How many strats before you give up?

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  • dindudedindude Frets: 8534
    I've lost shit loads of cash on guitars over years, I cannot lie. Strats though are the best - I could live with just a Start and be happy if I had to.
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  • robinbowesrobinbowes Frets: 3021
    I've had two Strats. I still have both. In fact, I nearly have three. Let me explain...

    #1 was a MIJ '57 Fotoflame. I say "was" because I have replaced everything on it, except the neck. Literally *everything* - body, hardware, pickups, everything. It has Kinman Impersonator pickups with the Kinman K7 switching system, which makes it quite versatile. It's my "comfy slippers" guitar. I'm currently playing my semis (Yamaha SA2000/2200) and my Telecaster a lot these days, but it always feels like coming home when I pick up the Strat. 

    #2 is a "project". It's a MIJ reverse headstock model, with a Floyd Rose trem. I have been trying to build it out with a Ghost pickup system and MIDI, etc. for years. I just never make time. I have all the bits, I just need to assemble it.

    #3 is all the left over bits from the Fotoflame - if I get another neck I can put it back together! :)

    R.
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  • rlwrlw Frets: 4671
    So far, 4 Strats and 4 Teles of which only 2 Strats remain.  A Highway One and an American Special, both of which I love but one must go soon.
    Save a cow.  Eat a vegetarian.
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  • HattigolHattigol Frets: 8176
    dindude said:
    I've lost shit loads of cash on guitars over years, I cannot lie. Strats though are the best - I could live with just a Start and be happy if I had to.
    That'd be a good Start. Sorry, Strat. 
    "Anybody can play. The note is only 20%. The attitude of the motherf*cker who plays it is  80%" - Miles Davis
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  • Philly_QPhilly_Q Frets: 22516
    Hick81 said:
    I decided to log all the guitars I’ve ever owned since I started playing in 1996, roughly what they cost and what I sold them for. This was to make a point to my wife that guitars are a sound financial investments akin to long term ISA’s or London property.

    £500 down over 22 years excluding the guitars I still own. 

    If I had a wife I think I'd have extreme difficulty persuading her guitars are a sound investment.

    The list of my guitar sales and purchases since 1982 more closely resembles the collapse of the Weimar republic...


    Strats, I've had lots, working up through Squiers and MIJs and MIMs and American Standards and AVRI... when I got to Custom Shop they've turned out to be keepers.

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  • StuartMac290StuartMac290 Frets: 1428
    I think I've had around 12-15 strats over the years, but only have one left now. By far the best was a beautiful Olympic White CS Dealer Select model I got from Coda and sold here a few months ago.

    Part of the problem is I've literally never used the bridge pickup on a strat if there's been a decent Tele around. I'm also not a huge fan of the clucky in-between sounds. Don't use whammys other than the occasional Bigsby either.

    A Tele with a strat neck pickup would be far more my preference. I much prefer the way teles hang too.
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  • DLMDLM Frets: 2513
    @StuartMac290 I think you and @Strat54 are describing the same phenomenon, which I recognise from Jerry Donahue interviews, and which led to his Fender signature series Strat having a bridge pickup built like @Strat54's. I think his later signature guitars with other companies had similar set-ups, too.
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  • OctafishOctafish Frets: 1937
    I've been a Strat player since I started playing 28 years ago. I started on a Squier Strat and went through a few other Squiers and MIM, but kept going to back to my first Squier as it seemed to have 'it' soundwise. The only issue with it being the neck's a little on the thin side and started to give me cramps when playing long sets.

    Nowadays my main Strat is a Japanese 58. I bought it new a few years ago after trying it out in a shop on the spur of the moment and finding it had one of the best feeling/sized necks I've ever played. I've changed the pickups for some Seymour Duncans I already had and I don't find it lacking in anything or me gassing for something 'better' :o so it must be good. I've also picked up a Japanese 68 which is also pretty darn good, if not quiite my number 1.

    One last Strat I'd like is a Candy Apple Red one for nothing else than I'd like one in Candy Apple Red...
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  • StuartMac290StuartMac290 Frets: 1428
    DLM said:
    @StuartMac290 I think you and @Strat54 are describing the same phenomenon, which I recognise from Jerry Donahue interviews, and which led to his Fender signature series Strat having a bridge pickup built like @Strat54's. I think his later signature guitars with other companies had similar set-ups, too.
    Indeed. He also moved the bridge pickup further away from the bridge on his Hellecaster strat
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  • vasselmeyervasselmeyer Frets: 3664
    I like the idea of Stratocasters but never got on with them. There are three things wrong with them:
    The bridge pickup is weedy and way too spiky
    The middle pickup is in the wrong place for the way I play
    They feel delicate (to me), yes I know they're really quite hard to smash up, but that's how they feel to me)

    Some of my favourite guitarists are Strat players. I LOVE the sound Jeff Healey gets and I am a massive fan of SRV and Gary Moore (when he plays Strats) but to me they're wrong. I'm still not sure I won't get another one though. I've had three so far.

