Guitar: Fender Stratocaster

The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as "Strat", is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top horn for balance while standing. The Stratocaster has been used by many leading guitarists and can be heard on many historic recordings. Along with the Gibson Les Paul, the Gibson SG and the Fender Telecaster, it is one of the most common and enduring models of electric guitar in the world. The design of the Stratocaster has transcended the field of music to rank among the classic industrial designs of all time; examples have been exhibited at major museums around the world.

In its original form, the Stratocaster was offered in a 2-color sunburst finish on a solid, deeply contoured ash body, a one-piece maple neck with 21 frets, black dot inlays, and Kluson machine heads, until 1956, when Fender started making bodies made from solid alder. There was also a set of available custom colors that wasn't standardized until 1960. These custom colors were mostly automobile lacquer colors made by Dupont and could be had for an extra 5% cost. The single-ply, 8-screw hole white pickguard was a unique concept that allowed mounting all electronic components—except the recessed jack plate—in one easily removed assembly. Subsequent Stratocaster designs (by both Fender and imitators) may or may not have improved on the original in usability and sound, but vintage Fender models are still often worth large amounts of money, and many prefer the timbre of older models.

The Stratocaster has been widely copied; as a result, the term "Strat," although a trademark of Fender Musical Instrument Corporation, is often used generically when referring to any guitar that has the same general features as the original, regardless of manufacturer.

Design and popularity changes

The Stratocaster's radically sleek, contoured body shape (officially referred to by Fender as the "Comfort Contour Body") was a marked difference to the flat, slab-like design of the Telecaster. Its double cutaways allowed players easier access to higher positions on the neck. The body features a unique curve on the upper back and a gradual curve at the front bottom, where the player's right arm rests. The one-piece maple neck's uniquely-shaped wide "dogleg"-style headstock again contrasted to the very narrow Fender Telecaster's headstock shape. The strings are anchored on a through-body pivot bridge attached with springs to a 'claw' in the bridge cavity on the back of the guitar. Original Stratocasters were shipped with five springs anchoring the bridge flat against the body. Players were able to remove the backplate covering the bridge, remove two of the springs and tighten the claw screws to allow the bridge to 'float,' with the pull of the strings in one direction countering the pull of the springs in the opposite direction. Once in the floating position, players can move the tremolo arm mounted on the bridge up or down to increase or decrease the pitch of the notes being played. Many players, such as Eric Clapton, who dislike the tuning instability of floating bridge Stratocasters, usually block the tremolo bridge by inserting a small wedge of wood in against the inertia block (the gap towards the bottom of the guitar body) and placing excessive tension on the springs, pulling in the opposite direction, to lock the bridge in a fixed position. Some Strats have a fixed bridge in place of the tremolo assembly; these are colloquially called "hard-tails."

The Stratocaster features three single coil pickups, with the output originally selected by a 3-way switch. Guitarists soon discovered that by jamming the switch in between the 1st and 2nd position, both the bridge and middle pickups could be selected, and similarly, the middle and neck pickups could be selected between the 2nd and 3rd position. This trick became widespread and Fender responded with the 5-way pickup selector (a standard feature since 1977), which allowed these tonal combinations and provided better switching stability. The "quacky" tone of the middle and bridge pickups, popularized by players such as David Gilmour, Rory Gallagher, Mark Knopfler, Bob Dylan, Scott Thurston, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray, can be obtained by using the pickup selector into positions 2 and 4. The neck and middle pickups are each wired to a tone control that incorporates a single, shared tone capacitor, whereas the bridge pickup, which is slanted towards the high strings for a more trebly sound, has no tone control for maximum brightness. On many modern Stratocasters, the first tone affects the neck pickup; the second tone affects the middle and bridge pickups; on some Artist Series models (Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy signature guitars), the first tone is a presence circuit that cuts or boosts treble and bass frequencies, affecting all the pickups; the second tone is an active midrange booster that boosts the midrange frequencies up to 25dB (12dB on certain models) to produce a fatter humbucker-like sound.

The volume level on all three pickups is controlled by a single volume knob. The placement of the knobs allows for relatively easy manipulation of the sound with the right hand while playing.

