Strat 101: A Guide to the History & Tones of the Fender Stratocaster

[Music] Eric Clapton Jimi Hendrix Stevie Ray Vaughan David Gilmore Mark Knopfler Jeff Beck John Mayer John Frusciante the edge Buddy Holly Hank Marvin there's a seemingly endless list of amazing artists with unique styles and incredibly distinct tones and they all have one thing in common this guitar the Fender Stratocaster well presumably they have more than one thing in common it's it's actually pretty likely they have a lot of things in common but for the purposes of this video so what is it about the Fender Stratocaster that has allowed so many artists to get such a distinct tone from the same instrument when you're talking about a Fender Stratocaster there is a lot to cover so we're gonna dive right in we're gonna talk about the history we're gonna talk about how to get some tones inspired by some of my favorite Stratocaster artists I'm gonna share some album recommendations with you we're going to talk about some unique setup tips and things that you might not have known please let us know in the comments who are your favorite strat artists and what are your favorite stratums to get us started we're gonna listen to a few tones and we're gonna dive into the history please remember to like and subscribe and hope you enjoy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you [Music] you [Music] so we're going to talk about the history now in the interest of time this is going to be kind of a condensed history if you're interested in a more detailed history I highly suggest a video by 5 watt world called fender stratocaster a short history they do a great job and really cover it in a lot of details again I'm going to give you the condensed version of the interest of time now the design of the fender stratocaster started in the early 50s and it was originally released in 1954 the design was not just leo fenders he also had help from Bill Carson Freddy Tavares and George Fullerton as well as its name coming from Don Randle Don Randall had also named the broadcaster turned no castor turned Telecaster of course that name harkening back to mass communications in the early days Stratocaster being an ode to the stratosphere and this space hunt heating up in the 1950s now the Stratocaster was an evolution from the Telecaster in many ways the Telecaster is sharp edges had been smoothed out in two specific places one right here for your arm to go over and the other on the back as a belly cut for the Stratocaster to sit snug against your body and be more comfortable they had spent a lot of time listening to player feedback and one of the common complaints about the Telecaster was that the edges were very very uncomfortable to hold the body was inspired by the fender Precision Bass the headstock was inspired by early Bigsby guitars instead of having the big ashtray bridge in two pickups you have three pickups and the controls were all mounted into a single ply pickguard the bridge also turned into the synchronized tremolo technically it's actually a vibrato but it was called the synchronized tremolo and this was a unique innovation in and of itself for starters on the surface now you have six adjustable saddles this was the first that allowed you to not only adjust the intonation but also the height of each individual string there had also been tremolos vibrato before this was the first one that moved the entire bridge with the strings beforehand you had things like the Bigsby tremolo in which the strings would slide up over the bridge causing points of friction in places where the strings could get caught that's gonna cause tuning issues this is the first one where the whole bridge actually moved with it there's a claw in the back that's held in place by Springs that go up to a bar and then when you press down on the tremolo and it causes the detuning effect the springs pull it back into place this was a totally revolutionary design now you had a 3-way selector switch we'll talk about that more later and you had three knobs you had a volume and two tones now the two tones would have been wired to the neck pickup in the middle pickup you had the recessed input jack right here a 21 fret maple neck a circular string tree and clusen tuners on the headstock it would have had what was called the original spaghetti fender logo it kind of slinky kind of looks like spaghetti small letters that say Stratocaster underneath it would say with synchronized tremolo and then up at the rounded end of the headstock it would have said original contour body the original Stratocasters would have looked similar to this one this is actually a squire we'll talk about this one later but they would have been in a two-tone sunburst finish with a single ply the maple neck that has kind of what's now referred to as like a vintage like the gym floor finish hannah has more of an orange e color and the originals were made out of ash now in most of the 1950's there weren't many dramatic changes to the Stratocaster the string tree changed most became alder although some were still in ash there were custom colors available but they were not advertised later on a Fiesta red would be advertised very famously by fender the real first star boost for the Fender Stratocaster is when Buddy Holly plays it on the Ed Sullivan Show and all of a sudden it becomes iconic of rock and roll and the times in 1958 the two-tone sunburst finish turns into a three tone sunburst finish which means you get kind of more of a red edge around the burst the first major year of transition for the Fender Stratocaster is in 1959 and in 1959 you