Guitar Story #8: Fender Standard Strat
Details
- Guitar: 1983 Fender Standard Strat
- Year Purchased: 1985
- Price Paid: $350.00 ($841.86 in 2021 dollars)
- Notes: YUCK!
That time Fender LOST ITS MIND. In 1985 I popped in for strings at this little hole in the wall record/music shop in Midland, MI and saw this on a stand by the counter. It had a $350.00 price tag on it which would have been a good in-store deal for any USA Strat that WASN’T THIS ONE. I had no idea that this model existed until I got home and noticed that it didn’t look like the Strats I was used to. I was starting to believe I had purchased a forgery but then while flipping through a guitar magazine I came across this ad:
The great deal I thought I’d gotten went up in smoke…but then I figured it was still an American made Fender guitar so how bad could it be? I went on to have a way too long relationship with the world’s worst Stratocaster. To Fender’s credit they did have a lot going on in 1983 with rolling out Vintage Reissues and the new Elite series and all. I think this model just got rushed out the door.
- Good:
- It was good wood and woodworking with nice tight neck pocket and well finished neck and body.
- It looked sort of like a Stratocaster.
- It sounded sort of like a Stratocaster.
- Bad:
- Flat, uninspiring fretboard (12 inch radius is just wrong on a Fender)
- Horrible top-loader bridge with saddles that wore really fast and broke strings
- Only looked sort of like a Stratocaster.
- Only sounded sort of like a Stratocaster.
I could never get this guitar to sound very good. Especially considering I was coming from the ultra-fat sounding Ibanez Iceman which I sold once I got this. I know Strat bridge pickups can be shrill but this one sounded like an aluminium ladder going down 16 flights of concrete stairs. I tried swapping it with a Duncan and it made 0 difference. My tech and I spent a lot of time trying to eliminate the string breakage problem. We tried different neck angles, new saddles, plastic sheaths around the strings at the ball end. I carried extra saddles with me in a toolbox for years because after a few months the strings would eat through the plating on the saddle and I thought maybe that was causing the string munching.
I had to deal with this guitar for a lot of years because this happened to be a very “hand-to-mouth” time in my life. I was having a BLAST but there simply was no money for guitars. I will say I was more than a little happy when I finally did unload this. It put me off Strats for YEARS.