Mexican Strats should not cost $700 unless you mean list price. $550 is the going rate for most of them.
BTW, I saw in my local store that Fender just raised prices 20%. Guess they haven’t heard about this recession thing. Or maybe they just raised the list prices but actual prices are the same.
Memo to myself: Learn a guitar chord before going shopping.
Thanks for the advice. The bit about neck size sounds important. I have small hands for my size (can’t quite palm a basketball, for example), so I’ll be sure to check that.
I was doing some more research last night, and now I’m leaning a bit more toward a Stratocaster. It seems like plans can change when confronted with the real thing, though.
This was probably 12 years ago or more, but I very distinctly remember my wife hitting the roof at the $700 price. But now I’m thinking about it, I recall that I did get a hardshell case and a chorus pedal at the same time, so the guitar itself may have been closer to $600. Plus, this was down in Eugene, OR, where the options at the time were: McKenzie River Music (overpriced high-end guitar snobbery, with the occasional vintage junk find), Buy & Sell (good peeps, but mostly used stuff), and Guitar Center, where I went (yes, overpriced, yes, corporate, but the only place in town with any kind of selection).
One other suggestion, especially for a first guitar. The stratocaster is a fine guitar, but I’d consider a “hardtail” guitar. The strat’s tremolo puts some new players off.
That said, dealing with a trem ain’t rocket science. You should be fine either way.
My advice, play a bunch of guitars.
Fender, G & L, Yamaha, any other brand in the store. Pick the one that you bond with. don’t get hung up on a name.
The one you sit down and play and go, Oh, yeah, like the kool aid guy should be the one you buy.
My daughter was shopping for a guitar and we first looked at a Squier Strat. Nasty. I mean, I saw potential, but wasn’t up for all the screwing around to make it playable. (Yeah, I wish I could play as well as I can improve guitars, but it’s like me with fixing anything: Once it works I lose interest.) We bought a lowend Mexican Strat and a friend who’s REAL good at improving guitars is going to fix it for $30! Can’t beat that.
I guess my point is that not much is as good coming off an assembly line as it could be with some filing and tweaking. I suspect that your Squier could be a sweet guitar with a few (note that I’m talking about $30) bucks invested.
Here is a youtube link to a guy that does several reviews of different guitars: The roadworn strat and see the stratocaster Japanese Reissue and several others, just scroll through the “More From: Johnhguitar” on the side…
That guy is not a particularly good reviewer. Great player, but all he basically does is give a brief tour of the Strat design and comment on how the frets are bigger vs. vintage and that it comes with Tex-Mex pickups and a 5-way selector. There are lots more places you can go with that type of review - what relic’ing / distressing does for a guitar’s playability; how those Road Worn’s compare to normal Mexican Strats; how they compare to US-Made Strats, etc. - lots of stuff. And he doesn’t even discuss or show how the guitar gains up! How many folks are going to put that through a fuzzbox or cranked tube amp for some distortion?
Sorry for being down on the link, **Yeeter **- finding reviews on YouTube is a smart thing; I do it as part of my research, too. But you have to weed through the different attempts, you know?
By the way - as I have stated in other threads, I agree with **Ogre **on this.
**tdn **is no guitar n00b, so that is a non-issue for him…
It really was a poor decision on my part - it was a mostly impulse buy. A few years ago, the wife was at a store, and there was a Guitar Center nearby, so I asked her if it was ok if I got a guitar. “If you must. . . :rolleyes:” I saw a cheap Tele, figured “I’ve always wanted one” played it for less than 2 minutes (with my 2 year old daughter hanging all over me) and bought it.
The main problem is with the body - it sounds duller than anything, which is not a good sound for the Tele. This thing just doesn’t sustain well, plugged or unplugged - it sounds flat and muddy. I think there may be a void or knot in the body, or possibly it’s the super-thick layer of poly finish.
It would likely sound better if I got it refinished and got a good set of pickups, but I really just plan on getting a proper guitar. I don’t want to put a huge amount of money into a guitar I’m not particularly thrilled with.
Incidentally, I played a Hamer XT archtop (their foreign model) the other day, and it sounded and felt very nice. The finish and setup looked amazing, and it felt very well balanced. Plus it’s a dual humbucker with a set-neck, which I’ve always wanted to go back to. I will likely be ordering a left-handed version sometime this summer, if we have any $ left after we get the house painted.
Couple of updates here.
So, I’m in the middle of a big fight with my girlfriend, and I figured that my mood would improve with a little shopping therapy. It was a sort of impulse buy. I bought a guitar strap, some strings, a guitar stand, and an amp (Marshall MG 10KK – hey, I live in an apartment, and I’m always telling my neighbors to keep the damn noise down, so I don’t need a huge stack).
Oh, and a Mexican Standard. Blue. SaaaaWEEEEEET!
So first off, Robot Arm, sorry I didn’t invite you to come with me, but if you want to go shopping there yourself, I’d be happy to accompany you. Just name the day and time.
Secondly, what’s the deal with whammy bars?
For one thing, it’s never where I want it to be. Just below my right hand would be ideal, but it just kind of swings towards gravity, sometimes hitting the cable. If I screw it in so it’s tight, it’s way off to the right. The guy that repaired my Squier Strat said that some players feed a little dental floss down the hole so that friction puts it where they want it. This raises a number of questions, such as just how minty fresh I want my axe to taste.