see the single ply pickguard switched to a three ply pickguard they would famously kind of get discolored and look slightly greenish so if you ever hear somebody talking about a mint green pit guard that's what they're talking about that started in 1959 kind of going up through the 1960s and then the introduction of the rosewood fingerboard now early rosewood fingerboard would have been what's called slab boards that means that it would have been flat between the fingerboard and the neck which didn't last very long that eventually became kind of the curved fingerboard like you see on on modern stratocasters now after that in the early 1960s the custom colors become more of an advertised thing there's a color turret that comes out the headstock would have looked largely the same for the first several years in the 1960s until 1964 when you get what's called the transition fender logo it's a fatter Fender logo and then things really get shaken up in 1965 in the five CBS buys fender this is the point when the electric guitar is making a huge splash in the world and music is really changing you had had Buddy Holly playing his Stratocaster on the Ed Sullivan Show Hank Marvin was making noise over in England Dick Dale is playing insanely loud amazing awesome surf music Al Jardine of the Beach Boys is playing a Stratocaster and don't forget how incredibly popular the Beach Boys were in the early days the electric guitar was becoming a powerhouse and a shadow of the powerhouse it would become remember in the early days the electric guitar is not what it is considered nowadays these were designed to be clean they were designed to sustain they were designed to limit the feedback that you got from big hollow bodies and they gets hers were electrified in the first place because guitars were just too quiet but really they would have been intended to play stuff like this [Music] now the same year that CBS buys Fender Bob Dylan plays the Newport Folk Festival and he decides to play a Stratocaster and it is an uproar it's this huge controversy but it's kind of this musical awakening in the culture and music has just changed so much along with CBS buying the Fender Stratocaster afterwards would come big changes in the guitar and the fender company in general so if you hear the term pre CBS they're talking about fenders that were made before the buyout in 1965 generally speaking they're more sought-after and we'll talk about that in a minute after the buyout in 1965 the Stratocaster changes the most dramatic change is that the headstock becomes a lot bigger now you still have the transition Fender logo and you still have the small Stratocaster lettering which later turns to these big kind of block Stratocaster letterings that curves up and around the little hook there aesthetically I personally think they're kind of cool I've always liked them however the problem with them is that along with the big corporation wanting just kind of a piece of this you know musical money-making pie quality drops now this would gradually get kind of worse and worse and really start deployment in the 1970s late 60s stratocasters are still very sought-after particularly because remember folks that's what Jimi Hendrix played in the later days everyone at Woodstock tried their hardest to have a good time despite the fact that Hendrix was playing a CBS era Stratocaster I mean come on if you're into later 60s or into 70 Stratocaster what would be referred to as CBS era stratocasters or post CBS buyout stratocasters you can make great music on a lot of people made iconic amazing music on them so when I talk about the quality dropping just keep that in mind I'm not trying to knock anybody's guitar for anybody who owns one well now there were some cool things that came out in the CBS era Stratocasters for one you get the introduction of the 5 way switch now I mentioned the three way switch earlier why is the 5 way switch significant because it standardizes getting the sound of the blending of the pickups so what I'm talking about there is on a vintage style Stratocaster or a vintage inspired one that has a 3-way switch you can wedge that switch in the middle so right so it doesn't just click there's kind of this little play in the middle you can get it to stick in that spot where you're getting these two pickups blended together interesting point this is not out of phase a lot of people call it the out of phase sound this is actually not technically on a phase but if you hear people talking about the out of phase position on a Stratocaster at the end of phase sound that's what they're talking about it sounded kind of quacky it sounded a little bit different it sounded thinner it was kind of quacky and plucky and you could sink into it a little bit more and it became a very desired sound the other pickup position sound great as well but that became one of the most iconic sounds to this day of the Fender Stratocaster well the 5 way switch where those are official positions that gets standardized in the CBS era as well as having the truss rod adjustment in the neck for those of you that don't know what the truss rod is it's a bar that goes through the middle of the neck and it allows you to adjust in case humidity causes the next to either warp or bow while on original stratocasters the truss rod adjustment was up here under the heel of the neck and you actually had to take the neck off in order to adjust it might not have been a problem in Southern California for me in Maine it's a big problem we get major humidity changes so I think having the truss rod adjustment at the the headstock is huge