Talk:Fender Stratocaster
The contents of the Fender Strat Plus page were merged into Fender Stratocaster on 22 July 2018. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
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Hey Xhefri!
You ever come here, Jeff? This article seems like it could use some of your help, along with some links to your info. Darr247 (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
- I think Xhefri's stuff is great, but it might fall foul of talk) 08:36, 12 April 2020 (UTC)]
Nitpicky bit about the 5 way selector switch
"The "quacky" tone of the middle and bridge pickups, popularized by players such as David Gilmour, Rory Gallagher, Mark Knopfler, Bob Dylan, Scott Thurston, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray, can be obtained by using the pickup selector into positions 2 and 4." The 2 position combines the middle and the neck pickup, not the middle and bridge pickups. Both 2 and 4 are quacky, but this sentence makes it sound like both the 2 and 4 pickups are a combination of the middle and bridge pickups, which is inaccurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.114.198.184 (talk) 06:01, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
- In Fender's current service diagrams, position one is 'bridge' and position five is 'neck'. However I see exactly what you mean about he ambiguity and I hope I've fixed this OK. talk) 15:13, 9 August 2020 (UTC)]
History
Why is there nothing about the history of how the guitar was designed? There's no mention of the feedback Fender got from Bill Carson, who the guitar was designed for. It does mention it at the article Bill Carson (musician) however. Who designed the shape? (Freddie Tavares). Very little facts here except for models and sales, etc.
This article is more like Fender ad copy.
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No mention of the "The Strat" model in the 80s with gold-plated hardware, color matched headstock, special wiring. 174.89.103.189 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 04:17, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
Current Models needs subsections, revisions, reoganization
Maybe it's just me, but I found the "current models" section of the article jumbled and difficult to follow. Therefore, I added subsections based upon the names of the current strat models according to Fender.com without any alterations to the pre-existing text, and immediately major problems became apparent. Most striking was the fact that there were two paragraphs about the american special series which were separated by a paragraph about the vintage hot rod series. Also, the text switches a great deal between describing the past and the present, which leads to further confusion, in my opinion. Finally, the VG Strat is no longer a current model, so I created (an admittedly terrible) extra section to contain it. I don't presume to know the best way to resolve the section on the VG Strat, other than to either delete it, or list all of the other discontinued strat models along with it, neither of which seem optimal.
Obviously, the article is also missing any mention of the remaining current series, which are (according to Fender.com):
- Standard
- American Vintage
- Deluxe
- Classic
- Classic Player
Also, of course, the Artist Series, which appears later in the article as "Signature Models", which should probably be renamed to be consistent with Fender's current terminology.
I intend to continue to tweak this section (I'll probably rearrange the order of the sections as well - maybe all american first, then MIM - there's a couple different logical ways to organize it) if no one objects. Discussion is absolutely invited, as well.Bradford44 (talk) 15:20, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for starting reworking this part of the article! I have also struggled with those sections, partly because I'm concerned that some of it might fall into what Wikipedia isn't, particularly that Wikipedia generally isn't supposed to be a directory/catalogue, and attempting to have an exhaustive list of models would in my opinion fall into that category. While I don't have any great suggestions right now, I would welcome changes that attempt to reduce the amount of content so the readers can get an easy overview of the models. If they're curious about model details they can always visit Fender's website. Anyhow, thanks again for the initiative, great job! Nettrom (talk) 16:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)]
- Thank you for the encouraging words, but reading over the current models again today, I see nothing but line after line of unsourced technical material which has no value whatsoever to the casual reader, so consequently I'm at a loss for the best course of action to proceed. I mean it's great (for example) that the "new for 2003" American Strat HSS came with a Diamondback humbucker and Tex-Mex single coils, but without any sources (or even wikilinks to those types of pickups), what possible value is anyone other than a fairly experienced and knowledgable guitarist going to get out of that content? You're exactly right that it's catalog material, but worse than that, it completely lacks context, i.e., what the heck is a Tex-Mex single coil and why should I care that the 2003 model has those instead of the pickups it used to have?
