Fender Stratocaster American Standard – My wonderful guitars

My main guitar

I bought my Fender American Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar, 3 Tone Sunburst, Maple Fretboard in 2008 in-person at Steve’s Music Store in Montreal. At that time I just joined a band that was playing dance and disco stuff, so my 7 strings Ibanez wasn’t really the right guitar for this band. I paid around 1000 CA$ and I got a rigid case with it.

This guitar really lived up to its expectations, it is versatile, reliable and it never goes out of tune. It has traveled to the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Nunavut, and all around the province of Quebec, Canada.

The Fender Stratocaster and heavy rock

When I started playing heavier stuff with it, I missed the sound of the humbuckers. Also, the single-coil positions are very noisy in bars where the space is limited and I am close to the amp. I still think you can play heavy stuff with a Strat, but I prefer working with guitars with humbuckers, like a Les Paul for example.

Eventually, when I joined more projects than the rock band, I bought another guitar to play rock only. It was also a good thing because that band played down a semitone, I had to tune every time I switched bands.

Be ready to use the switches and knobs

I have to admit, it took a long time for me to exploit the different combinations of the Fender Stratocaster pickup selection. I was a little bit ignorant at that time, I would put the switch where it sounded good and never change it.

Even for a long time, I was struggling with the sound. When I did leads with lots of distortion, my sound would be really bad, it produced an annoying vibration that altered the sound. It was happening using the two-pickups configuration, it was less evident on single pick up, but noisier.

Eventually, I found out that my problem was the tone knob. I put it bright because I liked the sound of it when I was clean, but combined with the distortion and the two pickups, it’s over-saturated. I realized that I needed to adjust these settings during the course of a show.

My settings for the Fender Stratocaster

Now, since I switched to pedals last year, my settings are like that. For clean sounds, I switch to the neck pickup with the tone bright and put the compression pedal on. I get this sweet bright and percussive tone perfect for my 80’s tribute band.

For distortion, I’ll use the bridge pickup and lower the tone on this one. Usually, I’ll turn off the compression, especially with heavy distortion because it gets noisy. I have a noise gate on my pedal board on all the time so it helps, but if the venue is too small and I get noise and feedback, I’ll put the switch to the middle and bridge pickup.

Conclusion

As of right now, I’m using the Fender Stratocaster for my 80’s tribute 80’s Night Band and the upcoming Madonna tribute. The sound and versatility are perfect for that kind of pop and soft rock. I also use a Jackson guitar that I bought especially for the heavier stuff on the tribute. The Jackson is easier to shred than the Fender, I use it to play the Van Halen solos in Jump and Beat it among others.

Useful links:
Fender website
Fender Stratocaster Wiki