it's absolutely huge the original ones were called the bullet truss rod adjustments because it kind of looked like this bullets sticking out before they became the recessed ones like you see nowadays now again the quality plummeted you start to get people who are really desiring more vintage style stratocasters Hendrix had revolutionized the Stratocaster at this point Ritchie Blackmore was playing them with deep purple among many many others playing stratocasters Eric Clapton gets Stratocasters he buys a whole bunch he gives him away to some of his friends he takes them apart and he puts together kind of his super strap between Hendrix's legacy who had passed away and clapped and playing them you have this whole revolutionized sound and you have people wanting to play the Stratocaster but they're just not getting the quality that they want from the ones that are brand-new off the shelf so vintage Stratocaster sales start to pick up later on you get the Japanese plant opening who start to make more vintage style reissues you get the American vintage series you get Squire coming out you get the Mexican plant and Fender starts to come up with all kinds of different ways to get different levels of casters to players rock gets really hard there are a bunch of different style hard rock strata casters and it kind of goes on from there but the really really significant era of the Fender Stratocaster the 1950s and the 1960s so now let's talk about how to get some strat tones that are some of my personal favorites inspired by some of my favorite Stratocaster players there's a lot of ways to get a lot of different Stratocaster tones to kick that off I'm gonna play some clean bluesy stuff inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughn on my surf green Stratocaster the one that you heard at the beginning of the video now for that one I'm going to be playing on the blended neck in middle this is a tone similar to what Stevie would have done when he played songs like Tin Pan Alley or Lemmy playing straight into a super reverb here it is enjoy [Music] [Music] [Music] for stevie ray vaughan albums my absolute favorite and I think one of the best representations of Stevie Ray Vaughn is Stevie Ray Vaughan live at Montreux now I have the DVD which is a double DVD and it has both his first concert there in his second concert there the first concert is the famous one where he actually gets booed really really brutally and it was a heartbreaking moment for him however Jackson Browne and David Bowie were there who were two of the famous established artists who helped him launch his stardom that's a story for another time but live at Montreux particularly the for the second concert is great too you know he plays fantastic the first concert you hear him just playing with such raw passion really you know trying to live his dream its aggressive it's amazing he can't go wrong with any Stevie Ray Vaughan if you're looking for Stratocaster Tom's but that's definitely must must listen for the next home we're gonna switch to the other blended pickup position from the bridge to the middle still gonna go straight into the super reverb this is a tone inspired by my favorite artists of all time definitely my favorite songwriter mr. Mark Knopfler famous for finger picking so I'm gonna finger pick playing out on a red Stratocaster with a rosewood board it's loaded with Andrew Robertson Blue Jay pickups enjoy [Music] [Music] now if you're looking for a great mark knopfler strat tone again he plays stratocasters all through his career all up through his solo career and I highly recommend anything dire straits or Mark Knopfler but the classic Knopfler strat tone that people talk about are from the first two dire straits albums which are dire straits and communicating that's where you get Sultans of Swing that's where you get lady writer that's where you get down to the waterline and six blade knife and you know a lot of other great dire straits songs with that really classic clean kind of compressed finger plucked Mark Knopfler sound but again I would recommend anything dire straits or Mark Knopfler there's beautiful strat tones and just beautiful guitar tones in general across his entire catalogue now we're gonna get a little over driven from one of my first biggest influences one of my absolute favorite guitar players of all time mr. Eric Clapton now Clapton as I talked about was famous for kind of giving new life to the Stratocaster in the 1970s the interesting thing about him is over his career not only has he you know primarily favored the Stratocaster except for in his early days but not only has he primarily favored the Stratocaster he's used multiple Stratton's for this one I'm gonna use my black strat this is my ode to Eric Clapton strat it's loaded with lust for tone 57 lust casters which are 50s inspired pickup now for this clip I'm introducing some overdrive I'm gonna be using an mxr distortion 3 which gets a really cool Clapton tone believe it or not playing into the super reverb for the first part of it I'm gonna play on the bridge in the middle blended and have the volume turned down after that I'm gonna turn the volume back up switch to the neck pickup with the tone rolled off that gets more of a modern kind of Clapton sound not like modern modern like the past 10 years but kind of more like the sounds he was getting in the late 90s and early 2000s he was playing a more aggressive sound he was using the tone more like he did when he was with cream here's this tone hope you enjoy [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for eric clapton so much