- All that said, I still intend to put time into improving the article, and I remain very open-minded for suggestions. Bradford44 (talk) 14:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
- You bring up very good points, and it's things I have also struggled with when working on other guitar-related articles. In my case I ended up spending a fair amount of time reading through reviews from (fairly) established guitar magazines, particularly Guitar World, Guitar Player, Premier Guitar, and Guitarist as those can be efficiently searched through Google. I have also been quite strict when writing my articles, which means I might end up trimming a lot of content, sometimes to the dislike of other editors. For some things it might be appropriate to refer to a user manual from Fender.com (they have some PDFs available), for other things I tend to prefer third-party descriptions like the ones from the magazines. I'll try to spend some time digging for some sources over the week-end to help you out. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 15:58, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Hey also is this list complete? For example the Richie Kotzen signature models are not on this list, nor the James Burton Telecaster — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.101.84.225 (talk) 11:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
- Suggestion. The article is looking a lot like a Fender company website promo piece. Please remove all the copy paste stuff from Fender website and please stop sourcing the article to Fender primary material. The article is pretty much a disaster, like a chatty blog. Just heaping information into it is a non starter and please do not start making lists of this and that. Wikipedia is not a list generator of things Fender or anything else. The article still needs cutting and proper sourcing. I took out a few un-sourced things, some tagged for many years. Earl King Jr. (talk) 03:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Ike Turner signature strat?
Should this be included in the Signature series section? Apparently it was limited edition made in 2004 and 100 were made. I don't know if this signature list includes limited editions. These can be found for sale on the internet from various dealers. I don't have full specs from a reliable source, but I know they're out there somewhereKaleeyed (talk) 13:49, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Initial design and subsequent developments
The Stratocaster's shape, called the "Comfort Contour Body" by Fender,[1] ) differed from the Telecaster's slab-like design. The Stratocaster's double cutaways gave players easier access to higher positions on the neck,[2] and the body's recessed "beer gut" concave curve on the upper back, and a gradual chamfer arm rest on the front, gave player's right arm rest, gave players a more comfortable guitar to play. The "dogleg" style headstock of the Startocasdters contrasted with the narrow headstock shape of the Telecaster.
The strings were anchored and the back side of the body through the
In its original form the Stratocaster featured three
Players known for often using the 2 and four pickup potions include David Gilmour, Rory Gallagher, Mark Knopfler, Scott Thurston, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. The neck and middle pickups are typically wired to separate tone controls that have a shared tone capacitor which allows players to roll off the higher frequencies. To maintain its inherent brightness, the bridge pickup has no tone control slanted closer towards the bridge on the high strings for a more trebly sound. Another technique to diminish higher frequencies on all pickups is to lower the Strat's volume control below its peak.
Fender placed the volume and tone control knobs on the Stratocaster to enable ready access of players' picking hand. In certain recent editions of Stratocasters, an additional tone control is dedicated to the neck pickup, and another tone control is for both the middle and bridge pickups. On Fender's
The three pickups were originally identical in construction, including output specifications. But the popularity of combining pickups in parallel combinations preceded Fender's introduction a reverse-wound, reverse-polarity middle pickup having a magnetic polarity contrary to the neck and bridge pickups. The middle pickup has a wire wound in the reverse direction around the bobbin compared to the other neck and bridge pickups. This caused a hum-canceling effect with this configuration (removing hum induced by poorly shielded, medium to high output AC devices) in positions 2 and 4 on the selector switch. A similar method of using two pickups to cancel hum had long been used by Fender, notably to their
- As a courtesy, I'm going to wait one more day, at least, before moving the new text in. Please comment.The Artist AKA Mr Anonymous (talk) 18:54, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
References
- ISBN 0793547350.
