David Hurst

There’s something special about owning a good quality instrument. It’s not snobbery - you pay more, you get more. What I can’t get over, is just how much you do get with the Fender Classic Player 50’s Stratocaster for such a reasonable price. I paid £400 for mine (although the RRP is £500), which is in 2 tone sunburst with a gloss finish maple neck. It compares very favourably with my brother’s USA Standard Stratocaster in terms of tone and finish.

Let me describe the various features, starting from the top down.

The guitar is kitted out with Fender/Gotoh vintage style locking tuning machines. Basically, you can chuck away your string winder! With these machine, you just insert the string, screw the top of the peg down to lock it and then snip off the excess string length. That should take some time off the re-stringing process. The machines themselves are solid with zero slip, as you would expect from Fender.

The neck is a soft “V” shape. I love this shape of neck as it suits my style of play and the size of my hands very nicely. If you’re used to a “C” neck, you’ll definitely want to go and play this instrument in a shop rather than buying online. I find it great for levering my thumb against to play scales on the top strings. The gloss finish gives no friction when playing, which makes it really quite quick.

The maple fingerboard sets off the look of the guitar perfectly. For me, a Strat has to have a maple fingerboard - rosewood just doesn’t do it for me. There are 21 medium jumbo frets, which I have found to be a massive improvement over any electric guitar I have owned previously. No fret buzz, and easy vibrato.

The pickups are American Vintage Strat single coils, with the middle pickup wound in reverse. This reverse polarity eliminates hum when you put the pickup selector in the middle position. Staggered Alnico 5 magnet pole pieces and aged plastic covers give the guitar both the authentic 50’s look and sound. The pickup selector (also with aged plastic), is custom configured so that position 4 selects the bridge and neck pickups, rather than the usual middle and neck combination. Mine is almost always in position 4 - the sound is warm, punchy and smooth. Beautiful!

The pickguard is 1-ply rather than the more modern 3-ply, which adds to the vintage appearance, as do the aged plastic knobs and whammy bar end-piece. Speaking of the tremolo, this is a vintage style 2 point synchonised model. I’ve had to tighten mine up from the factory settings, but that’s the only mod I’ve felt necessary.

On the rear at the neck joint is a Fender Custom Shop steel plate, and a 1-ply white plastic tremolo cover, with the usual slot for stringing.

The sustain is remarkable for a guitar in this price bracket, and the finish is excellent. Don’t let the fact it comes from the Mexico factory put you off - this is not the same as a Mex Strat. I have to give this a ten out of ten. My only slight gripe is the lack of hard case, but a swift trip to Thomann.de will solve that, and in the meantime the supplied gig bag is of very good quality. If you’re into the vintage sound, then for £400 I don’t think you can buy a better guitar.