great listening but here's a couple of album recommendations I love Clapton Live especially for strat tones just one night and ICI was here too great 70s Clapton albums that kind of are exemplary of that sort of thinner tone that he used to get for a modern tone I've never heard Clapton play better than he did in the 2005 Kreme reunion check that out Summa Clapton's best work and this is coming from somebody who has listened to a lot of Eric Clapton now we're gonna keep it going with the overdrive I'm gonna do another quick Stevie Ray Vaughan inspired sound here he really went back and forth a lot on the pickup selector but some of that classic Stevie Ray bluesy tone believe it or not you can really get it in just the middle setting on this middle pickup on its own going back to the red Stratocaster plugging into the super reverb and using a tube screamer hope you enjoy this tone [Music] now we haven't really talked about effects very much and one of the things that's unique about the Stratocaster is its sonic range and how that lends to all these different tones now it has this sort of bell like attack bridge is not quite as twangy as a Telecaster but it still has that sharp bite the neck has this cool focused bluesy thing going on the middle has this really nice edgy thing and then of course you know we've already talked about the in the middle settings that lends itself to be great for the use of effects so for this next clip what I want to do is play a tone inspired by David Gilmour from Pink Floyd now for this I'm gonna keep it clean I'm gonna be using my white Stratocaster this is a 50 style Stratocaster it's loaded with righteous sound opals which are 50s and inspired pickup it is wired with the 5 way I'm gonna use that Nick middle again it's just a beautiful I love that setting it's a bits of one of the most beautiful electric guitar tones as you can get playing into a Marshall Blues breaker and I'm gonna use a univibe and some delay for this clip McCaffery audio run rabbit run univibe and a love pedal echo phonic hope you enjoy this tone [Music] [Music] [Music] there was no greater pioneer of sonic effects and the use of effects to create sound escapes and to create different textures than Jimi Hendrix one of the greatest not only greatest Stratocaster players of all time for greatest guitar players of all time completely revolutionized the instrument for this tone I'm using the same unified I'm using a little bit of the delay and I'm using a one control Baltic blue fuzz Jimi was famous for using fuzz this one's actually based on a bigmouth which the big muff was supposedly they're supposed to the links to Jimi Hendrix and the big muff but that's a whole story for another time the one control Baltic blue fuzz gets a lot of great fuzz tones going to keep the fuzz roll back on that this is another take of what you heard at the beginning here's some more Hendrix tones for you [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for Hendrix album recommendation I really really love live at Monterey it was one of his most iconic concerts it's the one where he famously set his guitar on fire raw aggressive pushing the boundary Jimi playing but also kind of tender Jimi playing he does this this lovely version of like a rolling stone now in that one he's not playing the big headstock Stratocasters like he was famous for Woodstock he's actually playing earlier Stratocasters sounds great it's classic Jimi if you're into Jimi Hendrix you probably know it if you're not into Jimi Hendrix it's it's an iconic performance in music history now for my last artist inspired tone right now I want to play one more Gilmour sound this is again and again people you know with Hendrix and Gilmour it's very easy to get particular these are inspired by tones I'm not trying to nail an exact tone here just kind of give you something that gives you the right vibe I'm gonna stick with the one control Baltic blue fuzz gonna turn the fuzz away up though and I'm also gonna turn the delay up using one of my very favorite dear guitars a red Stratocaster of mine which is actually loaded with less four tone Monterrey pickups they're a jimi hendrix inspired pickup believe it or not plugging into the Marshall Blues breaker also got a little tremolo just because I like the way it makes the sound wave tremolo is coming from the amp hope you enjoy this tone [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for david gilmour recommendations you can get a lot of great strat tones from a lot of great places with david gilmour but I personally think he's never sounded better than he did on Pink Floyd pulse some of the most breathtaking guitar playing you'll ever hear and some of the great great strat tones of all time now I'm also gonna give an honorable mention to David Gilmour live in Gdansk it's one of his more modern performances he plays some amazing stuff on that he has these great edgy strat to him one of the reasons I'm giving an honorable mention to that is because he plays echoes and I love echoes some other album recommendations lost Lonely Boys Henry Garza plays some fantastic beautiful melodies on a Stratocaster on their first album their first album is fantastic he plays with a wah pedal and does this really great melodic stuff as well as some you know really killer diggin in blue stuff Buddy Guy you know a lot of Buddy guys gonna have great strat tones to modern albums of his that I love are living proof and born to play guitar great great blues albums with some great strat tones there's a band called Oh a R of a revolution which you might not expect me to bring