dandyman.us

A Tale of Two Stratocasters, Pt. 2

// April 19th, 2009 // Guitar

Welcome to part two of my comparison of two very different stratocasters. As I mentioned in part 1, I was able to borrow a Fender American Standard Stratocaster from a friend of mine for the and thought it would be fun to do a comparison between this high-end Fender guitar and it’s twin from the other side of the tracks; my Squier.

Part 1 was primarily concerned with documenting the many component level differences between the two guitars, while this post will focus more on the audible differences. Again, it bears noting that while the Squier has all stock pickups, the AmStd has an aftermarket Seymour Duncan stack humbucker in the bridge position. Now on to the sound checks.

All samples were created with a Line 6 POD 2.0 recorded in Garageband. The clean samples used the “Line 6 Clean” and were recorded on different days with slightly different settings. The little bit of static you hear on the Squier samples at the higher volumes is actually my ineptitude and not that of the guitar. Also, the neck on the AmStd had a very different feel to me and I had quite a few misplayed notes, catching a string etc. I started to get the hang of “proper’ frets later on and really came to love the ease with which I could play as opposed to my flat top frets on the Squier. Last but not least, the crunch tones were recorded one after the other with zero variance between the two guitars. This is were the distinction between the two really stood out.

I’m going to spare you my editorial on the differences between each position/sample, but did want to hear your thoughts.

Position 1 – Bridge

Position 2 – Bridge & Middle

Position 3 – Middle

Position 4 – Middle & Neck

Position 5 – Neck

Related posts:

1. A Tale of Two Stratocasters, Pt. 1
2. To Invest or Diversify?
3. Found My New Pickups
4. Changing the Nut on a Strat, Part 1
5. Madali S-812 Deluxe