RFI: Fender Stratocasters (RIP George Fullerton)

second, i know the late 70s are supposed to be shitty years for fender and for guitars in general.

Newer instruments are made with much more consistent quality, as with using more computer controlled machining of the wood and winding the pickups, you don't run into as wide a varience from one piece to another.

The older electrics also used a different type of paint, which didn't hold up as well but some people attribute to giving instruments a bit better sustain and sound. The newer poly based paints that are used hold up a whole lot better, but they are not supposed to let the wood breathe and age. It seems like somewhat a stretch to me, but some people can tell the difference. There is a whole cottage industry of guys that will paint guitars using the older techniques and supplys, then mangle, age and weather the instrument to make it look like it has been in barfights for 40 years. I know a guy that is making a living doing this kind of thing. I still think it is weird for some dentist to choke up a couple of grand for them to mangle and destroy a custom shop Les Paul.

I've owned a variety of Strats over the years, and played dozens of others.

I owned a 76 that I was never particularly fond of sonically. It was very thin sounding.

Later owned an early 80s model in which I installed a 5-way switch. Once again, this guitar was lacking the characteristics I was seeking.

Never overly fond of the American Standard Lace Sensor pick-ups models that flourished in the 80s and early 90s.

I ended up with two American made reissues from 89/90. One is a 62 reissue, one is a 57. The 62 is an incredible guitar. Feel, sonics, the way the paint is aging. Everything about it is class.
The 57 never really sounded great to me. I've tended to use it for slide or for the maple neck when a recording calls for that characteristic. But the pick-ups just don't do it for me.

Strats are very likely just like any other mass produced instrument - some stink and some are great.

The 80s Fernandes Strat copies and Squiers, which were I think made in the same factory in Japan are considered some of the best of that time. A local guitar tech around here collects the Fernandes Strats from that time period and says that they are as good as custom shop 50s Fender reissues, except they can be found for just a few hundred bucks.

If you get an old Korean made Strat from the 80's, u'll probably say the same thing. Amazingly, until the early 1990's, the foreign made cheaper instruments were actually pretty well built. Mexi-Strats are the in-between from Korean made and American made... some Mexican made strats sound great (I love the Lite Ash).

You'll find that with the 1950's strats and telecasters, the neck pickup is quiet as fuck. Modern switching has made the neck pickups a bit stronger.

There's no real "dark era" per se, in Fender. Though I will say that the 1970's telecaster design was just meant to compete w/ the growing popularity of the double humbucker Les Pauls.

I have a Mexican strat from 2003 or so and have had nary a problem with it--tuners, tremelo, frets, and neck are all excellent. At this point, for my needs, an American-made Strat would just be overkill. (Which is not to say I wouldn't welcome the gift of one. I'm just sayin.)

OTM, Bryan. That's a big issue with my 57 reissue. The volume difference from neck to bridge is vast.

I thought ILX hated Strats!

Funny enough, I rarely see musicians in my hometown playing Strats. I think some people find them ubiquitious. They are this rock icon associated with classic dudes or something.

But for some reason, I feel more comfortable playing a Strat than any other guitar. I like fighting against the string tension, and getting those glassy, bell tones. No other guitar does it!

OTM. Our guitarist hates strats on the grounds that if a middle-aged businessman was going to put a guitar on his wall to make him look rock'n'roll, he'd put a red Strat up there.

B-B-But there's always I Love Guitar

if that's gonna be the criteria, then your guitarist, and all of ILX, would also have to hate teles (too springsteen), les pauls (too iconic), rickenbackers (too beatles), martins (too everything), and god knows what else. we'd all have to play hamers or kramers for the rest of our lives.

RIP George Fullerton:

While Fender tinkered away, coming up with improvements in guitar design that led to the creation of his revolutionary Telecaster and Stratocaster electric guitars, Fullerton was charged with making those innovations practical for mass production in their Orange County factory that opened in the late 1940s. Nearly 1,000 people were working there when Fender sold it to CBS in 1965.

"Leo's domain was the lab: innovation, getting ideas together on the conceptual level. George's domain was the shop," said Richard Smith, curator of the Leo Fender Gallery at the Fullerton Museum Center and author of "Fender: The Sound Heard Round the World." Fullerton "made the machine that threaded the guitar necks. He came up with the neck shaper and all these unique tools they used. If Leo had problems, [Fullerton] needed to solve them."

...

Fullerton moved to Southern California shortly before World War II. He picked up technical skills working in an aircraft manufacturing plant during the war, after which he periodically ran into Fender, who ran a radio repair service and retail store.

Fender had begun making guitars -- originally focusing on steel guitars -- and amplifiers with Doc Kaufman (under the K&F brand), but their partnership ended quickly because of differing ideas about how to run the business.

Going it alone, Fender offered Fullerton a job helping with radio repair, but he soon shifted over to provide warranty service on Fender's steel guitars and amplifiers. Fender was as impressed by Fullerton's musical credentials -- he was playing in two bands at night after work -- as by his technical know-how. Fender was confident in his own technical expertise but often hired employees who also were musicians because he could barely play a note, much less a song.

In the late 1940s, various guitar makers were experimenting with ways to amplify the sound of a guitar to allow it to be heard in larger dance halls and ballrooms that featured live music. Fender wasn't the first to come up with a solid-body electric, which could handle a much greater degree of amplification without the sound feeding back, but his innovations in design allowed the instruments to be mass produced affordably -- something no one else had then figured out how to do.

They started working out of Fender's small shop in Fullerton, then expanded to two buildings. The early Fender team also included Don Randall, originally a salesman who became Fender's chief sales and marketing executive. At its height before the sale to CBS, Fender was turning out a guitar a minute from its 27 buildings in Fullerton and Anaheim.

oh wow. this is kind of an incredible loss - in many ways the man behind the man that never really got sufficient credit. RIP indeed.

rip. so many remarkable people worked at fender in the early years.