them up they're kind of a jam band but their guitar player Richard on great strat tones great strap player their album the wanderer has some great tones and they have a live album called 34th and 8th which also gets some great Stratton's also more Eric Clapton Eric Clapton 24 nights some great Stratton's on there and then there's this one yes I don't know how that got on there it's I heard there's some great Stratton's on there though I know I'm holding a Firebird in the cover let's get past that this is because there's some great Stratton's on there you now we're gonna talk about some unique things about the Stratocaster guitar itself which Stratocaster is right for you that's probably a question you're asking there's all kinds of different levels of Stratocaster there's vintage inspired ones there's of course uh vintage ones if you have a lot of money vintage inspired ones there's more modern ones there's all kinds of different levels again I've been mentioning I've been holding this guitar this is a squire classic vibe Stratocaster again inspired by the earliest 1950 stratocasters although it does have some modern appointments like the you know the truss rod adjustment up at the headstock and the five way selector switch this is a fantastic guitar this is way way better than you'd expect for the money this is one you could definitely give a chance if you're on a budget if you need a great strat tone but you don't have a ton of money to shell out this will play and record great here are some tones from this guitar playing straight into the super reverb [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] now two of the other guitars from this video are made in Mexico guitars the guitar that was playing for the Jimi Hendrix clips is a 2006 it was called a reverse headstock late 60s reissue now you can tell by the transition logo but the small Stratocaster that it's inspired by one of the earliest CBS era Stratocasters with the big headstock however the reverse headstock in the reverse bridge that's inspired by Jimi Hendrix that goes back to Jimi Hendrix because he famously took a right-handed Stratocaster and strung it up left-handed that's a made in Mexico guitar and in a little bit we're gonna talk about how to get some Jeff Beck tones because there's a set up thing different which is why it's separate from the other artists things but to get some Jeff Beck tones I'm using a Fender classic player strat now that one is a bit modified that one has less for tone 60 for less caster pickups in it it's a superb superb guitar if you're really really into classic strats and don't have a ton of money to shell out the squire classic vibe or some of the Mexican made vintage inspired series are great they've had ones called the the classic player series they the current one they have is the Ventura series more modern features you're gonna find on things like the player's strat and then you get up into the American performer series they've also had the highway ones like I was playing a highway one earlier they've had the American special series and all kinds of different ones no matter what your budget is you can find a great Stratocaster that will suit you now here's a question do you want rosewood or maple you want to know the unpopular opinion it doesn't really make that much of a difference it really doesn't totally if you play them back to back Darrell Braun's done a great video on this where there's actually like a blind test double blind if there's a blind test where you hear them back-to-back and you have to guess which one they point is when you get a great Stratocaster you're gonna get great strat tones a good place to start would be who are your favorite artists and what do they play right so if you're into Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Mayer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and guys like that maybe some early Hendrix start off with the rosewood fingerboard that's probably gonna be the one that you're ultimately gonna want now if you pick it up and it doesn't feel as good as the maple one then get the maple one it's really a very very simple thing the sound differences are so so minimal it takes a very very trained ear to notice a difference just go with whatever you want pickups you could spend a lot of time talking about pickups on Stratocasters they kind of lend themselves to being modified and part of that is because all the electronics except the jack load into one pit guard so a lot of people love to mod Stratocasters now first of all we'll say if you're looking at a Stratocaster you need to understand the letter codes so there are all kinds of different iterations of stratocasters with pickups this would be referred to as SS single single single the next most common one is going to be HSS which is a humbucker in the bridge position and then still two single coils that's also referred to as a fat strap there's HS H which is two humbuckers with a single in the middle there's H H here's the most important thing know what the routing on the strap body is because you can't just plop a humbucker in there unless it's routed for a humbucker underneath the hood here there are some stratocasters where the only space for a pickup are for single single single then you get ones that you can fit anything which has what's called a swimming-pool route which is this whole area is kind of carved now just know what you have first before you go by and pick up some pit guards know that you need to measure the distance from the top of the bridge here to where the you know the next pickups gonna start because there's