Hendrix Signature Strat talk with Mike Eldred

[Tone seaker]

Fender just needs to reissue the 68 maple neck strat and not call it a Hendrix Strat, Just call it what it is 68 reissue with maple neck.

[parkhead]

Some of you might find this interesting...

After many Years of messing with strats I had actually stopped playing them because I couldn't get

them to play well above the 10th fret & was considering having my two "player" strats re-fretted.

The Gold strat used to be impossible... with all kinds of fretting out and choking all over the neck

Then I found this thread and remembered an old old MAGAZINE article where Eric Barret (roadie tech) was interviewed

and stated "they are pretty much stock strats but we do take them apart and remove the blobs of paint, and such"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CpAGHdAG-Q" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Enjoy

p

[Tone seaker]

Some of you might find this interesting...

After many Years of messing with strats I had actually stopped playing them because I couldn't get

them to play well above the 10th fret & was considering having my two "player" strats re-fretted.

The Gold strat used to be impossible... with all kinds of fretting out and choking all over the neck

Then I found this thread and remembered an old old MAGAZINE article where Eric Barret (roadie tech) was interviewed

and stated "they are pretty much stock strats but we do take them apart and remove the blobs of paint, and such"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CpAGHdAG-Q" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Enjoy

p

I don't buy the non shim thing. Maybe scraping the pocket to make it perfectly smooth but Fender has been putting shims in strats for way back. I have a great sounding Pre CBS strat that has a factory shim in the pocket. I took it out and it made no difference in tone. It played better with it in too.

[parkhead]

Agreed the shim has very little to do with it...

I think a bigger factor is the edge of the butt of the neck rounded over by sanding.

(I think even in the golden era Fender had to shim a lot of guitars because of inconsistent neck butt sanding

resulting in weird unintentional neck angles. I also think modern production being a C & C machine process

results in a consistently back angled neck.)

I believe sanding the edges prevents binding at the pocket corner in the body, allowing a tighter joint with

better "placement" possibilities.

In particular its a big issue with modern & Japanese reissue necks where the butt edge is very crisp compared to my pre

cbs strats.

At the end of the day its hard to argue with the Obvious change to the gold guitar which was on the "refret, part out or sell

off" LIST and has now joined my "A" player list.

The Gold guitar did not have a shim & the neck pocket was cleaner than the sunburst guitar, It was fretting out on any

bend past the 10th fret. Cleaning up the edges of the neck butt resolved all of the issues with that guitar.

Here in Canada MIJ stratocasters were very popular and super cheap used for quite a while, I've had tons and tons of

strats. I got rid of a nice US 57 surf green reissue years ago over the same neck set issues, kept my pre cbs strats and work

on my Japanese & parts casters so the old stuff can stay at home.

If you think about the geometry of stratocaster necks if the neck were back angled to the slightest degree, you would get an

effect very similar to too much truss rod back bow... low action, but lots of potential buzzing, fretting out and choked

bends. IMHO a flat neck placement... or even slight forward angle for the daring would have the opposite effect.

Its easy to go too far and have terrible action but if you get it right you can get low action, almost no truss rod relief and

clean clear big notes. (the gold strat has ZERO truss rod relief the neck is FLAT)

Cleaning up the sanding edges gives you more options since the neck can "rotate" slightly during the assembly process

allowing the technician to set it the way it needs to be... which is the entire purpose of shimming the neck as well

If you remember the old GP article Supernova Strats where Dan Erlwine gives all the specs on SRV and Jeff Becks

guitars I always found it curious that JB's strat had ZERO truss rod relief yet did not fret out... ponder that one

D.E. does not note anything on NECK angles but basic geometry answers the mystery!

Of course it only took me 20 years of pondering the mystery to suspect what the answer must be..

Here's the SRV half of the Article

http://www.tangledupinblues.com/setup.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

IMHO this kind of geometrical setup stuff is where the Magic happens with "supernova strats" not some secret PUP winding

formula. Years ago Mike Eldred told me that SRV's #1 strat had stock 59 pickups, otherwise the guitar had been

repaired and messed with an astonishing amount. Mike knows lots of weird stuff about strats.

P

[Tone seaker]

I read that article about SRV's many years ago and my old rose wood is set up just like it. Very little relief. Mine has been re fretted at least 3 times and has very large frets now. It has a tinny shim in the back of the pocket and it plays like a dream and sounds amazing. I had a 67 one time that fretted out at the 12th fret and had it leveled and it fixed it. I also have Pre CBS strat that is very lose side to side in the neck pocket when it is unbolted. It has no shim and sounds amazing also. It to has been re-fretted with original size frets.

[heatpad]

IMO cleaning the neck pocket isn't going to help a guitar that frets out.
IMO higher action and very little relief or straight neck I found helps.

This is a close as I can get. Uncomfortable but it gets the sound-

[parkhead]

Yes the Hendrix Guitar is great I've played them many times...