The three pickups were originally identical in their construction. With the rising popularity of using pickups in combination, Fender introduced a new feature in 1977 coinciding with the standard 5-position switch; a reverse-wound, reverse-polarity middle pickup. As the description implies, the magnetic polarity of this pickup is opposite the other two, as is the direction of the wire winding around the bobbin. This provides a hum-canceling effect (removing hum induced by poorly shielded, medium to high output AC devices) in positions 2 and 4 on the selector switch. This principle had been known for many years beforehand, being applied in the form of Gibson's humbucking pickup and Fender's own split-coil pickup used on the Precision Bass. Today, virtually all Fender instruments with more than one single-coil pickup (most notably the Stratocaster, Telecaster and Jazz Bass) are wired in such a manner as to provide a hum-canceling combination of pickups.

At one point, Fender switched to producing guitars with the bridge pickup, located farthest from the highest-amplitude portion of the vibrating strings, slightly "over-wound", thus increasing the signal output from that pickup. Even more overwound pickups ("hot-wired" designs) became popular, either for all three pickups (a "hot" configuration), or for the bridge position only (so-called "Texas Hot" due to its popularity among Southern Rock guitarists).

The Stratocaster is noted for its bright, clean and 'twangy' sounds. The neck pickup has a mellower, fuller and louder sound compared to the brighter and sharper tone of the bridge pickup. The middle pickup provides a sound somewhere between the two.

Buddy Holly was one of the pioneers of the Stratocaster and used the instrument on virtually all of his songs with The Crickets. During the recording of Peggy Sue, rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan was not needed for the song, and instead stood next to Holly, and flipped the selector switch of Holly's guitar from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup for the guitar solo.

From 1959 to 1967, the Stratocaster was made with a rosewood fretboard as standard, as well as color choices other than sunburst, including a variety of colorful car-like paint jobs that appealed to the nascent surfer and hot-rod culture, pioneered by such bands as the Surfaris, the Ventures and the Beach Boys. Fender would paint any guitar from the DuPont car color range for 5% over purchase price. Dick Dale is a prominent Stratocaster player who also collaborated with Leo Fender in developing the Fender Showman amplifier. In the early 1960s, the instrument was also championed by Hank Marvin—guitarist for the Shadows, a band that originally backed Cliff Richard and then produced instrumentals of its own. So distinctive was Hank Marvin's sound that many musicians, including the Beatles, initially deliberately avoided the Stratocaster. However, in 1965, George Harrison and John Lennon of the Beatles both acquired Stratocasters and used them for Help!, Rubber Soul and later recording sessions; the double unison guitar solo on "Nowhere Man" is played by Harrison and Lennon on their new Stratocasters.
Eric Clapton plays his signature model at the Tsunami Relief concert, January 22, 2005

The one-piece maple neck was discontinued in 1958. From 1958 until summer 1964 the fingerboard was a piece of rosewood milled flat on the underside and glued to the maple. This has become known as a "slab fingerboard". The slab fingerboard was approx 4.8 mm at its thickest point in the centre of the neck under strings 3 and 4. From mid 1964 until 1979 the rosewood and maple were pre radiused and the fingerboard became known as curved, round laminate or "veneer", having an even thickness across the neck unlike the previous slab type. This design change was made because Fender encountered problems with some of the necks twisting with the slab design and this new method of construction reduced this problem significantly. Maple fingerboards were available as a special order only. The following year the pickguard design changed to a 3-ply (4-ply on some colors) "multi-layer" with 11 screw holes. After purchasing Fender in 1965, CBS began to offer both a maple neck with a separate glued-on laminated maple fretboard in 1967 (known as a "maple cap" neck) and the rosewood fretboard over maple neck remaining the other neck option. Two years later, the CBS-owned Fender companies re-introduced the 1-piece maple neck after a 10-year absence. The primary reason for the switch to rosewood in 1959 was that Gibson guitars had rosewood fingerboards and customers wanted this and that the maple fingerboards discolored very quickly because the old nitro cellulose lacquer was not very durable and wore through on the fretboard very fast. Since the introduction of the Fender Stratocaster Ultra series in 1989, ebony was officially selected as a fretboard material on some models (although several Elite Series Stratocasters manufactured in 1983/84 such as the Gold and Walnut were available with a stained ebony fretboard). In December 1965 the Stratocaster was given a broader headstock with altered decals to match the size of the Jazzmaster and Jaguar.

Eric Clapton Stratocaster
Series : Artist
Model : 0117602806