still some wood right in there and I've had the wrong pick guard before where you couldn't get it in because it was you know the humbucker was hitting the wood of the guitar so you just need to know what you have now the big question for me as far as mixing and matching pickups cuz he can actually do more than that - you know you can put p90s in there you could put mini humbuckers or you know you see stratocasters that have gold foil pickups and all kinds of stuff nowadays the big question for me is not just what sound are you going for but how did the pickup sound together so here's a clip from a video that I did a while back and I switch back and forth on the pickups not just so that you can hear what it sounds like with that bridge humbucker but what do they sound like together what does it sound like when you switch from the bridge humbucker to the neck pickup is that a big contrast in tone that doesn't work or do you like how they sit together so here's this for your reference [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] now there are also other types of pickups there are noiseless pickups which can be extremely useful if you have you know big signal chains if you're playing in places that have poor wiring there's a lot of hatred towards and noise-canceling pickups eric clapton and Jeff Beck plam so you know I'll leave it at that also know that on most modern Stratocasters if you hear something called RW RP that's reverse wined reverse polarity and that would be on the middle pickup and what that means is that the blended positions are going to be hum cancelling that can be your best friend if you're playing in one of those clubs that have poor wiring and you know when you go to the bridge pickup you get yeah well then when you switch back here it's nice and quiet I've been in that situation before and having hum cancelling in there is extremely useful really true vintage style pickups are not gonna be reverse one with reverse polarity but most most modern pickups even vintage-inspired ones will have that or will at least have an option if you're ordering the pickups so that's another thing to just be aware of you also have humbuckers that can fit into this single coil spot that have these two crazy there blade pickups there's the lip stick pickups like I was playing in that surf green strap which has one of the most beautiful clean tones I've ever heard it's all kinds of different things one of the things to fall back on when it comes to pickups is if you have a great Stratocaster it's more a matter of taste of than anything now I mentioned back towards the beginning of the video that the two tones were originally wired to the neck in the middle pickup now the downside to that is that the bridge pickup is really probably the one you're gonna want that tone knob on the reason for that is because you know when you're playing particularly live into a tube amp and tube amps can get pretty bright that bridge pickup can get very very troubling very strident very snappy and and just be a little too much a little too bright a little too harsh I remember one time I was playing I had a 50 style Stratocaster and I was playing into a Vox ac30 and I flipped over to the bridge without the tone rolled off and it was it was searing it was just it was so so troubling now most modern stratocasters the this tone knob is going to be wired to the bridge so be aware of what your tone knob is wired to if it is not why to the bridge and you want it to be don't fret it's a very very easy modification if you're not handy with a soldering iron a tech shouldn't charge you very much money at all to take care of that for you so but do be aware of where the tone knobs are wired on your Stratocaster now the tremolo we are gonna talk a little bit about the tremolo because there's some really unique stuff about this now one of the first big questions is do you have it floating or do you have it pressed up against the body believe it or not leo fender and Freddie Tavares did not agree on this in fact Leo fender liked the idea of the floating tremolo as part of his design Freddie Taveras thought that as the story goes you'd get more resonance and it would be better for the guitar if it were pulled up against the body so keep that in mind when you're thinking about which way you want there really isn't a right or wrong answer there are pros and cons to each the pros of having it pressed up against the body would be that you can if you have a heavier right hand you can really lay your hand there on the bridge and not have any kind of issues of getting a little pitchy because if it's floating you're gonna press it down flipside to that argument is you can do some cool the broto stuff with your hand that way so you will probably stay in tune a little better with it pressed down because it's not kind of in the middle there where it can go back and forth it has a real set spot to go back to that being said part of the original design of the strat bridge was to be able to pull it back we talked about strings getting caught over the bridge well they can also get caught up here at the nut now if you down pitch with the whammy bar and it gets caught up at the nut part of the idea of the floating trim is that then you can pull it back and kind of get it back out from where it was stuck and get hopefully closer to where you are in tune some players can do this really well and get right back in tune I've never really been able to do that very well so which is right for you I mean a big part of it just depends on how you use the tremolo some players famously like Eric Clapton