Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Impact Of The Fender Strat Rock Guitar

By Andrew Nelly

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 most likely to be considered to be the most sought after of the near sixty year run guitar classic. The 57 release features the famous 2-tone sunburst coloring, usually orange fading to red or yellow and black and can be seen being played by guitar heros such as Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin during the recent years. After it's launch all those years ago, the Strat was mainly used for playing Blues until the likes of Hendrix transformed it into another dimension and started pushing the guitars boundaries and rock music to it's limits and into a new era. Jimi was one of several who was able to operate with the Fender boffins and the Fender Custom Factory team to design and release his own white signature model of Strat. Leo Fender was well known for encouraging and allowing the worlds best guitarists to work along side them to not only manufacture their own personally designed signature models, but also reinvigorate their existing designs through customization.

The Fender Stratocaster has been used on a wide variety of different musical styles over the years from blues to thrash and jazz. It's clean, clear sound lets the guitar player have the freedom to make any style and type of music accessible and the perfect build quality of each guitar is second to none. The main body of the strat is made from alder wood and the kneck is made from maple with a rosewood fretboard. The guitar includes a set of three single coil pickups which assists the generation of the the clean sound. There is a five way selector switch that allows you to switch between different combinations of the 3 pickups to produce very different tones and a series of volume and tone knobs.

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.

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