- ^ Balmer 20
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/fruduatv#p/u/10/O0Oyc6slYRc
- ^ Balmer 23.
DuPont paint redundancy
The DuPont paint for 5% more is repeated twice in the article - therefore it's redundant. ICE77 (talk) 06:50, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
- Noticed it's mentioned in the lead section, which seems misplaced. If I have some time over the weekend I might have a go at rewriting the lead section to more properly summarise the content. Should be more important to have it mention why the guitar is important, some of its influence in music and instrument manufacturing, etc... Feel free to beat me to the editing though, and thanks for the good work you've done so far! Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 14:40, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
What happened to the signature models section?
There are a bunch of links that link to a Fender Stratocaster#Signature models but there is no section on the page. I propose we bring it back. 106.68.213.89 (talk) 06:18, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Squier is not Fender, & other problems
For the moment, I've blanked the section that runs on at length about Squier Stratocasters, rather than (read the headline) Fender Stratocasters. Discussion ought to be properly put under Squier.
Most of the article reads as a mix of OR and fanboy POV. Even at that, there are gross oversights scattered about, for instance that the primary Design developments section gives no information about the development of the design. If I were to mark up all the claims and "real facts" that are pasted in without substantiation, the tags would double the article's bytes. Overall, it's a very poor piece.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 00:14, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
A previous post above (unsigned/undated, roughly 2011-2013) says it quite well, and bears repeating:
- Why is there nothing about the history of how the guitar was designed? There's no mention of the feedback Fender got from Bill Carson, who the guitar was designed for. It does mention it at the article Bill Carson (musician) however. Who designed the shape? (Freddie Tavares). Very little facts here except for models and sales, etc.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 07:12, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
- Does Rex Gallion deserve any credit for the body shape?
Weeb Dingle (talk) 17:40, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
And yet another
Weeb Dingle (talk) 17:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
Merger proposal
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- The result of this discussion was to merge. talk) 10:28, 22 July 2018 (UTC)]
- The result of this discussion was to merge.
I propose that
the Design stuff
(Mostly a note to myself, but anyone can have at it.) The Design developments section needs overhaul. First, it sails off in a few clear directions that can readily be broken up, then better addressed on merits. For starters, there's a bunch about the
]- I've had a brief look - to me, it felt that while there was lots of detail, we were missing an overview describing what a Stratocaster actually is. I've had a first attempt, but I'm sure it can be enhanced. talk) 08:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)]
Removal of Floyd Rose from infobox - what's best do do here?
@Meclazine: Thanks for your recent edits to
- Removed reference to Floyd Rose as a bridge type. Stratocasters never came stock with these, and 0.001% of custom orders would have them.
I wonder if this is correct, please? Fender currently sells some production models like this - there's a current Player Stratocaster HSS Floyd Rose at [1] and I recall many similar models over the years. Wheeler (2000) does make references to models with Floyd Roses in the American Special line c.2000 in The Stratocaster Chronicles, p.246.
Would you be happy for the Floyd Rose to be reinstated? Alternatively, given that both the Player and American Professional lines use two-pivot systems now, please we could just leave the reference to the original six-screw tremolo, remove the hardtail, and simply say 'and others'. What do you think, please.
@
- Thanks for that. I am a bit wary of unsourced statistics - that's why I picked up in this from the edit history. My suggestion - currently in the infobox - is the 'six screw bridge' + others. Hope that works for everyone. It seems compact and avoids WP:UNDUE.
- Incidentally, I would be interested in verifiable data on Fender's production levels over the years. I imagine that they are making more guitars now than ever, so an apparent 'fringe' model introduced in the 1990s could by now be quite significant compared to the now-rare hardtails - but I don't have hard facts to test that hypothesis. talk) 08:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)]
To add to article
Basic information to add to this article: where the name comes from. Is it related to the word "stratosphere"? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 04:27, 2 August 2021 (UTC)