don't use it at all and didn't like it so they blocked it off down in the back here where they if you like that kind of palm vibrato and if you like doing both down pitching and up pitching which also leads to some Jeff Beck stuff which we're going to talk about soon then having it floating is right for you now the vintage style strat tremolo is what we call the six point trim has six screws that anchor it in to the body and the six or what it pivots on the more modern one and one that you'll see very commonly nowadays is a two-point trim now that has two posts that they bridge pivots on the two-point trim I find to be much smoother I really really like the two-point trim if I'm using the tremolo more the six point trim is revolutionary it's still very functional so you know I don't want to this is just a you know side-by-side comparison I'm not saying that this is a terrible bridge or anything this is a great revolutionary bridge I just happen to think that the two-point trum is a little smoother if you're gonna use the tremolo so for me personally on guitars that I have that have a six point drum I have it pulled up against the body for guitars that have a two-point trim I have it floating that's just kind of the way that I've done it I mentioned Jeff Beck earlier now if you have a floating tremolo you can do the Jeff Beck warble how do you do the Jeff Beck warble well let's talk about it a little bit now the Jeff Beck warble is that kind of weird screeching sound that he makes he does so musically and brilliantly you get that sound by flicking up on the whammy bar but before we really get into that first you need to make sure it's set up right and you need to make sure that your whammy bar is not doing this can you hear that this is not entirely secure in there there's a lot of wiggle room even though it's threaded in there's a lot of wiggle room for that strap arm to go back and forth and if you want to do the Jeff Beck warble and really quick stuff on the tremolo you can't have that now there's a couple ways you can compensate for that number one you can buy these little tiny Springs not the big fat trim Springs that go on the back but these little tiny Springs that go in first to help increase the tension I'm gonna put a link to this stuff down below where you can get it off of Amazon those help increase the tension however the thing that I have found that makes a really big difference is to use something called teflon tape also referred to as plumber's tape now plumbers tape is used in plumbing and and other work to kind of thicken the thread on things that screw together you know specifically pipe fittings and stuff you'll see this on a lot of showerheads to make sure that there's no leakage and and it's not an adhesive tape it's this really thin Teflon material that just kind of fills in around the threads but still allows allows the threads to function I'm going to show a clip here if you wrap up the bottom end of whammy bar with teflon tape and then screw it in it makes it much more snug and then it allows you to do the Jeff Beck warble and again you do that by flicking up on the strat arm what you do is you flick up on it and you immediately let it go kind of like that you flick up and let it go and it creates this kind of screechy warbly sound also having the whammy bar just much snugger allows you to do just a lot of more kind of really well controlled tremolo stuff so I'm gonna pull you a clip now inspired by Jeff Beck for that I'm playing that classic player 60 Stratocaster I mentioned it's loaded with less per tone 60 for less casters playing into this amp right here Fender Hot Rod deville using a wampler Tumnus deluxe overdrive to get some some kind of cool warm Jeff Beck inspired tones check this out with a little bit of that sort of tremolo style [Music] now for Jeff Beck albums Jeff Beck has got a ton of great albums my two favorite Jeff Beck albums are live at Ronnie Scott's which is some of the best guitar playing you'll ever hear and a modern Jeff Beck album called emotion & commotion beautiful arrangements just a stunning stunning album definitely check out Jeff Beck emotion & commotion folks I'm gonna leave you with one last tip on how to get some of the best tones out of your Fender Stratocaster and that is that Stratocasters love mid-range where you dial in the mid-range a big part of that's going to depend on your amplifier because different amplifiers have different levels of mid-range but Stratocasters love mid-range so in order to get that really warm strat sound as well as the really clear bell like strat sound in order to fill out that mid make sure you've got a generous amount of mid-range in your tone please remember to share some of your favorite Stratocaster artists and Stratocaster albums in the comments I'd love to hear what you're all listening to especially if it's something I haven't heard because I'm always looking for great new listening thank you so much for tuning in I hope that you found this video informative and helpful please remember to Like share and subscribe and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Jack Fossett

Views: 11,452

Rating: 4.9034853 out of 5

Keywords: Jack Fossett, Guitar, Rock & Roll, Blues, Guitarist, Guitar Player, Fender Stratocaster, Fender, history, stratocaster, strat, strat 101, Fender Stratocaster: A Short History, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, Buddy Holly, tremolo, vibrato, fender super reverb

Id: TRSoMbggyJI

Length: 46min 1sec (2761 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Urmamasophat]

Hell yes this is good content