Why do kids hate Stratocasters?
I grew up hating Strat’s but now I couldn’t live without one.
My first experience of a Stratocaster style guitar was a late 90’s Squire Stratocaster. I would hazard a guess that many of us might have started with a Squire Strat, or may have at least experienced playing one in our early playing days. A Squire was the entry into the instrument for so many. The catalogue stores even packaged them up with cables, straps and a practice amp, for the complete introduction to the instrument, it was a no-brainer for parents at Christmas time.
For me, I started on an old Marlin Stingray that was given to me by an old friend. Whilst I was very grateful for it, and the amp he gave me at the time, a 30w Laney Linebacker, which started my love affair with Laney amps, the guitar left a lot to be desired. Another friend described it as ‘drift wood’, and he wasn’t wrong. At the time, I was 16 and I didn’t know what an electric guitar was meant to feel like, but it clearly wasn’t meant to feel as heavy as the Stingray did, or sound as out of tune, or drift in and out of tune mid-song like it did!
Another friend of mine started in an easier manner, with a Squire Stratocaster, which he kindly let me borrow, in lieu of me needing a guitar which at least held its tuning. Whilst it did that job, it didn’t have the heft that I felt I needed in order to sound like my favourite rock heroes at the time. The single coils made it sound weak and wirey and palm muting was not achievable, and that, for me, was a requirement! This was a misunderstanding on my part, a Stratocaster wasn’t meant to be bashed around doing nu-metal, it can, but that wasn’t what it excelled at. I expected too much of it. Suffice to say, I dismissed Stratocasters hereafter, for roughly 13 years and stuck with humbucker equipped single-cut guitars.
Pink Floyd
In 2002, my uncle sadly passed away and I always remember admiring his CD collection, often borrowing Bon Jovi CD’s to copy them to tape, as I couldn’t afford to buy them myself. But amongst that CD library was the spine of a CD which had a flashing LED, that was my first introduction to Pink Floyd. I didn’t play the CD, but I knew it was a Pink Floyd record from then on.
At his funeral, his brother chose to play a song, it was 9 and a half minutes long and had a full guitar solo that lasted for 7 minutes without any lyrics which amazed and bemused the funeral attendees. I thought it was amusing that my uncle had held all these people to ransom for nearly 10 minutes of indulgence, whether they liked it or not.
Knowing my uncles taste in music, I had a feeling that it was a Floyd song and figured it was Comfortably Numb as that was the only song title I’d heard of.
It was epic. Everything clicked into place at that moment. This was real music. Yes, the visceral emotion of the funeral and the loss of my uncle played a massive part, but that solo epitomised everything about that day, where hundreds gathered to pay tribute to a beloved person who died way before his time.
I later realised that the blinking LED was the P-U-L-S-E CD, which happened to be the exact extended version of Comfortably Numb that was played that day.
My love of Pink Floyd had begun.
Over the years I delved deeper into their back catalogue and after I finally got to see David Gilmour and Roger Waters perform live, separately of course (until 2011, when I saw them both perform Comfortably Numb at the O2), when my attention turned toward trying to recreate some of the sounds for myself, and a Stratocaster, as we all know, is core to that ‘Floyd’ sound.
The Red Strat
In 2013 I started to crave what I thought was the sound of a Stratocaster. Finding one that I wanted wasn’t easy though. As I mentioned in another story, I was never keen on the solid colours and found it hard to settle on one, so I went with what I knew…chose the same colour of Gilmour’s Candy Apple Red Stratocaster, used on that P-U-L-S-E solo. Why not, I’d never had a red guitar before and it was the coolest finish I could find.
It was around this time that I started to value more vintage flourishes though. So when I arrived at the music shop to try a few Strats out, I gravitated toward the darker orange tinted, maple fretboard, the vintage saddles and vintage tuning pegs, for aesthetic purposes mainly. But soon realised after purchasing, that they all play a part in how a guitar feels and this one particularly felt like a vintage instrument. It was a 1957 Vintage Reissue Fender Stratocaster and since I bought it, I realise that I bought it at the right time, because since then, Fender has not reissued vintage accurate guitars, not to that standard at least, in my humble opinion.
I love Stratocaster’s
In the years since I purchased that Strat, it’s become my absolute favourite guitar. I don’t try to play heavy metal on it, but I could if I wanted to. It has a nuance to the tone that is just perfect for my needs.
I had a brief spell without it but I could never be without a Stratocaster, especially not this one, ever again. In fact, I’d happily buy many more Stratocaster’s and I’m already looking at '62 reissue Strat’s with Rosewood board’s, and even another Suhr Classic S. The list goes on, as does the GAS.
Maybe “kids” these days are better than I was back then. But this kid wrongly dismissed Stratocasters for a long time based on my experiences with Squire’s. It must be said that Squire makes some amazing guitars nowadays, a lot better than the one I had. But that particular guitar didn’t help me.
How do you feel about the humble and much beloved Fender Stratocaster? Is there another guitar that you could never get on with but perhaps did in later life? Let me know in the comments.
