Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Massive Effect Of The Fender Strat Rock Guitar

By Julian Shanty

Throughout the history of the rock guitar, since it's birth as an instrument, there have been lots of models and shapes and sizes that have stood out from the crowd. This is not just because of the way that the guitar has been built or that they feature the recent and most innovative designs and internal components, but that they have been created, owned and played by by the most famous guitarists of all time.

Most likely, the most infamous guitar would be the Fender Stratocaster. First made by its creator, Leo Fender, founder of the world leading Fender Guitar company back in the 50s, the Stratocaster or Fender Strat as it is more commonly known, has taken it's place amongst the history of music and rock and roll. Now enjoying a cult of followers from newbie guitar players and vintage guitar lovers alike, the Strat still empowers the best of todays musical groups.

The 1957 model of the Strat is definitely considered to be the best and most collectable of the near 60 year run guitar classic. The 57' model features the tell tale 2 tone sun-burst design, usually red fading to orange or yellow and black and can be seen being played by famous guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin during more recent times. After it's inception all those years ago, the Strat was usually used for playing blues music until the likes of Jimi blasted it into another dimension and started breaking the limitations of the guitar and rock music to it's limits and smashing into a new era. Jimi was one of many guitarists who was able to combine their talents with the Fender technicians and the team behind the Fender Custom Factory to make his own white signature model of Stratocaster. Leo Fender was famous for encouraging the worlds most famous guitar players to work with them to not only manufacture their own personally designed signature models, but also evolve their existing designs through experimentation and customization.

The Fender Stratocaster has been used on a wide variety of different music styles over the years from blues, rock, jazz and swing. It's clean and clear sound allows the guitar player have the freedom to make any sound and type of music accessible and the perfect build quality of each Fender Strat is perfect. The body of the strat is constructed from alder wood and the neck is made from maple wood with a rose wood fretboard. The guitar contains a set of 3 single coil pickups which aids the the clean and pure sound. There is a five way selector switch that allows you to alter various combinations of the guitar pickups to produce different tones and a set of volume and tone controls.

The Strat is undoubtably a guitar name that will go down in history as being a near perfect and extremely versatile instrument that really helped change the face of rock music and guitar sound as we know it. Little did Leo Fender did not know that when he first made the Strat long ago in his workshop in 1950, he would also be instrumental in starting a cult that will last forever.

About the Author:

0 comments:

Post a Comment