Why do 70's strats get a bad rap??

[carlygtr56]

They are what I learned on and played.
I had a bunch of them. The best being my first, a Sunburst '73 with a RW neck I later replaced with a maple neck.
Some were dogs as far as tuning issues. I had a blue "The Strat" Remember that?

As far as the 3-bolt, i would disebgage the Micro-Tilt (a joke) make sure the E strings were alighned, and tighten the bolts good.

...and I had a GREAT Antiqua strat I still have recordings of.

[razelfrax]

I remember a guy I was in a band with had a 77 strat that was beautiful to look at like a purple neon sunburst but it was the heaviest guitar I ever held with a too bright nasally tone I couldn't stand. My first guitar was a 79 rw natural hardtail strat and I never cared for the sound of that one either. Now I build my own and find some bodies and necks just have poor resonance and tone to varying degrees and sometimes a very bright neck coupled to a duller body can sound very good .I wonder if back in the old days some fenders were put together this way, ie midrangy neck with mid scouped body etc. When you have a good grasp on how different pickups sound you can add these to the neck body equation too. These days more than ever before we can get consistently great hardware too. So I'm sayin with the price of vintage fenders if you have good ears and hands you can build your own for under 1500$. I build my own pedal clones for the same reason. Thats what most of us here are trying to do with Marshalls isnt it?

[Guitar-Sam]

Well I just sold a half MIJ RI/half 1974 strat on ebay to fund xmas and fund a 79 3 tone sunburst body.
I gotta say my NEW strat is a 1975 neck on a 1979 body and it sounds really good and bluesy,but my old 79' 25th anniversary which weights about 3-4 lbs more and has a terrible neck pocket gap,just has something that the lighter one doesn't,a certain warm thickness.Both are ash.
I'm starting to think there is something to the heavy weighted guitars.
Now I had a 2002 70s RI strat that was a total pile of crap.But I'm wondering if I took the time and scrutiny on the setup I take now,if it really was a good guitar??

[yngwie308]

GuitarSam, you make a very good point about the relative weights of guitars in relation to their tone. I know this ash, light/heavy thing has been thrashed to death on the Dutchboy forum. The neck pocket and set up is obviously critical in the Strat vibration/tone transfer equation. For the record I also prefer the Fender vintage trem to an OFR on the same body wood for ultimate tone, but that's not the topic. I ordered one of the first Mary Kaye '57 Vintage Reissues back in 1987 when I lived in Pa. I had to wait like 6 months for this thing to come, finally my dealer made some calls and they pushed me up the waiting list. It was the ash body with the real deal semi-transparent white nitro and gold hardware. It was a beautiful guitar to look at but it played and sounded like a dawg, seriously and it was majorly heavy. I ended up trading it to Music Ground for a 1959 Jennings Vox AC-15 TV cab two-tone combo, which they made out more than I did as they sold it for something like almost $5K and that was back then My point is this was a heavy ash guitar and it sucked had no acoustic tone at all, in comparison to my late '83 '57 Reissue I also ordered new, which has to be maybe even under 7 lbs if that. It rings like my 1954 LP Junior unamplified, well a little quieter but you get my point. So pretty much identical spec guitars of different wood sound totally different. My Gary Moore Heritages are both almost 11 lbs with the Grovers, EMG's, ect, but they have awesome sustain and stainless steel frets too (take that EVH.. ) they are acoustically loud too. Then my '52/'56 Goldtop is major light, even lighter now with an ally Pigtail ABR-1 and tailpiece, but it has great sustain unamplified and is only slightly heavier than my '83 Blackie. So I think it completely is based on the individual guitar the sum of it's parts how it will sound. All the guitars I mentioned are very different. This is what I have found. When I played the Fender megabuck Blackie, it had the same weight as my '57 Reissue Blackie, mine had more paint , the $25K Frankenstein EVH I played, acoustically it sucked, yes it is an OFR, but still my Washburn SS80 blew that away tonally for me, so go figure.
My 2004 YJM which is kinda not really exactly like a seventies Strat, it isn't that loud acoustically either, but sounds fantastic amplified. The loss of wood from scalloping has a lot to do with that. I'm sure the MK III YJM's (2007 and up) with the machine screw/brass neck inserts , which have even deeper scallops, is probably louder with the bullet truss rod and aforementioned brass insert mounting.
That's what makes it all exciting and buying a guitar without playing it, I was only unlucky that one time, not that I buy that many guitars, but the MK Strat was not for me
yngwie308

[lcampz]

Some were dogs as far as tuning issues. I had a blue "The Strat" Remember that?

Yeah... at least they were starting to head back towards some type of consistent quality control and respect for their heritage with that one...

And how 'bout the 1983 strat... the one with the jack where the last tone control used to be and the wacked out vibrato bar. People are selling those things as "vintage" instruments now!!

"We were messing with the geometry, changing the relationship between the pivot point and the intonation point of the string, and we didn't get a chance to test it enough. We ended up giving a lot more power to the string, so when you tuned it up the bridge would pull up off the body further than on a normal Stratocaster, and when you bent strings the bridge would move around more. It was impossible to keep in tune. We didn't realize all that until after we tooled up. The bridge was a cast piece from Schaller. We tried to make it better than [it's predecessor], but at the end of the day the tremolo was a nightmare." - Dan Smith

So they slapped them on and sent them out anyway!! That's what a corporate mindset does to a great idea... For all the bashing, at least Fender is capable of making a great guitar at a decent price... ...when they want to. If Gibson makes a decent axe... ...reach deeeeeeep into your pockets! or have it x-ray'd.

[Guitar-Sam]

Well I made another discovery in my "amatuer guitar builder" quest I've been on.After stripping two micro-tilt set screws I finally threw the set screws in the trash and used a peice of card stock to shim the neck pitch slightly.....waaaaaaayyyyy better tone,more like my other one.BUT the heavy one still has the mojo.
So my micro-tilt quote befor proves to have put a size 11 wide boot in my mouth.....but I still think the 3 bolts are as good as 4.

[razelfrax]

On my partcasters I will use a glass plate or long board with sandpaper and sand the heal of the neck instead of shimming then do a quick refin of said heal with Tru oil . You can use the truss rod to get the sanding angle correct. Or put an lp or suitable shim under the headstock while sanding.

[Guitar-Sam]

On my partcasters I will use a glass plate or long board with sandpaper and sand the heal of the neck instead of shimming then do a quick refin of said heal with Tru oil . You can use the truss rod to get the sanding angle correct. Or put an lp or suitable shim under the headstock while sanding.

If I tried that I can see myself needing a new neck afterwards I try to stay away from projects involving sanders,plainers or saws things tend to get ugly for me.

[razelfrax]

I'm sure after 2 or 3 you'd get it down lol . I only hand sand the heal by keeping the sandpaper stationary while moving the neck forward and back with the tuners removed . No machines that way you dont take too much off.