Fender Player Series

Anyone had a chance to try the new player series guitars from Fender? Particularly the strats. I dig the colours and the variety of models, and *on paper *they certainly seem like a step in the right direction. But at such a reasonable price point I'm worried they're too good to be true. Considering grabbing one when I head up to Canada for my final year of Uni for open mics and the occaisional band thing.

I won't be able to actually play one until I'm up there (my Island is tiny and stocks very little gear for me to be able to try out), and obviously my having a test run of them will be what decides it, just wandering if anyone's had any experience with them yet, any issues I should be aware of.

In particular I'm wondering if the tremolo on the strat really is an improvement, that's always been the part I struggle with most on lower-end strats of any kind.

tried some... strat is a pretty run of the mill strat... bridge feels like any old floating 2 point trem fender's been cranking out... nothign special about this guitar line. The jag was kinda fun, but I really missed the jag bridge pickup. I always dig the spaghetti western and spy movie sound of the jag's bridge pup and that humbucker can't get close.

I really feel like the flaws with fender's first vibrato system have nothing to do with the number of screws and everything to do with how it contacts the body when pivoting or resting and that can't be alleviated without a redesign. I swear that the real reason fender went to 2 points over the vintage 6 on a lot of guitars is that 2 screws cost less per guitar than 2.

To be perfectly honest with you, 'run of the mill' strat is fine by me, I have a Fender Tele, but my strats have only ever been Squiers, so it wouldn't have to be anything particularly special to be an improvement anyway. Any idea how they hold up to the older mexican standards? A friend is selling one at the moment. By the sounds of it, there's not much of a significant difference between the two, so I'm likely better off saving money and buying my pal's one.

I'm curious about the Floyd Rose models as well, if only because I've never found a Floyd on an 'affordable' guitar that could hold its tune very well (other than my 90's RG, which I actually haven't even added to my equipboard yet)

I like 90s mexican standards quite a bit.... but those still have the vintage bridge, which I prefer ebcause I tend to set my trem up wrong and have massive spring tension so I don't take it out of tune when I mute... otherwise similar quality I thought. Not as nice as an older mexican high end, but easily as nice as the older standard if you're not picky about the bridge type. I would say the pickups sounded quite a bit better than stock mexican standard pickups of the 90s and even american standard pickups of the 90s! I was enver a fan of what they were using back then.

for frame of reference, I haven't played a lot of newer strats. I pick something like this up once in a blue. My #1 modified strat is probably almost as old as you are being a 90s jimmy Vaughn... I recently got a silver, hardtail strat, the Robert cray I think. Its pretty well old too. at elast 15 years old. I forget the date. I've had various classic series and the odd American standard but they were all late 90s production and maybe an early 2000s...

I havent personally played them so i cant speak to how they feel but listenig to a side by side the new strats pick ups sound better to my ear a bit fuller sound closer to the american pick ups and the guys from andertons said that for the budget they one of the best lines on the market, and that they embody fenders roots of an affordable guitar that can survive gigging and the tribuations of playing on the road

also if you were to go the tele route you can now get a pao ferro neck under 800, used to be the cheapest were the baja and classic players now and for guitars, aesthetically i prefer rosewood and pao ferro fretboards on fenders and ive never really had a maple neck ive fallen in love with outside the 72 deluxes 12 inch neck

when I was in ym 20s I used to feel like strats and to a lesser extent teles should be maple boards with the good old skunks tripe on the back.... but I really flipped script in my 30s and I've been focusing on rosewood and pao ferro like you are. I still like the maple baord gutiars I have, they're all VERY 50s, but on a go to level my rosewood baord tele and strat are the guitars I reach for when i don't have a specific sound in mind apart from 'fender'. They feel like they play easier. Some of that is the board, some of it is the brdge assemblies, string tree placements etc. Lots of little refinements in the 60s helped the rosewood boarded guitars to play better. On the other hand there's something to a 50s spec fender that you gotta wrassle with and force into making music! And the bright, finished maple fretboard can really stand a much hotter wind pickup and more midrangey magnets and stilld eliver mighty chime because of that reflective fingerbaord…. hot pickups in a rosewood tele or strat get dull to my ear. Best to have both. When I want a dark guitar I have gibsons that do that.

I'm going to come to a conclusion that the player series is bang for buck across the board. They sound good (if not the way I would want, they're still much better than what fender was doing with msot of their guitars, especially chepies, when iw as young, defintiely a higher sonic benchmark to my ear), they're well made (fit and finish were nice by today's standards although the early mexi standards kill them there, later mexi standards don't).... versy serviceable fenders. They're relatively inexpensive for an actual fender these days... Iw ould wait and look for used ones in a year though. They'll get cheaper. If you must have fender on the headstock (and I get that desire) then they're a good bet. They will need less electronics tweaking then an old standard and they seem rpetty consistent whereas a used standard is a crap shoot in that department based on the year. I cna reptty much guarantee you will dislike the electronics, especially the picups, in any standard strat... they were always shrill, dog's ass pickups and those guitars really fueled Duncan and Dimarzio's empires! Additionally, most MIM standards are poplar and not alder, so they have a kinda weird midrange resonance and the transparent finishes universally look shitty on poplar but fender mexico cranked out the bursts and such through my teens and 20s! Poplar is just a bad material for a stock strat. Even a pickup upgrade doesn't make the guitar sound the way I want it to... Its not TERRRIBLE, but if you're being picky? Go with the alder body for a strat, its THE sound. It might bug you down the road going poplar.