I think there are two points here

#1 Cleaning out the neck pocket and shaping the heal edges did resolve this issue with this guitar. It has now worked on several other modern guitars I've tried it on as well

#2 My pre CBS strats never had this problem to the severity and degree that the newer guitars do I therefore conclude that some aspect of the manufacturing process has changed over the last 40 years and got to work measuring and examining old guitars


In the first guitar player Hendrix special edition circa 75-78... there is a quotation from Eric Barret or Roger Mayer
stating that they took the strats apart cleaned out the neck pocket and made sure they were "right" ...
Keep in mind in those days having your guitar "set up" was almost unknown... unfortunately a magazine would not bore us with further setup details

Could Hendrix set up his own strats .. #1 yes how else did he flip them over ? ... #2 He would set up strats for other people... if I recall the guitarist from the "eire apparent" a forgotten band he produced talks about Jimi stopping the session and setting up his strat to make it play remarkably better
I've been doing my own setups ever since I read those shreds of info as a kid ... "ahhh the man was one with his machine"

Until some time in the early 80's strat necks were made with a saw a pin router and a belt sander,
now they are made in a CNC router 4 at a time ... The product is more consistent (excellent!) but IMHO they miss the "accidental step" of kissing the edges with the belt sander.
Don't forget it took Fender years to realize that the rounded over fretboard edge on a vintage strat was not an accident of wear & tear but a forgotten Human step in the sanding & finishing process that made those necks feel great...
Bam a few years ago they started rounding over the fretboard edges for a "better feeling , better playing strat" if you remember the pick guard sticker...

Yes... since the sanding "effect" was almost accidental it would lead to inconsistent production guitars... some would be bang on some would be great and some would be average... but if they were all kissed with the belt sander in a quest for smooth feeling edges there would be more vintage strat neck buts with smooth rounded edges (& thats what the visual evidence suggests)
The shims found in vintage guitars and Leo's 3 bolt neck system were attempts to address these consistency issues

A lot of people put credence in "un-obtainium" ie that vintage guitars were great because the wood was better, or because they have aged. But in 1970 both Fender and Gibson were detail cutting corners to meet demand and hot players were choosing 10 to 12 year old used guitars. I have a nice 1982 heritage 335, at 20 years old it was still not a great guitar, at 30 years old & after a few vintage spec mods ie pots, great boutique pickups, aluminum stop bar... its a pretty cool guitar

I personally think that a great sounding Great Playing guitar is a complex engineering problem... too complex perhaps for a manufacturer with successful products and a back order list to devote time too.

Imagine the engineering meeting, what Item gets more attention

A) how do we address problem X to increase production to meet our back-orders, the shareholders want to see a sales increase
B) I think we need to slow down and build more stuff the old way by hand to discover the last 3% of the old magic

the guy who brought up topic A ... is making more money

The guy who brought up topic B is in artist relations, the custom shop or engineering, everyone loves him but he does not make as much dough as guy A


BTW the sanded Guitar has LOWER action, does not fret out and can be set up with zero relief
...high action is also available if you want it


p

[badfinger]

There you go, the one in the middle!

[Tone seaker]

A big misconception is people thinking CNC machining is better than manual machining. I worked as a machinist for many years with both CNC and manuals. You have to go by blueprints for no mater which way you machine the part and keep it in tolerance. CNC is just computer controlled instead of a person manually controlling the machine. Both methods can make scrap. I have made parts on manuals that had tolerances in the ten thousands which is very close. A piece of paper is .005 thick usually. I have made parts on manual machines that had tolerances of .0003. Much tighter.

[HARLEYIII]

I have a 97 Tribute strat. If I had known they were gonna be limited edition, I would have put mine up & not played it. I bought it brand new when I was 20. Spent a whole 2 weeks pay check on it. Ive played the hell out of it. Dents, scratches & all. The prices on em now are ridiculously crazy. $1200.00 new. Now Im seing used ones selling way higher than that.

[Tone Slinger]

I LOVE the 'round laminated' fingerboards that Fender used . The tooling switched to this to use LESS rosewood, since it was IMPORTED $$$. All the necks were rosewood board (with FEW exceptions) throughout the '60's. Some wanted maple board again, but the tooling had switched to this vaneer round lam type (originally one piece maple from '54 to '58 I believe). SO, Fender just did the same with the maple as they did with the rosewood, made a maple vaneer cap.

Hendrix got the two strats (white one & black one) around Aug-oct of '68. These were probably very rare (maple boards) and were probably either custom ordered by Manny's, or were 'show off' pieces by the salesman (Fender did sales by salesmen back then) or they were simply given to Hendrix by one of the salesmen.

I've had necks and bodies from lots of companies over the yrs, and can say that they are all pretty good. I have a reliced 'woodstock' strat that has the Musikraft round laminated maple cap. It is EXCELLENT. I got 6105 frets, which are TALLER than stock Fender frets (vintage style, that is). The bridge saddles on on these old Fender bridges just wont adjust up high enough to cover the height difference, so I thinned the but of the neck where it sits in the neck pocket to accomodate this.

There are MANY things one learns along the way, when messing with guitars, in my case, specifically Fender style all the way from Fender through Boogie bodies to San Dimas Charvel.