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  • ricorico Frets: 1220
    I love the sound of strats but I can't get on with them. The middle pickup is bang in the wrong place for me so if I lower it out of the way then the inbetween positions are too quiet. They also never really have enough oomph for me. And the volume knob is annoying in the standard location.
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  • thegummythegummy Frets: 4389
    DLM said:
    Hick81 said:
    It only posted half of the message, let me try and finish 

    OK...


    I'm a let you finish but Harry Seven has the most Retail Price Index busting guitar collection of all time!
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  • MistyMisty Frets: 135
    edited May 2018
    You like them or you don't. I Have three, one which I bought new in '95, one I bought new in '97, and my most used one, a '64 which I bought around '99. I also take a Gibbo to gigs, and invariably some smart arse will tell me the Gibbo sounds better. It probably does, but I still favour the Strat as my main axe, and it sounds good to me. I'm just comfortable with a Strat, and that's it really.

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  • BlueingreenBlueingreen Frets: 2582
    Push comes to shove I'm a Strat player, although my current no 1 "Strat" is a Tom Anderson Short Classic.  Gets rid of the things I don't like about Strats (scale length, weedy bridge pickup) and keeps the things I do like (Neck pickup, 4th position, Nile Rogers funk sounds, trem).
    “To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
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  • Matt_McGMatt_McG Frets: 321
    I haven't owned a strat since the catalogue-bought Marlin I had when I was 15.

    Which is ironic, since I love the sound of them. Many of my favourite recorded guitar sounds are Strats. Something about the neck pickup, and the in-between sounds on a good Strat just sounds right, to me. 




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  • Hick81Hick81 Frets: 122
    Right, it seems like 10 strats is proof I need to get used to the fact they aren’t for me....unless I try custom shop! 
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  • richardhomerrichardhomer Frets: 24793
    edited May 2018
    Hick81 said:
    Right, it seems like 10 strats is proof I need to get used to the fact they aren’t for me....unless I try custom shop! 
    I love Strats - my favourite electric guitar - but going upmarket is unlikely to alter your view if you don’t get on with them.

    I have the same issue with Les Pauls - the high-end ones I’ve played are invariably ‘better’ instruments than the cheaper ones I’ve owned/played - but ultimately not for me.
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  • RabsRabs Frets: 2602
    edited May 2018 tFB Trader

    One  

    Never really been in to strats..  Don't get on with the 9.5" radius..  But one day I really just decided I had to at least try cos well its a Strat, Hendrix is one of my faves so just from that alone I felt I had to give it a go ..

    This one a Mexi Deluxe.. I had it for a year, never got on with it really even though I wanted too. Was pretty though.

    https://i.imgur.com/9XOdhCE.jpg

    The guy I sold it too said he loved it more than his USA Standard Strat. So at least someone ended up happy with it.

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  • Philly_QPhilly_Q Frets: 22516
    Hick81 said:
    Right, it seems like 10 strats is proof I need to get used to the fact they aren’t for me....unless I try custom shop! 
    I love Strats - my favourite electric guitar - but going upmarket is unlikely to alter your view if you don’t get on with them.
    That's interesting, for me going upmarket made all the difference.

    In the nearly 40 years I've been playing buying guitars, I've always gone through phases of preferring Fender types for a while, then Gibson types, then back to Fender and so on.  But for a long time in more recent years, i'd settled on mahogany, set-neck guitars - LP Juniors, SGs, some PRS models.

    Then about 3 years ago I bought a Custom Shop Strat.  It was a bit of a shot in the dark - it had a V neck, which I'd never really got on with before, I wasn't crazy about the colour or the '50s styling - but it was just so much better than any other Strat I'd owned.  The neck turned out to be super-comfortable, the fretwork's great, the whole thing is resonant and "alive".  I've owned a lot of guitars and most have come and gone, but this was definitely one of the few which really made an impression.

    Now, I'm not a gigging musician - I'm not a musician at all really - so all those things like weedy bridge pickups, intrusive middle pickups and inconveniently-placed volume controls might turn out to be problems if I had to deal with them in the real world.  But for sitting around playing at home, I now love my Strats!
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  • HAL9000HAL9000 Frets: 9551

    ...The thing that I can never get right is the bridge pickup.  I've tried replacement pickups, over wound, really over wound, humbucking single coil sized and full buckers.  Of all I found humbuckers the most to my taste, but could never get that punch I was looking for.

    ^This. I like the middle and neck positions on a Strat (paricularly the middle) but find the bridge a bit thin and weedy. My Strat has been upgraded with Oil City StoneTones with a baseplate on the bridge unit. This has helped massively but I'd still like more of that Telecaster 'punch'. Unfortunately I  suspect it's a case of 'you can't get there from here'. I think possibly a hardtail Strat might be the way to go - I saw Robert Cray a few years ago now and his (hardtail) Strat definitely had more 'thump' to it than is normal for a Strat.
    I play guitar because I enjoy it rather than because I’m any good at it
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