In answer to Comojo's question? if asking price is the same as the new Player Series I would probably avoid the MIM standard strat even though I prefer a vintage 6 bolt bridge. Frankly I would just as soon replace the whole thing with a Babicz vibrato down the road or hard tail it. If it was ME? Both guitars feature a slim girl's neck so I wouldn't buy either. I kidna like MIM strats of the 90s, but boy are the necks a joke and, like I said, poplar, pickups, meh. I would enver pay 650 for one, that's for sure.... but these are crazy times. And you might like that fender 'modern, slim C' neck. Not I! Gimmee a U, soft V, Boat, roundback!!! Less fatiguing.

For the same money I would also look at 70s and 80s Tokai, Fernandez and Greco strat copies. They are fine fender style guitars that still trade for very reasonable prices versus those company's Gibson style lawsuit guitars... very comparable in quality to the JV series fenders and earliest Japanese squiers, they just lack the fender logo... the key with those guitars though is to really pay attention to the specs, the lower end mdoels are pretty decent like early squiers whereas the higher end models are very vintage correct like the JV series (fender's first official RI series, those Japanese guys taught fender how to make the guitars right again and spawned the AVRI series)…

food for thought.

hmm, interesting... I have heard from most people that I have asked/would listen to about such things that the Player series is a definite improvement over the recent models, but not necessarily over the older Mexican models or some of the clones of a similar price range.

The problem with the latter option though, is that I live in two places with decidedly uninteresting secondhand markets. My Island home deals almost exclusively in squier bullets with the occaisional American Standard strat, and the area around my Uni in Canada is usually the opposite (vintage, top end strats worth thousands and the occaisional squier bullet). I'm having a scroll through reverb now, but my options are significantly limited, as Canada can have some HUGE import taxes (especially from the US nowadays), and subsequently I end up having to limit my reach mostly to stuff within the country, I think stuff from Japan might also be fine but I'm not too sure. Nonetheless, I'll be searching around for a little bit still (I still have a month before I'm back), but it's looking like one of the new player's series might be my best bet.

That being said, as I type this I've just found a '79 Greco on Reverb for a very reasonable price that looks beautiful. Hopefully it's not gone before I have the funds together!

I just order my japanese axes sight unseen, often right from japanese dealers. Link me to the Greco, I'll tell you what I think.

https://reverb.com/ca/item/11840154-greco-se500n-super-sound#description-tab found a Tokai and a couple of Fernandes' that I quite like too, but I most like the look of this one

looks really sweet.... the 500 denominates the thousands of yen it riginally cost retail, the alrger the number on a Greco the more it cost and generally the better made it is. Higher number will typically feature real nitro finishes and vintage correct pickups, like 800 and up? lwoer numbers will have less accurate pickups and polyester finish... this greco is VERY fairly priced before shipping, but with the shipping from japan is a little high in my opinion. I'm not positive where int eh line this falls, on an LP copy it would be middle of the line, but strats might have been alla round cheaper sicne I never see anything about SE700 for sale... Matbe $100 too high. Because you live on an isolated island, when you deal with the Japanese sellers make sure they can get the guitar to you easily through their international shipping service... I've had guitars from Japan dropped off by random dudes in their cars before rather than uniformed delivery guys or postal employees, so definitely talk to the seller extensively before giving hima pennny. I would also ask the guy if he can come down 50 to 100 USD.

Thanks for the advice. If I might trouble you one more time, what do you make of this one? Really really liking the look of this one and the shipping is less extreme https://reverb.com/ca/item/11148289-excellent-1970s-type-fernandes-japan-tl-555-electric-guitar-ref-no-1359

fernandez are excellent strats across the board... theys till make great s-types actually! price is good, see if you can get the nut width from the seller. The odler jap guitars soemtimes have wonky nut widths and this bothers some people... it may also cause issues if you wanna replace the bridge if the string spacing is smaller then 50s or 60s fender spacing. Its not common on the fender copies like the it is on the gibson copies but its not unheard of. For reference, the Burny guitars are the gibson clones by fernandez ;-)

also ask the seller about the pickup screw placement. I've never encoutnered it but I've read that soemtimes the pickups in the early lawsuit fender style guitars is some weird metric spacing. It all went standard USA spacing eventually but there's a chance if the guitar is really old that the pickups mount funny and can't be easily replaced if they're not to your liking. If I recall though msot fernandez prducts use Gotoh pickups of the era which are all pretty nice sounding. Very vintage construction although they soemtimes have wonky magnet types. Cheapies will have ceramic while some gotohs will use oddball alnico grades that were enver used by fender like A8... you run into this with the maxon humbuckers too. Ia ctually like the A8 pickups, but not everyone will. Fender used A3 and A5 exclusively for strats, just like teles. As you know, early teles had an A3 bridge and the first eyar of strats were all A3 and later on went over to the familiar A5. Its less critical with the buckers since there are documented PAFs with every grade of alnico from 2 to 5 and the 8s are kinda cool in a bucker and stillv ery PAF-ish... anyway....

that fernandez is probably a better guitar than the greco. I think Grecos gibbies really outdo their fenders. Tokai is of course the n=benchmark for all alwsuit guitars but this is reflected in the sued pricing for 70s and 80s models.

Thanks for your help, pal. I'll send a few messages/offers to sellers, see what I get back, and work from there! Aiming for the Fernandes for now but we'll see what happens

yeah, no problem... I'm a big proponent of japanese lawsuit guitars!