For another, it puts the strings wildly out of tune. Is there some way to mitigate this problem? Listening to Floyd’s live version of Sorrow, Gilmour repeatedly whammies down a good octave, and his instrument stays more or less in tune. How come?
And finally, when I use it even a little, the instrument creaks and groans like an old haunted house. Regions beyond the bridge and nut produce all sorts of eerie ghost tones, and they are transmitted directly to the amp. While cool and groovy, they are not very welcome in my current recording project.
Are there any solutions to these problems?
Having said all that, I love that new amp smell. If only there were a way to make new cars, old amps, and girlfriends smell that way.
Congratulations on the new guitar.
I’ll be in touch.
Most tuning issues can be traced to the nut. The strings slide back and forth (a minute amount) when the strings are bent or the trem is used. If the strings bind in the nut they don’t return to pitch. Common on new guitars. You can smooth the nut slots out with something like fine sandpaper but be careful, you dont want to deepen the slots (usually). Many people also apply a tiny drop of lubricant to the slots to let the strings slide more freely. A drop on the bottom of the string tree is good too. I use graphite lube, some use petroleum jelly. Very small amounts!
I don’t use the trem on my Strat but I’ve heard these methods for keeping the arm in place.
Plumbers teflon tape wrapped around the threads.
Strats usually come with a tiny little spring that goes in the trem hole before you thread the arm in. The pressure of the spring keeps the arm from swinging around. They are easy to lose! You may not have gotten one with yours but your music store should be able to fix you up. Maybe you noticed Strats in the music store with small round stickers over the trem hole where the arm screws in, they are to hold that spring in.
A tiny drop of the **NON-PERMANENT ** Loc-tite thread adhesive. It comes in different formulas. I think the one I use is called Loc-tite 270
Ah, the spring! There was mention of that in the user’s manual. With the thing hanging around on the display wall, I bet it fell out and got vacuumed up.
I’m sure it’s gone, but how can I tell?
As it comes from the factory, it’s not attached at all. It just sits in the hole, held by the sticker or the trem arm. I have heard of people putting a dab of silicone caulk or some thing similar on the spring and then dropping it in the hole to keep it in place. Also, if it was still in there it would be keeping your trem arm from swinging.
As for the creaking and groaning, make sure your four neck screws are tight. That may or may not be the problem.
A good guitar set-up and maintenance book is well worth the cost.
This is my go-to book for set up and maintenance on guitars.
I just remembered reading somewhere that some of the import Strats have trem blocks that are made from cast metal and are drilled too deep to use the spring. Upgrading the trem block to a steel one is a common mod for improving tone. Yours may or may not have a steel block now. The ones that are drilled too deep for the spring can be modded to use a spring by cutting new threads from the other side and installing a set screw.
A Google Image Search for Stratocaster Tremolo turns up several pictures of the trem assembly alone. The trem block is the big gray thing with holes for the strings. It is removed by taking out the three phillips screws under the bridge saddles. It’s a fairly involved job requiring resetting the intonation after re-assembly. You would want a book to do it yourself.
Is this the kind of spring we’re talking about?
Yes.
**River Hippie **is doing a great job on the mechanics of the Strat whammy spring, so I won’t interject.
This issue is exactly what **Ogre **and I were referring to when we were saying that a “hardtail” (i.e., no whammy) guitar is a better starter guitar.
But tdn, you are no n00b, so I am not too worried - but there is a basic truth you need to embrace: you have to learn how to Master the Whammy™. By that, I do NOT refer to enhancing your playing technique to include everything from dive-bombs to waggling vibrato (although that will be cool for you when you do). I mean that one has to learn the “care and feeding” of maintaining a Strat with a whammy.
Clearly you get this - you posted in this thread asking for tips! 
But the bottom line is that there is a learning curve for how you like your whammy set up, how you approach tuning the guitar with a whammy and how you modify your playing technique to ensure that you maximize the likelihood that you maintain the in-tune-ness (or intonation, if you prefer!) of the guitar while you are playing it.
A few thoughts:
Stretch the crap out of your strings before you tune them up. When you first install a new set, I bet you stretch strings to get the slack out of the metal - well, do a lot more of that
Get the guitar out of the way of the strings - basically ensure your Strat doesn’t have any issues that could lead to a string getting “hung up.” This is all the good stuff **RH **states, and also includes little things like ensuring your string trees (the retainers on the front of the headstock that the higher strings pass under) don’t have any burrs on them that a string could catch on, etc. Rather that go into detail here, I strongly recommend you Google and search YouTube for “Strat Whammy Setup” or “Stratocaster Tremolo” or whatever - I bet there are dozens of videos where folks walk you through the basics.
Think about your playing technique - when you do a dive bomb, standard operating procedure is to leave the whammy bar lightly in your fingers and when you release it to bring the strings back up to tension, give it the slightest upward tug to ensure the strings haven’t caught on the nut or anything. There are many ways like that where you can add “a little something” to your technique to account for the whammy - trust me, real diehard whammy-er’s do 'em all…
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