5 things you didn't know about your Fender Strat

hey guys today we're going to do five things you didn't know about a Fender Stratocaster alright let's start with number one if you have an American Stratocaster you may have bought it new and seeing this little sticker sometimes their colors but most time they're silver and if you weren't aware that sticker was holding this little guy it's a spring now if you've got a use Merrick strat you probably didn't know this spring existed like so so what's it for well it's simple a lot of you guys when you put your tremolo arm into your strap you notice it's kind of a little kind of loosey-goosey like that and you keep going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going to go and going until it gets really stiff and sometimes you get it that way just to get it toward doesn't wiggle see wiggle inside the socket well that's what the spring is for so what we do is we take the scrim long I'm out drop that little guy in there watch what happens now when we put it in you'll notice right away that the pressure from the spring makes it much stiffer and you'll get your tremolo arm see well stay wherever you want it right now I can just do this my pinky it's staying where I want it and it's not stiff at all so if you want it like here and then they're there but you don't want it swinging but you also don't want it stiff that's what the spring is for so you can take it or leave it kind of effect and it also helps you not cross thread or mess up your tremolo arm when you insert it in the into the socket what about a made Mexico strat well you'll notice it never came with one and no sticker in there does it work absolutely drop straight in there I'm surf the tremolo arm and same effect you get stiff right away where you don't have a whole lot of tension you can have it how you like you have more control of your trim alarm it feels a little better and if you have it work on vintage strats as well most strats some Squires if you have issues with the spring you will see it in the link below where to buy these if you need to you'll buy them in a pack they are very hard you cannot flex them you cannot squeeze them together there is a lot of pressure you can cut them though to a depth number to static electricity sometimes when you're touching your guitar and you hear crackling on the pickguard right and or crackling when you're touching things like the screws sometimes it's grounding sometimes electronics you may want to take that in but a lot of times you just need a clean cloth and some kind of static guard or static remover again just a little spray not much just a little bit goes Pat it and touch the area that it's affected make sure you're mostly touching the plastic again just keep it light sometimes you know you can with the strings in the bridge just any where you think of static charge is built up you want to eliminate that from there before you take it and pay for any kind of electronics to be done you can even wipe the inside down if with some static remover you could also use fabric softeners just keep in mind a lot of them have fragrances added to him so the cakiness gets on the guitar but if you can find a fragrance free static guard our static softener sheet that works amazing do that number three so a lot of times when you want to back the tremolo against the body one thing or lower the tremolo a lot of times you'll screw the six screws or if it's a American strat the two screws down as hard as you can and what will happen is you don't notice that the tremolo let's say that close has a edge on it that's hard to see especially on the main Mexico's area parent on the main America you see how it's not perfectly flat it's coming up what happens is is I you just screw the screws down the bridge actually kicks up because it's not it's rating on this you see what I see the edge there so if you screw these screws too tight you'll actually cause the bridge to go from being flat to cocked up a little bit so on your guitar if you look right if you look you have a little bit of area right there and so you want to loose those and lower that so believe or not loosening the screws sometimes will lower the bridge to stop it from this action to that action number four one of the problems sometimes we have with the fender strats is that the springs make this noise and it's not very pleasing especially when you're playing and you hear that kind of ring sound especially from these okay so what you want to do is just one time just pull the spring out make sure it doesn't cook you or pinch you right if you feel more comfortable taking out all different ways I understand you want to get a piece of foam like so I get these from the bottom of electric guitar pickup packaging but you want the strip to be maybe a quarter-inch thick right like so and it'll be kind of like try to make it like a quarter-inch five quarter-inch that's ideal see that works just like that now what you want to take is a low E string off of your electric guitar bend it like a hook stab it through like it's a worm go about a half inch through bend it down and then what I want to do is push it through the string press rips through the spring not the string Bend this to make sure it will go through and then slowly pull and then you'll notice it's pretty much through we got have got about 97 through you might have to take this end and push on the back to kind of just get it the rest in there yep that's working okay pull it through then take your scissors cut it off that side and then now listen right so now you hook it here and now versus and you do that's all three and you'll mellow your Springs out a lot of guys will just shove a toilet paper or tissue paper or foam inside underneath there that works too I just like this trick because it's very clean and easy and as you saw how fast I did if you take a few extra seconds you can actually make it really stick out on each end and make it look a little cleaner nicer number five all right so a lot of guys have the same problem when they're strumming they hit their knob and a lot of them will remove the knob use one of these and leave it like that I've seen that a lot I've seen where they've actually had somebody like me take a tone about and move it down and not have anything there and if your strumming so it's at to the point where you're hitting the knob there's no way around that unfortunately however a lot of times the issue is not hitting the knob it's just while you're playing you feel like you're bumping it and turning the guitar down a little bit we've all kind of just caught it right right so how do you stop that well again you're going to use a piece of foam some scissors and enough and basically it's like arts and crafts stick the LIA knob on top of the foam and start cutting the foam to fit the knob so we can make essentially a foam doughnut very exciting do some trim work to make it look a little better and that looks perfect okay so now we have a foam doughnut we're going to use two things we need the tremolo arm from the guitar and the scissors very carefully please just stab down the center of the foam okay that's all you want to do and then crisscross it like a Philips head screw then take the trim alarm and use the plastic shroud to spread the foam out very cool and then all you're going to do is just put it over the post make sure the post is turn all way forward take the knob put it there push down and if you have a little sticking out again it's pretty straightforward you can just do some quick cleanup there with the scissors you're going to notice you may have to kind of tweak it to whatever works something like so and now right there and again line it up follow them there push down and now you'll notice that it still turns but it's really hard and you won't have to worry about bumping because you're going to have to definitely want to turn it to get the turn all right guys that's five things you need to know about a Fender Strat as always thank you for your time know your gear

Channel: Phillip McKnight

Views: 3,594,142

Keywords: Fender, stratocaster, tremolo, trmolo springs, strat, strat bridge, volume knob, spring, guitar, static on guitar, telecaster, phillip mcknight, phil mcknight, know your gear, fender tunning issues, gibson broke, gibson issues, fender vs gibson, tunning issues, reapir, fix, fender broke, fender closing, stratocaster vs les paul, stratocaster vs telecaster, stratocaster set up, stratocaster blues, startocaster jazz, stratocaster metal, stratocaster mods, stratocaster tone

Id: jxdfKixydUo

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/manwhoel]

Wow I don't have a Fender strat but I do have a Cort strat with the third problem. Gonna try this out as soon as I get home, those screws must be too tight.