Fender Neck Width Vs Other Brands Help

I'm fairly new to the guitar and have been playing for a while learning songs by tablature. I own a Fender Squier Affinity Strat guitar and the neck on it is extremely narrow. A couple of my fingers are slightly large where this guitar is not comfortable to play. My brother owns a Schecter Diamond Series guitar and I can play that guitar like butter. It has a wider neck and it's very comfortable to play. I still like the Fender sound better though.

So here is my question...

Does Fender Stratocaster guitars have wider necks than the Squier Affinity Strat guitar or are Fender necks more narrow anyways? Would I be better off investing in a Les Paul or would a Stratocaster have that wider neck I'm looking for?

Thanks!

Some fenders have wider flater necks.. But your more likly to find one on a LP. Shop around, and play some guitars. Im sure you can find one that fits you a bit better.

Personally, I hate Fender necks (others love them).

The fretboard is too round (short radius) and the neck too fat (front to back). I do like the sound though, so I own a Parker Maxxfly that has the Duncan pickups that many strat players upgrade to - but the guitar has a narrow, 14" radius neck that fits me personally. YMMV

The sound of the electric guitar is predominantly in the pickups. If you get any guitar with the same pickup configuration as your Fender (whether it is 3 single coils or 2 single coils and a humbucker) you can replace the pickups and have the same sound as the Fender with a different neck/body.

Sometimes it takes owning a few different guitars until you find out what fits you best. I played a lot in music stores, I owned Gibson, Epiphone, ESP, and Kramer (Strat copy) before discovering the Parker fits me best.

Now that you have some experience with the guitar, you know what you like, go out and find it.

Insights and incites by Notes

If you like the guitar except for the neck - change the neck. Mighty Mite and Allparts offer lots of choices for a little money and any guitar shop would probably charge you $40 bucks to switch it all over if you weren't up to it. Look for a larger radius and nut width and probably jumbo frets if you like the scheckter. Squier has all of their specs on their website.

Thank you everyone for the information. I'll test some guitars out in the store and may end up going towards a Les Paul and swapping pickups out. Great info.

some of the strat knock offs have unusually thin necks, maybe because they're made for younger kids or possibly just to save on wood. i think you have one of those. other than that, outside of classical guitars, most necks feel pretty much the same to me. play it before you buy it, is a rule to live by when it comes to guitars and the best advice i could give you.

Smaller neck widths and profiles seem easier to play at first, and typically people in eastern countries are slighter than other places. That and the youth market probably account for smaller necks.

Yeah, I got the guitar when I was around 19 or 20. My fingers are slightly larger than then (I'm 24 now) and the neck is comfortable feeling in terms of neck diameter, but the nut width just isn't wide enough. It's about 40.9 mm nut, I believe. I need to head to the guitar store to play around with the LP's and compare to the Stratocasters. I think a 42 mm Mexican Strat should work for me, but I want to compare them to the LP's still. I think Strats are beautiful looking guitars, I love the pickups, the neck diameter is good, just need that wider nut width, so I have a feeling the 42 mm Strats should work. If I had tons of money to blow, I'd just buy a Strat and an LP to have both. Both are very nice. :D

When I was 24 I had neither strat or a paul, you've got plenty of time to build up the collection. Just don't get married.

LOL 8)

I prefer the longer scale (Fender) to the short (Gibson) one, and I like a long (14") Radius. Nut width can get too narrow for me, I don't know the measurements I prefer, but I can tell by playing a few chords if it's too narrow. I don't like the fretboard to back to be too fat, personal preference.

Until a few months ago my ideal neck was the old fender "boat tail" which I think they typically call the "U" or "D" neck - Anybody that's played a mid sixties Tele knows it well. They were about an inch thick or about 20% thicker than the standard modern c shape. And the 9" radius fret board and medium jumbo frets. But I suddenly like a much thinner and wider D shape with a 12" to 14" radius with taller frets. - I think I avoided such necks in the past because of its association with Metal guitars, but they just feel and play much better and easier to me now. I might have been swayed by the "vintage specs" when I was younger and just became used to them but here I am (heavily invested in vintage spec necks) liking new things in my advanced age (playing age that is).

It is said that short radius necks make it easier to play chords, but I don't think so.

Perhaps because I learned on a GIbson with a 14" radius and just worked until I got it.

But everything has a trade off. Short radius necks make it harder to bend the strings and if your action is low, you can "fret out" while bending, and the curvature of the strings by your picking hand can slow down your picking as your hand has to adjust more to accommodate the curve.

Of course, it all comes down to your own hands and what fits you the best.

It took me a few guitars to find out what is best for me.

Notes

I concur. I have found everything easier since switching to a flatter board.

first off: just wanted to suggest you look for the fender "HM" series from the eighties or check out some ibanez guitars.
both typically have wide string spacing (assuming this is what you want) and you can always find a happy medium by switching out pickups or otherwise modifying the electronics.

that said, I've found a number of dif necks I've loved over the years and it seems to me that I'm not even sure what dimensions are important to making me 'like' a neck. I have a jem that has a really wide neck. an epi 295 that has a baseball bat for a neck, an ultra thin tele, a slightly wide strat, a vintage style v neck and a few in-between. They all feel great to me depending on the day of the week!

I think the most reliable advice has been to go try a few guitars and find one that sits well with you because you may buy something based on one dimension and decide you hate it because of the frets, how far into the body it sits, the radius, placement of vol or pickups, binding, neck finish, body shape, weight or any other number of variables I'm forgetting.