeah sometimes you just have to have humbuckers. I just sold a "fat strat" style Strat not too long ago. It was true USA Strat with a Seymour Duncan humbucker in the bridge. Pro set-up, maple neck, all that shit. I'm not sure on the year, but I think it was early 90's. A guy I know left it with me cuz I loaned him some money. He didn't pay me back by the agreed upon date, so I sold it. Anyway, I hated that guitar. I never even used it. I didn't like the way it played or the sound of it. It sounded fat and muddy. I didn't like it at all.

as for your recording style, that's a cool combo, i agree...i recently did a song where i did the same, did the parker in the right channel and my strat on the bridge in the left..used some OD pedals with it though, but the mixture of the two guitars actually came out pretty sweet and metal sounding lol
Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. I think a strat rhythm track coupled with something else is a nice combination for some variety in tones. To me, that's all they're good for.
 
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I like the 1968 Hendrix style strat. The one I actually played that I liked the most was a 1983 Japanese Squier, I think one of the first made.
 
greg, i like the tone on walmart...it's that standard strat sound, and you're totally right about that punk sound...powerchords are probably clearer through the strat and less chunky..that's a damn good tone. what settings did you use on the JCM, do you remember? i'm still trying to get a nice EQ setting on my JCM2000 for the strat. you use an SM57 on there too? that tones sick

those drums all you playing mic'ed up too? that's some damn good quality lol i'm jealous
 
greg, i like the tone on walmart...it's that standard strat sound, and you're totally right about that punk sound...powerchords are probably clearer through the strat and less chunky..that's a damn good tone. what settings did you use on the JCM, do you remember? i'm still trying to get a nice EQ setting on my JCM2000 for the strat. you use an SM57 on there too? that tones sick

those drums all you playing mic'ed up too? that's some damn good quality lol i'm jealous

Yup, them drums be me too. Thanks.

I don't remember what the exact setting were on the JCM800 for "Wal-Mart", but with the Strat I usually keep all the EQ knobs around 5, crank the pre-amp gain to like 6-8, and put the master volume on like 3-5. 1960A cab with a 57 a little off-axis on the center of the cone. It's fucking loud as shit.
 
By my count, and I coulda missed a couple, I've owned 17 Fender guitars, mostly Strats....couple of Tele's and the occasional Jaguar. Some of these were SLI's...(Strat-like instruments) a couple were handmade bodies (from scratch, exotic woods, glued up and cut out on the band saw by me)....Four were investment grade instruments...One played itself...A 1963 beat-to-shit Strat I paid $175 for back in the high-life days. I wasnt worthy of that guitars talent level. My 1987 MIJ Strat is as close to an 'old' one I've seen. I have a cheap mex with an early Gilmore EMG plate set-up and its as good as any I've owned or played. These EMG's are the first generation of the quick connects and it has more balls as well as the sweet shimmer that old single-coils get when they're about ready to give it up. And no noise. Strat purists frown at me while they're trying to manuver into the position that cuts back the hum......

I had a 65 Jaguar that had the best neck of ANY guitar I've owned. It had a nice level sound, not Tele, not Strat, but something like the Rick guitars treble position sound.

I have a parts guitar now that has a Chandler body, a 30 yr old Boogie Bodies boat shaped maple neck with a 10 degree radius board, 30 yr old Seymour Duncan humbuckers and a vintage Strat p/u in the middle. It does most of what I need in my studio.

There was a 77 maple body hardtail that I had that was a great guitar. I traded it on a 65 SG Special because I always liked the P90's. The SG took off with an ex-friend, who if he's reading this(you know who you are) is STILL on the hit list.
 
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