Don't Buy Your Next Strat WITHOUT Watching This First!!!

Maple or Rosewood?
It's perhaps one of the biggest questions guitarists have when looking for a new guitar. But does it really matter as much as they think??
In this weeks video, Sam takes a closer look at three identical Fender American Professional II Strats. The only difference between the three being their necks, to really shine light on the difference the neck wood holds.

Fender American Professional II Stratocaster

Video with full transcript available on our website!

Chapters:
0:00 - 0:35 Intro
0:36 - 1:33 Overview of Strats
1:34 - 2:15 Playing Comparison
2:16 - 2:48 How Fender Changed The Recipe
2:49 - 3:57 Conclusion / Outro

#fender #fenderstratocaster #stratocaster #tone #guitar #comparison #hearthedifference #guitarist #guitar #electricguitar

[bordonbert]

If you flick from one guitar to the other based on the clock to hear the same notes played on each, (1:40 <-> 1:53 for example), I suspect you can hear that the maple is definitely just a tad sharper, (assuming your picking technique is identical in each case which is difficult to achieve). I will own up and admit that I'm normally a debunker of this sort of cork sniffing stuff but even I can hear that though it is subtle just as you said. I think your assessment that it will make no difference in real life playing is an honest and a refreshing one in these days of internet hype where everything has to be 101% perfect for the bedroom "tone junkies" (and they describe themselves as that with such pride) or it's absolute dross. In the real world of band playing these things are generally a total non-issue. Good comparison and great straight talking conclusion Sam.

[TerrapinTrader]

Always interesting. Hated maple until I tried it! I think some peopl have felt that string slip when you are sweating buckets and it just seems like rosewood is the better option but regarding sound - I saw Jimi in '69 use about 6 different strats as they kept going out of tune and they of course all sounded perfect.

[Dikakakaka]

The best review video so far, I bought the solid rosewood since it has catchy looks and the neck feels great

[FingalPersson]

Don't buy before watching this... oh.. well that is too late... I bought a Fender Players series J bass ( love it ) A Squier affinity telecaster ( love it, but did change tuners to fender tuners which did require me to drill new plug holes lol and swapped the bridge pickup to a DiMarzio chopper )

Now let's talk about my Strat that i bought om February this year while watching this video for the first time and what I have done and what's left for me to do!

Bought a 2023 seafoam green Fender Player series Stratocaster.
Swapped bridge pickup to Seymore Duncan SHR-1B
Swapped the Neck to DiMarzio Air Norton S
Swapping the mid to DiMarzio Pro Track ( waiting for it to be shipped )
Swapped the tuners to Fender Locking Tuners
Swapped the pickguard to US made pickguard ( the one it came with had 2 dents that pointed outwards so Fender issued me a new one )
Swapping the Tone/volume pots to Fender 500K split axel pots. ( waiting for those 3 to be shipped as well )
Swapping the Pao Ferro Neck to a Fender American Professional II Scalloped Stratocaster Neck, Rosewood ( will be shipped and arrive in mid of September )

My strat is also setup with .08-38 gauge
My Tellie is setup with .09-42 gauge
And the J bass came with flatwounds unsure of the gauge size to be fair, did never bother to check and have yet not swapped gauge on it yet as i bought it last year of December!
I did want tapewound on it, UNTIL i heard that it doesnt ground and you'd have to touch the bridge in order to kill the noise that comes due to the fact that its not grounded so I kept it as is with the flatwound gauge.

What would I have done different if I've watched this video before buying? Probably nothing 😀

[colonelhathi]

The answer is NO. - good grief! Why would it? And with the levels of reverb/distortion etc demonstrated - why would it matter anyway?